Last week, a young creative at Y&R in Indonesia, died of a heart attack at her desk after working 30 straight hours, coked up on "energy drinks."
She wore her extreme work habits as a badge, as witnessed by these tweets: "Alright, one full week of going home past 2am from the office. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we just broke a record."
"Weekend? What weekend? "
"30 hours of working and still going strooong."
As this year closes, I wonder how many of us are working too hard. Probably more because we have to rather than we want to.
Last night, I got an email at midnight to look at some CGI animation.
Writing this early in the morning, my wife's phone is buzzing with incoming messages.
All the management blather about "balance" and being a "caring culture," well, does anyone believe any of that?
No, it's 1890 in advertising. And our job is to take as much coal out of the ground as we can. Anything that slows our productivity is bad for the shareholders and therefore bad for the holding company moguls.
There's no solution here.
Really.
Except, maybe personal discipline.
And closing the Mac.
As my daughter admonishes by way of Ice-T or Ice Cube: check yourself before you wreck yourself.
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