Nothing's Ever Easy

This is going to be a relatively short post as I'm pretty swamped with work today - but being swamped is really what led me to writing this piece.

We often hear that people are overworked and underpaid. The two seem to go hand in hand. I would place myself in this group. I am in IT in the telecom industry. My whole family has been in IT for as long as I can remember. Back in the day, before my parents retired, they enjoyed flexible hours, enjoyable co-workers and rarely ever had to work on the weekends or overtime. Fast forward to 2007 and I'm seeing a lot of six-day, 40+ hour work weeks with NO compensation days to speak of. It's almost as if it's expected. Of course the law says that employers can't come out and say, 'I expect you to be working more than 40 hours a week...' yet it is commonly insinuated and understood that we should be working over 40 hours and weekend coverage, if needed...and to just shut up about it.

For my particular position, I don't have it nearly as bad as the developers on my team. I'm just a Project Manager and a Business Analyst - I get my work done quickly and efficiently, but we're currently nearing an end of a project where there is User Testing involved and those guys are testing 9 hours/day, Mon-Fri, and then 8 hours on Saturday for three weeks. I am the primary point of contact for my system during this period of insane work hours and I'm wondering - is anyone going to talk to me about working over 50 hours/week? When I submit my time sheet, it's always over 40 hours yet I don't get paid by the hour. As Michael Scott says, 'I get paid by the year.' But my coworkers have definitely been working over 50 hours for probably the last few months and I don't see them getting any relief.

I think it's the fault of management for overextending themselves yet not securing the resources necessary to cover the workload. I have an 'Easy' button, from Staples, on my desk, but aside from playing with it when I first got it, I haven't had the opportunity to press that darn thing - cause nothing's ever easy.

So I'm wondering...is there an occupation out there that is under-worked and overpaid? I know there are a lot of factors that go into that possibility - quality of life, geographic location, etc. My initial thoughts are that celebrities are probably in that category - but in real-people terms, is there such an occupation? And could I be happy there?