I see and experience the so called misery contest happen all the time where I work and also with people who I interact with outside work. My workplace definitely promotes a culture of overworking ones self even if being there so many hours doesn't even accomplish any additional work.
I was once indoctrinated into the belief that working 50-60 or even sometimes 70 or 80 hours a week and having no free time was a noble or good thing. Then a few years ago it hit me that some day I'll be dead and none of it will matter.
So now I say NO to as many things as I can as far as work is concerned. I still get things done that are actually important but there's so much extra curricular crap that they force down our throats that it's really hard sometimes to just do my job as it's definite in the job description.
This is one insane world we live in isn't it.
"My workplace definitely promotes a culture of overworking ones self even if being there so many hours doesn't even accomplish any additional work."
As I noted below, it's immediately obvious why they would want to do that. It would be surprising if they didn't do it.
Japan tried forcing this culture for decades, and now they have a generation of young men who don't want to move out of their parents house or interact with women, because that is simply seen as a gateway to a lot of unwanted responsibility.
The balance between work and play in the west is well out of whack. We could use more siestas.
Funny you mention the Japanese...my company's headquarters are in Japan and the culture in my facility is kind of a bastardized version of what the Japanese were doing years ago. The Japanese expats in my facility are quite honestly more reasonable and logical in their thinking and actions than many of the Americans that run the place are.
I remember asking an expat if the kids there (in JP) still had 6 day / week school and he said "no we figured out it's bad for them so we stopped doing that".
I don't mind working hard and I like being productive but the corporate culture in the U.S. has become completely insane to the point where it's nearly impossible to get anything meaningful accomplished. Unfortunately I've only been in the corporate world for just shy of a decade so I can't say "oh it didnt' used to be this way..." and know for sure that I'm correct in saying that.
""no we figured out it's bad for them so we stopped doing that"."
I wonder if it's going to take a generation to get back to some sort of middle-ground. The young men there now are, on average, doing nothing with their lives.
Couldn't agree more with everything else you said.
Its only insane if the people around you feel you so. There's a sort of peer pressure that is a lot like a invisible blanket draped over different aspects of your life. Work tends to be the kind that is universal misery. Since work life is such a large component of life in general, and we are always trying to size up our peers, we end up having these shitting contest that is nothing but negative.
Is group mentality.. That generally is why people collectively stay late I think and end up loathing themselves.
As you might imagine, the corporations are absolutely fine to not only allow but promote this as well, whenever possible. Much like the banks encourage the idea that having bad credit, or breaking a contract (under the terms of the contract itself, like defaulting on a mortgage) somehow makes you a bad person.
I honestly think Mike Judge is a luminary in this area. His work on this topic in the movie Office Space is legitimately genius.
Unfortunately, by failing to reward loyalty, giving adequate raises, etc employers have made it a battle to attempt to do as little work as possible without getting fired. Just as Peter notes.