Working for the weekend? Not if you want to keep your job

It’s Friday as I write this, and as usual, I’m ambivalent about my supposed two days of rest. I can’t summon much enthusiasm because for more than a decade, my weekends haven’t really been mine; surely, many of you can relate.

Nowadays work follows us everywhere, especially our Saturdays and Sundays, via wonderful enabling technologies that let bosses know where we are and when we’re there, so they can email us at 10 p.m. on a Friday with the expectation of answers/results by 8 a.m. Saturday. It’s become the new American way, and we’ve accepted it as an inevitable part of the next-gen rat race.

[ Also on InfoWorld: 7 blowhard bosses bollix up IT | For a humorous take on the tech industry’s shenanigans, subscribe to Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter and follow Cringely on Twitter. | Can we talk? Send your tech war story to offtherecord@infoworld.com and get a $50 AmEx gift cheque if InfoWorld publishes it. We’re all ears! ]

It doesn’t have to be like that. Other countries don’t subscribe to it — France, for example. Sure, they’re a little annoying when you interact with them in any way whatsoever, and that Maginot line thing made them look dumber than a bowl of breakfast cereal, but you gotta admit they know how to make great food, probably because they have so many free hours in which to cook it.

You see, France has a legally mandated 35-hour workweek. This may explain why they’re not a superpower in anything except arrogance and pâté, but hey, they don’t seem to care and it gives them ample opportunity to chug excellent wine, look down on Americans, and make crêpes. They get a government-enforced 11 hours of “rest” every day. We get government-enforced invasion of privacy and a business culture that questions our loyalty if we take more than 11 hours off a week.

Liberté, égalité, et le weekend

Now France has taken another step toward having an actual weekend: a deal between business groups and unions that prohibits business managers to send, check, or even be pressured to look in on their email after business hours. Lower-level employees still need to keep up on their email after 5, but if your boss can’t send that “I need this for the meeting at 6 a.m.” missive at 11 p.m., that’s not such a big burden. I like capitalism, but that makes me jealous as hell.

The French have taken to the concept like war-losing ducks to water, but I think Americans would have a hard time handling it. I understand that many Amazon, Google, and Microsoft employees stationed in France have been left stumbling down the Champs-Élysées after 5 p.m. like zombies looking for brains. The rest lie in bed, covered in cold sweat, shaking and screaming while suffering through digital withdrawal because France cut their Net-bilical cord.

Would it play in Peoria?

Could such a policy work in the land of apple pie and pre-50 stress strokes? Sure, employers here say they want employees to concentrate on work-life balance, but the memo comes in at midnight on a Tuesday with the conviction of sneaker manufacturer claiming to crack down on child labor. In our business culture, work-life balance means attending your kid’s soccer game with a smartphone, so you can work when she’s not on the field. It means making sure your iPad has a business inbox, so you can kick your pre-schooler off Doodlebug every time a manager passes the buck over to you.

American employers put up a kinder, gentler façade, but let’s face it: If you don’t work like you want your heart to pop, you won’t get a good annual evaluation. It’s a horrible habit that turns men into pear-shaped cube slaves and spawns moms with the mental stability of Sarah Connor.

Back in the real world Amazon recently announced another backhanded way to pretend to care for its employees’ well-being. Bezos has implemented a pay-to-quit program, which the company rolled out to 40,000 of its warehouse workers. Bezos says the program is to make sure his employees are happy at their jobs and want to stay. Translation: If they’re not ready to cut family time by 80 percent and make that facetious “110 percent” commitment to the greatest company ever, take the five grand and get the hell out.

American IT workers can be among the hardest hit by this overcommitment culture. Device makers tout “access anywhere anytime” innovation like it’s a fantastic advancement. But it’s a boon to only A-type senior execs who can buy $500,000 yachts but can’t enjoy them because they’re addicted to work and want everyone else to be, too. For the rest of us, it means we have to respond instantly whenever a server hiccups, a senior exec forgets a password, or a sales rep wants us to remove the drunken and highly incriminating Facebook post they made the night before. How is that a good thing?

Anywhere anytime means — well, anywhere anytime. It means your phone can thrust work stress on you 24/7, whether you’re camping in Yellowstone, coaching Little League, or enjoying a relaxing baby seal-hunting trip in the upper Arctic.

I think the Heartbleed guy is lying through his teeth. I think he put that bug in on purpose so that businesses would panic and shut down VPN access for one glorious week. If that’s the case, I’m going to send him a case of scotch and a gift certificate for a massage. Then after he’s had his fill, I’ll take him out back and give him exactly what he deserves for compromising my bank password.

This article, “Working for the weekend? Not if you want to keep your job,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the crazy twists and turns of the tech industry with Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Field blog, follow Cringely on Twitter, and subscribe to Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter.