The Most Hours You've Ever Worked

[Razgriz]

I regularly put in 110 hour work weeks during my first year out of college in M&A. My refusal to start smoking and doing coke made it impossible to compete with my co-workers. A few months into it I actually fainted while waiting for a cab, got taken to the ER and my boss's only response was "it happens to all of us. you should ask your doctor for 'something.'" I decorated my cubicle with medical studies on the effects of sleep deprivation and frequently announced to my office at which hours I would be considered intoxicated or insane by playing "Brain Damage" loudly. Boss did not find it funny, many others did.

These days I put in, on average, 12 hour work days with some 20 and others just a couple, because I make my own schedule. Working long hours is a whole other ball game when you're working for yourself. I get to wear jeans, go to the gym half way through the day, do cool shit and tell any pretentious assholes that dare enter my work environment to make the beast with two backs off. Most importantly, I get to wake up after 10am most days and get to sleep in a few days a week 

May I ask which M&A firm you worked for?
I worked for one in Hong Kong last year, easily pulled 100+ hours a week. The weeks we travel to Indonesia are the worst since we leave on a Sunday around midnight, it's a 5hour flight to Jakarta. We have a meeting before the flight, finishing up buyer presentations and stuff on the plane and by the time we get to the client's office its around 9-10am on Monday. Give the pitch. Work on the deal depending on the negotiation which might take up the whole week. Then fly back to HK on a midnight flight, and continue the next day...
After 6 months I start sympathize with my coworkers who start to drink and smoke heavily, cheat on their wives with prostitutes, and just destroy their personal lives.
At the end of the year I took my bonus and ran lol   

[Bun-bun]

In one 7 day period; 111 hours working for a boat dealer in Maryland getting boats rigged for the Annapolis boat show.

In 2003, I worked 142 hours in 9 days cutting trees and tarping houses after hurricane Isabel.

That hurricane paid the down payment on my house.

[DesmoLu]

May I ask which M&A firm you worked for?

At the end of the year I took my bonus and ran lol   

at JP AND me too!!

In 2003, I worked 142 hours in 9 days cutting trees and tarping houses after hurricane Isabel.

Physical work is tiring in a completely different way. Very hard but overall just *feels* better and is more natural. I think we are meant to and can work hard physically but it is the sitting in front of computer dealing with intense stress and a bunch of assholes that actually kills us. 

[NAKID]

16-18 hours a day for 103 days straight, all while never seeing land...

[redxblack]

I used to be a systems engineer. One very high profile server went down and the owner of the company said I had to go babysit it until it came back to life. I got on site at the end of my regularly scheduled 10 hour day. Immediately, I diagnosed the problem as a vendor software issue. It wasn't something I could fix, but I had to stay until it was fixed. In a server room. For three days.

I walked through fixes with the vendor, but there was nothing that could be fixed remotely. The package had to be rewritten. I could get the server online for 20 minutes, and then it would crash again at the same point.

After being captive for 82 hours, another engineer came out to show me how I was doing it wrong. He "fixed" it in a matter of minutes, just as I had several times already. He then went on to berate me about how I didn't know anything. I called my boss and explained that it was back online, would break again in less than 15 mins and that the douchebag claiming to have fixed it (and just all staff emailed how he fixed it and was awesome) hadn't. The boss took pity on me and sent me home. 96 hours from clock in to clock out with naps in the server room.

I hadn't left the parking lot when my pager went off that the server crashed again, but I had been officially relieved by the guy they fired a few months later. I decided to finish my degree and go teach high school. 24/7 on-call for non-life threatening situations is bullshit.

[sbrguy]

the real querstion is how much are you getting paid to put in the 110 weeks and such?

sometimes those good jobs and mucho money do not come cheap, there is a reason that law firms pay some starting associates fresh out of school that know nothing 150k a year starting and then they work 100-130 hour weeks all the time, its because they aren't going to pay you a kings ransom for nothing.

for that you have to become a rock start or get drafted in the nba.

[Timmy Tucker]

In 2003, I worked 142 hours in 9 days cutting trees and tarping houses after hurricane Isabel.

Isabel worked my ass off too. I had to oversee hurricane prep in the garden center of all the Lowe's stores between Elizabeth City and DC. That was a hectic week. I went back home to Staunton (200 miles inland from VA Beach) about 6 hours before landfall and dealt with shit there. Ended up w/ waist deep water in my yard and a foot of water in the house. make the beast with two backsing trees every where. Worst flooding we'd had since Juan in '85 and Camille in '69.

the real querstion is how much are you getting paid to put in the 110 weeks and such?

The busiest week I had doing construction in my previous post I billed around $12K. Of course, that $$ trickled in over a six month period.  The busiest week where I've walked with $$ in my hand was about 70 hrs over 4 days. I walked with $6K profit, gave my helper a $500 bonus for generally being awesome and took a week off. Those figures may not seem like a lot to most business people, but my overhead was only $300/wk plus a part-time 1099 helper. Damn how I miss the construction days of yore....