The Habit of Complaining in the Forty-Hour Work Week (Inspired by David Cain)

A few Fridays ago a small group of us were having Friday drinks at my office.  Edging towards that 5pm mark, people had already started loitering around the board room, stopping in offices and chatting as that Friday afternoon fatigue was rapidly setting in.  Finally, there it was - 5pm, the time of the angels of heaven above, the time when all good people everywhere are clinking glasses and celebrating!  Small life victories - like making it through the week, okay, so more like making it through the last two hours - are what we're going on here, people.

As we sat in that room on a really lovely, sunny friday, with an iceberg in view in the harbour, we chatted about how absolutely unfortunate it was that one girl couldn't drink because she had to go to a bridal shower about an hour outside of town.  (And, quite frankly, I wasn't even being facetious for the sake of a laugh - going to a bridal shower on friday instead of drinking is literally one of my personal nightmares.  More bridal showers should be wine showers.  Just bring enough wine for me and himself for a year so that we actually make it, after all they say the first year is the hardest...but I digress.)

I was reminded of this (and other) complaining - not just by the girl who had to go but by us on her behalf - after reading a fantastic article, "Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (The Real Reason for the Forty-Hour Workweek)".  The author postulates that the way the work week is designed forces us to have so little free time to ourselves to do the things we enjoy, that when we choose to do things - especially of a social nature - our hands are quite often forced to do things that are expensive (think lunch with your girlfriend, drinks with the crowd, dinner and a movie with your significant other) because our time is not only very limited, but also because our hours of freedom fall to times where greater capital is required for most social activities (think lunch, dinner, weekend brunch, evening drinking).  The more we spend to enjoy our time, the more we need to spend to enjoy our time.  Once you're in, can you ever really get out?

As I remembered the complainy banter we had going on at our Friday at five, I realized the forty-hour workweek has also resulted in these very complaints.  My colleague had finally made it to the weekend and instead of doing the bit of socialization or fun she wanted to do, she had to do something she was obligated to do.  Because her time is so short as it is, to attend said bridal (not wine) shower was cumbersome, irritating, frustrating, and, most definitely, bitch worthy.  

Of course, the things we don't want to do that we must do in our limited free time are not isolated to lame social activities like bridal (not wine) showers.  We also need to factor in horrible chores like grocery shopping, getting your oil changed, going to Costco (honestly just end this privileged first world existence I'm leading right now), or mowing the lawn even if it's grey and cold outdoors.  No matter what the terrible chore is, when your time is limited, people are frustrated and like to air that grievance.  Other people working that forty hour work week understand the annoyance of such time-thieving activities, and they don't mind the venting because they'll get to vent, too.

Each week the things that didn't get done the week before remain to be completed and just add to the stress of the forty hour workweek worker, encouraging more complaining as more and more colleagues fall into the same bottomless bit of tasks and limited time and growing fatigue.  

I got to thinking - first of all, none of these things are so bad.  Even though, personally, I think that bridal showers should all just morph into wine showers without further adieu, to each their own.  I want to be happy to be invited to such a function!  What makes these activities feel worse than they are is the complaining.  Complaining is just a habit of negative rather than positive thoughts popping into your head and being uttered before you think through whether it actually contributes much to a good dialogue.  The more we complain, the more we will complain.

What's worse than just the complaining in and of itself is the overall effect a constant string of complaining and negative thoughts has on you.  The more one sees the world painted in negatives, the more negative it all seems to be every day.  If we're creatures of agency (we are), then we get to control ourselves and our own output and how we act in society.  This habit of complaining - perpetuated by the limited time we all have in common and the activities we don't want to do in that limited time - just makes each day more negative.  We become trapped, feeling more and more down, the time off we do have shrouded in consistent slight misery, the days at work a little bit less enjoyable.

The slight misery encouraged by our complaining and subsequent bad attitudes isn't static, with things we can't wait to do hopefully always just around a corner of some kind.  But, as the author of that article suggests, those things are likely sufficiently costly that the forty hour work week will most definitely remain your ruler, and your limited time will probably force you back into friday drinks, dreading and vocalizing the dread you have about the next lame tea party you have to attend.  

If one is set on having and paying for the many and various "things" we seem to most definitely need living up here in cushy Canada, the forty-hour workweek is a necessary evil.  But that complaining lending insult to injury - that just might be a little addition all of our own making.  They say it takes twenty-one days to break an old habit/build a new one (well...I think Oprah and Deepak Chopra say that anyway), maybe we should all take a challenge to stifle that complaint.  I can't say for sure, but my guess is the stifling could lead to silencing some of those negative voices in the first place, and if that leads to a happier work day, workweek, it seems worth it to me.