“In the last twenty years the amount of time Americans have spent at their jobs has risen steadily. Each year the change is small, amounting to about nine hours, or slightly more than one additional day of work (Schor, 1). Juliet B. Schor’s The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure explores the decline of leisure time in American professionals and laborers as a result of an increase in working time. In comparison to our European counterparts, American workers are now working close to 320 more hours yearly. Schor highlights the fact that American workers are choosing to work multiple jobs contributing to less leisure time due to longer working hours. In conclusion the book depicts the idea that the materialistic nature of Americans results in them choosing to work more so that they can spend more. …show more content…
My interpretation of Schors philosophical basis was to show readers the key points as to why Americans are spending less time in leisure and more time at the desk.
She uses various statistics to support her claims such as “Americans are sleeping on average 60-90 minutes less than other countries (Schor, 5)”. Not only are Americans spending more time working but because of their hectic work schedules they also get less time sleeping, which can lead to a variety of other problems. Schor continues throughout the book with different reasons to support her claim. She goes on to say that many of the white collar workers feel that is a need to “overwork” in order to meet the needs of their job. “Schor tells us that many overworked Americans-and she is not talking about the unemployed or underemployed but the overemployed professional, white collar management, and skilled workers-have lost any sense of autonomy over their jobs (Schor 4)”. The author clearly makes it obvious that American workers are working way more and as time goes on this trend will continue to
rise. After reading this book I was able to make a strong connection with Schor and some of her findings, many of these quotes throughout the passage relates to me and my field of study. “Schor offers three broad explanations for the rise of overwork…the "incentive structures" within capitalism are biased toward longer working hours; the rising standards and expectations of domestic life, while making domestic life easier, have expanded the hours devoted to cleaning, food preparation, and childrearing; and the consumer cycle of earn and spend has required long work hours to support America's material way of life”. This quote relates to me because of how hard I work and being in the recreation field, sometimes I work very long hours, making less time for “Play”. Recently I reached out to my supervisor and asked her how has the work hours affected her since being in the recreation field for the last ten years. She told me that since working in the field over the last decade she has been getting less time with family and more time at her center. She said it is not something you realize is happening, but she can tell that times are changing and working is beginning to take up majority of her time. I feel that this is something that people in our field have in common. Schor is right on it when it comes to explaining why workers in America are overworking and their main reason behind it. From the 1900’s all the way until now the trend is going up and workers are working more hours than ever, Schor says she will continue to watch this trend rise over time.
Marks, L. (2006). The Loss of Leisure in a Culture of Overwork. Spirit of Change Magazine.
James K. Polk once said, “No president who performs his duties faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure.” According to the article titled, “James K. Polk,” Polk was born in North Carolina, and graduated from the University of North Carolina in which he studied to become a successful attorney. Polk had a successful political career in which he held high ranks of authority in the Tennessee and federal government. He was also known as “Young Hickory” referencing his mentor and friend Andrew Jackson. He came into office at the age of 49 in 1845 in which his accomplishments would help make up the big picture known as America. James K. Polk was the determined and strong, eleventh president of the United States, who carried out all of his goals he set forth during his presidency, which included the expansion of the United States to the west, the settlement of the Oregon boundary, and the restore the Independent Treasury.
“My very ability to work tirelessly hour after hour is a product of decades of better-than-average medical care, a high-protein diet, and workouts in gyms that charge $400 or $500 a year. If I am now a productive fake member of the working class, it’s because I haven’t been working, in any hard physical sense, long enough to have
Tim Kreider’s “The ‘Busy’ Trap” from The New York Times (June 30, 2012) explores the different worlds of both, the busy and the free. His article evaluates and persuades the American working class to stop for a second and reassess their constantly busy lifestyles. His knowledge comes from his own and other’s life experiences. Relating on a personal level, Kreider encourages his audience to recognize that being busy may make them feel important, but they are sacrificing all their valuable time life has given them. In fact, he influences them to think about how much stress their work is, and how it most likely won’t amount to anything. He does this through logos, providing personal anecdotes and common knowledge; ethos, demonstrating that he
Many individuals would define leisure as time free from paid work, domestic responsibilities, and just about anything that one would not do as part of their daily routine. Time for leisure and time for work are both two separate spheres. The activities which people choose to do on their spare time benefit their own personal interests as well as their satisfactions. While some people may enjoy one activity, others pay not. Leisure is all about personal interests and what people constitute having a good time is all about. Some may say that the process of working class leisure can be seen to contribute their own subordination as well as the reproduction of capitalist class relations. Self-produced patterns of working class leisure can lead to resistance to such reproduction. This leads to social class relations and inequalities, and the fact that it they can never be completely reproduced in the leisure sphere. This film Home Feeling: Struggle for a Community, gives some examples of the role of leisure within a capitalist society dealing with issues such as class inequalities, and how they are different among various societies.
In today’s society you either have to work hard to live a good life, or just inherit a lump sum of cash, which is probably never going to happen. So instead a person has to work a usual nine to five just to put food on the table for their families, and in many cases that is not even enough. In the article, “Why We Work” by Andrew Curry, Curry examines the complexities of work and touches on the reasons why many workers feel unsatisfied with their jobs. Barbara Ehrenreich writes an essay called, “Serving in Florida” which is about the overlooked life of being a server and the struggles of working off low minimum wages. Curry’s standpoint on jobs is that workers are not satisfied, the job takes control of their whole life, and workers spend
Evidence suggests that families often enjoyed everyday leisure but in reality working class social life was divided by gender. Married women’s leisure tended to be separate from the public domain and was not very different from work, but was linked with domestic duties and family relations. It was during this period that to survive families had to send their sons and daughters into the labor force to supplement the earnings of the father, while the mother cooked, cleaned, cared for the children and manufactured goods in the home. The typical wage-earning woman of 1900 was young and single.
The poem describes workers to be “Killing the overtime ‘cause the dream is your life, / Refusing to take holidays or go home to your spouse, / But for many the overtime comes, ‘cause the work is not done. / Deadlines to be met. So you continue to dream like a war vet, / Having flashbacks to make you shiver and scream” (Jones, stanza 7, lines 2-6). Jones reinforces that overworking for an incentive of money does not give one a sense of gratification, and it also distracts them from the values that should matter more to them than anything else. Both Kohn and Jones have a similar approach to showing the reader the effect that overworking can have on a person, and how it will change their values in life, causing unhappiness. Many students go through school dispirited and do not join various clubs and activities for their own enjoyment. A friend of Kohn’s who was also a high school guidance counsellor had a student with ‘…amazing grade and board scores. It remained only to knock out a dazzling essay on his college applications that would clinch the sale. “Why don’t we start with some books that
Previous generations have a strong belief of keeping work and home life separate; that work is for work and home is for play (Rampell, 2011, para 21). Today’s professionals do not seem to abide by similar beliefs, constantly crossing the borders of one into the other. While many recognize this as an issue that could result in employees being less productive, it has actually resulted in them accepting that their work may run late into the evening or even into the weekend. I agree with this completely in that I grew up being taught that business is business and personal is personal; you leave your home life at the door. But now times have changed, and my weekends are no longer dedicated to my home life, but for work, because I attend classes during the week. Also, in my line of work in the Allied Health industry, it is a requirement to work off hours. Long gone are the days of working nine to five, Monday through Friday; technology and the demand of wanting affairs done and done as soon as possible, has made it so the “work week” is now 24-7. “Jon Della Volpe, the director of polling at Harvard Institute of Politics, said, ‘Some experts also believe that today’s young people are better at quickly switching from one task to another, given their exposure to so many stimuli during their childhood and adolescence’” (Rampbell,
People will argue that having a low-paying job and freedom is better than a high-paying job and a 60-hour workweek. However many including myself, don’t share the views of Hal Niedzviecki’s essay’s “Stupid Jobs Are Good to Relax With”. Having a higher paying and longer hours provides much more income and allows for a lot more financial freedom. This freedom can help bring much more happiness into your life compared to the lower paying workweek. Hal Niedzviecki mentions many benefits to the easy jobs with low-paying workweeks in the following statement
Throughout history, traveling both domestically and internationally has been a major aspect of American life. Whether traveling for work, vacation, or even just leisure, Americans have always been on the move. Although, from Arthur C. Brooks article, “How to Get Americans Moving Again,” it is evident that times are changing. In “How to Get Americans Moving Again,” Brooks portrays an America that has had an immense percentage decrease in the amount of Americans that domestically move between states. This decrease is due to a traveling environment that has left a vast amount of fear and uncertainty in the hearts of travelers, which has caused them to stay home. Considering the current circumstances that Americans are traveling in, which includes
Harrington, J. M. (2001). Health Effects of Shift Work and Extended Hours of Work. OEM Education. Retrieved on December 3, 2013, from http://oem.bmj.com/content/58/1/68.full. doi: 10.1136.oem.58.1.68
While the American Dream of the post-war ‘40s and ‘50s was the same core ideology as the American Dream had always been, it expanded its previous definitions to include a uniform “American Way of Life”. Will Herberg argues that the true common religion in the United States is not western monotheism but this way of life that we have. He cites the fact that a majority of people at this time don’t let their religious beliefs affect their decisions about politics and society . He infers that there must be another force behind the country’s unity and it is our way of life. This way was more linear in definition than in the past and was reinforced by the pressure that the Cold War produced. Popular media reflected the conformism that was prevalent
The work week had dropped from 60 to 48 hours. For the first time, the Americans considered play as important as work. The weekend family outing and vacation had become things workers expected it. Huge numbers of people had radios went to the movies and owned a car.
Written in 1899, by Thorstein Veblen, “The Theory of the Leisure Class”, analyzes and critiques consumerism in the United States. Veblen explores the lifestyle and ways of thinking of the exploiter versus the exploited; in a point of view from those who are born into power and those who serve people in power. It is in this book where Veblen created the phrase “conspicuous consumption”, where it means buying goods in order to display a higher social class than others (Heath, 2001). He traces almost all practices and tastes of the leisure class directly to the pecuniary interest. I chose this book because I wanted to learn about how certain groups in society try to distinguish themselves from other groups and how it came to be for such differential.