Research Proves Why We Shouldn’t Log Insane Hours At The Office And Always Leave On Time

Do you love working long hours? Of course you don’t. You’re not an asshole. It’s your boss and your company who are the assholes, expecting you to be at the office for 12 hours a day every, single, fucking day.

That may not be the case at every job, but it’s certainly the new normal in America. You want to climb the corporate ladder? Prove it by sitting at your desk an extra few hours each day. And why do you have to do that? Maybe it’s to manage perception because Jessica and Mike, the two new associates who were hired with you, refuse to leave at a normal hour. They want to be the bossmans’s pet and the only way to do that is to outwork you, or at least make it seem like they are outworking you. Or maybe you find yourself stuck at the office while everyone else is out having a life because you work for a company that loves meetings. Every meeting requires a pre-meeting and before that per-meeting there is a brainstorm session and by the time five o’clock rolls around you haven’t done shit with your day. Meanwhile, your boss is headed out the door because all he does is go to meetings and then sticks you with all the actual work. LIFE IS SO FAIR, ISN’T IT?

Either way, the vast majority of America is working a ton of hours in 2015. And a lot of those hours are overtime without the overtime pay (See: the aforementioned question about life being fair). But we’re not even the most overworked country in the world, although it sure seems that way because we’re spoiled, first-world dickfarmers who love to complain.

So where are we going with all of this, you ask? Turns out, that maybe we’re doing it wrong. Maybe we would be way more productive if we felt like we had a fucking life outside of work? Like, say, the people who live in France.

According to Guardian:

There is a lot of evidence that the number of hours worked does not equate to how much you are getting done. With the OECD countries above, there is a statistically significant negative relationship between the average hours worked and the amount of money made per hour worked. In other words, the countries with longer working hours tend to have less economically productive workers.

The French work on average about 1,500 hours per year. Among OECD members only employees in the Netherlands, Germany, Norway and Denmark work fewer hours.

However, the number of hours worked tells only a partial story. At the other end of the OECD rankings, workers in Greece clock more than 2,000 hours a year on the job, but in terms of productivity the output of Greek workers generates far less value compared with most other European countries. By this measure, those slackers in France, the Netherlands and Denmark perform better than most other EU members, including Germany and Britain.

Son of a bitch. This is the ultimate lose-lose situation. Either you can live in America and spend your life working your fingers to the bone, or you can move to France and be living in France.