Aimee Chan: Facebook, Twitter, Skype, MSN. Singaporeans work way too hard
Is a Twitter window permanently open on your workplace computer? We might be in the office after hours, but does that actually mean we work hard?
She bemoaned still being in the office at 2 a.m. Simultaneously, a second friend emailed me to ask for career advice. This was her third night in a row that she’d stayed back past midnight. She’d had enough.
It seems no matter where we work, or how many times we change jobs, a balance of work and play is near impossible to achieve in Singapore. Dinner parties must be scheduled to start after 8 p.m. even though people come straight from the office.
Laptops need to be with us even while on annual leave. Blackberrys are answered even inside the cinema so clients can reach us at any time.
No one I know leaves the office before 7 p.m. In fact, many times when I’ve been up writing at night I’ve received replies to work emails, as if 1 a.m. is a normal business operating hour.
Why do Singaporeans work so hard?
Or do they?
One can’t really complain about working late if you only arrive at 10 a.m. I’ve seen whole staff in near revolt over any meeting scheduled before 9:30 a.m.. But late starts mean everything gets delayed. Even if you queue 15 minutes before the bank opens at 11 a.m., it’s often nearly noon before you get your banking done.
So the time needs to be made up elsewhere. If you’re always unable to make it to work on time when it rains, should you really complain that you’re staying back after the cleaning aunty has turned off the aircon?
Then there’s the long lunches. I’m not saying we should eat at our desks and work through a well-earned break, but it seems excessive that 20 people spend most of the morning emailing each other about where to eat (fish noodles or Japanese pasta?) and then spend another two hours actually doing it. Every day. No wonder we’re still working past 7p.m.
And while I love fashion as much as the next girl, if you’re absent from the office for half a day due to the Club 21 sale, isn’t it likely you’ll be doing that work at some other (less convenient) time?
It’s an annoying truism that, no matter how efficient you are, in every industry there are some times when project deadlines will keep employees back late. But even then, no one seems in a rush to get home.
Wouldn’t you rather buy a pizza to share in the office and be home by 10 p.m. instead of all ambling over to Crystal Jade, spending an hour surfing Twitter, and then getting home at midnight? Not most Singaporeans I know.
Late one night my team and I were still in the office. My job was to chase them for their stories, so I was waiting around for work that wasn’t coming in. Everyone was silent, just the sound of keyboards tapping. I tried an experiment to see if they were actually writing as hard as it looked. I posted something funny on Facebook.
Every single person laughed out loud.
There is no doubt that here the pace of life is fast and employers have unreasonable expectations. I know several clients who don’t think twice about calling editors on their personal mobiles even on weekends, demanding copy immediately; mind you, I’m not even in a life-saving industry.
But there are some ways we could help ourselves to get out of the office quicker. Do we need to post photos of every meal we eat on Facebook? Is every episode of "Glee" worth an hour’s conversation round the coffee machine in the morning?
Could we save flicking through the latest magazines until after we get home?
If career is first priority for most Singaporeans, then it makes sense that work is where we spend a lot of our time. But it’s a slippery slope to letting the workplace become our lives. And we all seem to be on it.
The opinions of this commentary are solely those of Aimee Chan.
