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Have you tried to negotiate four days week trial with your employers?

I work for an American company situated in Europe. I have been trying to negotiate working four days a week.

I am on salary and work long arduous hours daily, roughly 10 plus hours. We are expected to perform but performance dwindle due to exhaustion. Studies have shown the longer employees work the more their productivity levels drop.

SW has helped sedate my brain from exploding. I wake up thinking about meeting deadlines, I go to sleep dreaming of deadlines. It's a nightmare but every time I suggest this to my employer, I'm told you're paid a hefty amount to perform and complete the task. How you manage it is your problem. 😢

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Mamapolo2016 · F

You might want to consider trying to negotiate work-from-home Fridays, or some of each of the daily work hours.

I have more time to actually work if I'm not commuting.

I will be more alert instead exhausted from commuting PLUS working long hours.

Random1Thoughts · F

That was part of the point I was pushing to my employer. If I work 4 days, I can do the rest at home.

At the moment, I am already spending significant amount of my weekends working: it could be that the workload is too much. @Mamapolo2016

Mamapolo2016 · F

@Random1Thoughts I would try to do some research to learn how many of their employees have quit or been fired because they'd become burnt-out husks.

I don't know your age. If the pay is that good, maybe it's worth a few years in the lion's den to get financially stable. If you try to do it forever you won't be able to enjoy what you earn, so what's the point?

When I was in my late twenties I was promoted to a position as trainer. Salaried, management level, bonuses.

They worked me like a rented mule. When a new store opened, my schedule was 8-8 weekdays, catch up on correspondence weekends, for two weeks (also it was as far as 75 miles to some of the outlying stores). The third week, it was essentially store open to store close for a full week, six days for that one.

I asked for help, I asked for more lead time...no go. After three years I walked into my boss's office and said, "As of two weeks from today I'm either working somewhere else HERE or I'm working somewhere else.

Random1Thoughts · F

I'm 28 years old and I can't complain with the pay package. I'm paid very well, I made sure to negotiate my salary according to my qualifications. I am paid more than some of the senior engineers in our department.

I will stick it out a bit longer to acquire more experience and move on from there.

I'm offsite a lot too and diving from A to B takes up significant amount of time. I want to retire well and live comfortably, unemployment is not an option. @Mamapolo2016

Mamapolo2016 · F

@Random1Thoughts In the meantime make sure you are working as smart as you can. When you are perpetually exhausted it's easy to fall into stupid habits without realizing it.

Random1Thoughts · F

@Mamapolo2016 I have realized that that I'm falling to the trap of over working. I take more vacations time to travel now.

Mamapolo2016 · F

@Random1Thoughts Good. You're smart. You'll handle it or know when it's time to stop trying to handle it.