What do you consider too much time away from home?

i dont normally have much to add to these type of discussions, but in this case, thats still true. ill say something anyways. :)

for me, the daily hours doesnt bother me. 10's, 12's 16's i dont care. im already there, at work. the more hours i work today, the more money i get in a 5 day period. but dont berkeley with my weekend. i work 4-10's now, and its heaven. i dont see the kids much during the week, even being on night shift, 7pm-630am, but im off thursday morning and i dont go back till the kids go to bed at 7pm sunday, so its great for me. if it was my call, id work 20 hrs straight, take 8 off to sleep in my truck, then work another 20, then go home for 5 days.

just dont berkeley with my weekend. getting dragged in on saturday to do a rebuild (im a maintenance tech) while my family goes to cedar point blows...

-J0N

With my current job if I spend more than six hours a week away from home I feel like I've gone overboard.

In all seriousness, before I started working from home I spent about 11 hours a day Monday through Friday working or commuting. This meant I woke the kids up to put them in daycare and picked them up to give them dinner and pack them off to bed. It sucked.

I'd rather be happy and broke than have money and be stressed out from working too much.

In reply to jmthunderbirdturbo:

I don't work many weekends anymore, but when I do I get very short tempered.

I'm also salary so even though I'm putting 55-60 in I'm only getting paid for 40.

On weekdays, I leave at 4:45am and get home around 5:00pm, so it's just over 12 hours. I am glad I get to be home around 5pm, so I can spend as much time with the family as I can. The downside is getting up so early in the morning leaves me drained at night, especially by time we get to Thursday and Friday.

If I add in the time I run back out the door to shuttle the kids to practice, I'm at 15 hours away from home. Leave 4:45am, home at 5:00pm, back out the door at 5:30pm, home at 8:30pm. Do housework, etc...get a little sleep, rinse, repeat. It's a very tiring grind. My weekends are important to me, though they're often just as busy.

Just depends on what I have to do that day. If I'm not running any errands I typically leave around 6:30 and get home around 4:30. If going to the gym/grocery shopping/etc, add another 1-2 hours.

My wife on the other hand typically leaves around 6:30am Mon and gets home between 9pm-midnight on Thursday.

When I was in my 20's and single I was perfectly happy being gone 14-16 hours a day plus another 8 on a Saturday. Now I'd quit if that happened for more than 1-2 days a month for an emergency. these days I'm gone about 10 hours a day 5 days a week and I'm happy with that. Next week I'll be out of town Sunday through Tuesday night then working long hours for the rest of the week, but that's a 3-4 times a year gig which is planned for in advance both at work and home, I'm actually looking forward to that as it will be really interesting.

I have friends and family who are gone Monday oh dark hundred a.m. and don't return until Friday late or even for one guy Sunday a.m. For one guy he couldn't hack it and quite after a couple of years. For another it's because his family wants to live in Michigan and he's an exec in Florida, for the third he's a long haul driver and it's the only reason he's remained married for 20 years as his wife is a grade A pshyco crazy hose beast bitch, make that BITCH. Personally I'd have divorced the psycho decades ago, but it's too late for that now as she hasn't managed to hold a job for more than a couple of weeks at a time while spending them into massive debt so he's lose everything.

I (involuntarily) spend a lot of time at home now, when working I typically did 7am-6pm M-F and that's quite enough for me. Of course that changes on race weekends... Problem with being home is there's ALWAYS something that needs 'fettling', as our Limey cousins say.

I feel weird by comparison to many of you. My job is 8-4:30 M-F, no nights, shifts, or holidays. I live 5 miles from work so my morning commute is around 15 minutes (traffic) and afternoons can be done in as little as 4 (all right turns and two lights).

I've done longer commutes and more hours, they didn't help my state of mind.

I told my six year old a story last night.

Dad doesn't read this forum, otherwise I could never put this here.

When I was 6-8, my Dad (at the time a Snap-on dealer) would arrive home well after dinner. He would always be mad and tired. He and Mom would yell at each other for a bit, and then he;d go into the garage to work on stuff. Eventually I found out that he was restoring a '66 GTO. I saw it once or twice I think. I went to bed each night listening to garage noises wondering why he never came to say goodnight or tuck me in. He was gone in the morning before I woke up.

So yeah, I feed my kids breakfast every morning, help get them dressed and ready until I am about 15 minutes late for work and I walk in the door at five for dinner. Every day. I get them bathed, dressed, I read to them and tuck them in. Every day. I try not to go on business trips, and try not to stay the night if I do. I don't go out to work on the truck project unless they are sleeping.

In reply to tuna55: Yeah, I worked real hard at doing all the right Dad things when my kids were little. Must have read Goodnight Moon about a million times.

KyAllroad wrote: In reply to tuna55: Yeah, I worked real hard at doing all the right Dad things when my kids were little. Must have read Goodnight Moon about a million times.

Real sorry to hear that it didn't work out well for you in the interim (read your rant in the rant thread and it stuck with me). I am positive that it will make a difference somehow.

I must be a weird one, I like trips away from home. I don't mind working weekends. I just wouldn't want to do it every week for 20 years. I always jump at the chance to get out of the office, even if it means staying in a hotel one night or two a month.

I think I'd rather work a weird changing schedule and have a boss who is cool with me saying "I need this weekend, and I'd like to take this Wednesday off, and that weekend, and that Friday" than a boss who grumbles when I request to leave an hour early.

PHeller wrote: I must be a weird one, I like trips away from home. I don't mind working weekends. I just wouldn't want to do it every week for 20 years. I always jump at the chance to get out of the office, even if it means staying in a hotel one night or two a month. I think I'd rather work a weird changing schedule and have a boss who is cool with me saying "I need this weekend, and I'd like to take this Wednesday off, and that weekend, and that Friday" than a boss who grumbles when I request to leave an hour early.

Dude, I have the best desk job in the world for that.

Just yesterday: "Hey boss, I am going to need next week pretty much off because of Tunawife's surgery"

"Alright. Keep us posted"

Plus, we do real live flex time.

tuna55 wrote: So yeah, I feed my kids breakfast every morning, help get them dressed and ready until I am about 15 minutes late for work and I walk in the door at five for dinner. Every day. I get them bathed, dressed, I read to them and tuck them in. Every day. I try not to go on business trips, and try not to stay the night if I do. I don't go out to work on the truck project unless they are sleeping.

I'm very similar. I don't get to see my kids in the mornings, but I do whatever I have to so I can be home for dinner, after school activities, etc... Have the bedtime routine with them too. I don't travel in my new job, but I did in my old one 3-4 times per year. I liked going places, but hated...HATED...leaving the kids (I missed my wife too, but much more the kids).

My wife and I started a "Family fun night" with our kids about 6 years ago, because we wanted to be sure we were active with them and spent time with them. Every Friday after work, we take them for a night out. Could be something as simple as McDonalds, or to BounceU, or a movie. They live for it, it's their favorite thing all week. Sadly, I think it may run its' course soon. My 10 and 7 year old sons often want to do something different than my 7 year old daughter, and they wind up arguing about it...or if my wife and I pick, someone has a sad face. Yet, when I mentioned that maybe the time has come to end it, all three of my kids broke into tears "Nooooo!!! We wait all week for it!!!" Then they turned right back to arguing about what we were doing.

I don't have kids, but I think that I'm away from home too much--I leave the house at 5:50AM, and I get back at about 5:00PM. On the weekends I’ll spend between 2 and 15 hours at the ice rink reffing games—figure an average of 4 hours a weekend. This isn’t the same as my regular job, because I really do love reffing so it doesn’t drain me like my real job does. But I’m still away from home, because I “need” the money.

So we have 59 hours a week that I’m working/commuting. I’d like to get 52.5 hours a week of sleep (7.5 hours), but that doesn’t happen. That leaves me with 56.5 hours a week to do my own thing. Consider that 29 of those hours are the weekend, and all of a sudden I don’t have much we time, and virtually no “ME” time.

Over half of my time is working, or getting to work. That is a serious problem. It is also why I’m saving like crazy now. I don’t want to be in the position where I have to take the managerial position that would increase my time at work by 20 hours a week. I want to enjoy my time.

As to the actual question of how much is too much, it depends. Is the fiancé working 12 hour shifts all week? Then any time away that she is there is too much. Is she with her mom who is visiting? Then I can be away for 90% of the day and it doesn’t matter. The really hard times are when I’m on a business trip (about 5 a year) and she has the 60 hour work weeks.

I for one am ready for the 6 hour workday.

pinchvalve wrote: I for one am ready for the 6 hour workday.

I'd rather have 4x8's, but I agree with the general idea. Not scientific, but I believe that the more time you are at work, the time you waste goes up exponentially. While it is likely not 2 hours that I'm wasting in the 8 hour day, I bet that at least 50% of my waste comes between 1:00 and 3:30 when I leave.

I'd really love to have WFM or 4x10's in the current situation though.

After going through architecture school (think 60-hour weeks at a job where you pay them ) and seeing how so many firms use chronic semi-paid overtime as a business model, I decided it was fine if I worked for somebody else for my whole career. I like going home at night and having my weekends more or less free.

I'm usually out of the house for about 10-11 hours a day. Yesterday it was 14 hours, one day last week it was more than 20. I typically end up doing 8-12 hours OT during the course of a month. It's tolerable, but I'd rather not. I could seriously use about 8 more hours of sleep a week, not to mention project time.

My commute's not bad - 30 minutes each way, unless traffic is horrendous. I wouldn't want to waste much more time in the car than that.

So far I have had almost zero flexibility. I've requested a day off over a month in advance and still when the day comes been told that I couldn't have it off. Missed birthdays and family vacations.

I guess I'm just getting sick of working

I don't mind being away from home for a long time. Being at work that whole time sucks though. I love doing an 8 hr day + lunch followed by several hours of mountain biking or going to the gym and not getting home until I've been gone for 12-13 hours.

But I'm married now, so that doesn't happen.

You clearly have not earned your time and are being unreasonable. Give it another 10 years and everything should be alright.

In reply to PHeller:

PHeller wrote: You clearly have not earned your time and are being unreasonable. Give it another 10 years and everything should be alright.

Heh

There are days when I don't go home. Close one job, open another. You get used to sleeping in a truck if you're tired enough.

Damn... I'm gone by 6:30am and home not usually before 7:30pm. Maybe that's why my marriage is failing...