Working 24/7

This story originally aired on April 2, 2006.

Americans work longer hours than nearly anyone in the developed world, even the Japanese. For many professionals and corporate managers, the 40-hour work week is history; 60- to 80-hour work weeks are now the norm.

Signs of our addiction to work are everywhere. For one, rush hours are starting earlier and ending later. When 60 Minutes first broadcast this story a few months ago, the first train for commuters from the suburbs into New York had just been pushed back to 4:45 a.m., by popular demand.

Why do Americans work so much? The simplest answer is because we can.

The Digital Revolution means cell phones, wireless Internet and handheld computers like the BlackBerry allow us to work anywhere, anytime, 24/7. And we do, as correspondent Lesley Stahl reports.

For Joe and his wife, Christina Mireles, new technology means their work day isn't 9 to 5. It's 5 to 9.

"Because we have wireless access, you can work wherever," says Joe.

"We can be in the kitchen. We can be in our bedroom, we can be here in the living room," Christina points out.

With a masters and a law degree each, they're not exactly underachievers. Joe logs 12- to 15-hour days as vice president of an Internet travel Web site.

Sometimes, Joe admits he gets up at night to send e-mails.

"Sometimes I can't sleep and I'll get up at 2 or 3 (a.m.), yeah, to do e-mails, definitely," he said, while his wife was shaking her head.

"Or you'll set your alarm, you know to wake up at one, two in the morning," she added.

"I do, I do," he replied.

Christina, a vice president of a charter school company, works a few hours less than Joe. She says she is no match for her husband in terms of gadgets.

"Oh, I have the absolute bare minimum, I think. I have two cell phones, a personal and …," Christina explained.

"That's the bare minimum, America. Two cell phones," Joe interrupted.

Not a minute is wasted, even before getting to the office. Christina juggles the two cell phones, returning business and personal calls. She usually eats behind the wheel.

On his commute, Joe manages the consulting business he has on the side and even keeps track of new messages on his BlackBerry. But he says he's never tried anything as dangerous as typing out an e-mail while driving in rush hour traffic.

Joe's work day is a blur of business meetings, incoming phone calls, and hundreds of e-mails.

"I can check e-mails and respond to e-mails. I can have a conversation on the telephone. I can have a conversation via IM. And I can keep exactly probably half an ear on a conversation with a person," he says.

"In the room with you?" Stahl asks.

"Half, yeah, exactly," Joe says.

Asked if he is doing all of these things well when he does them at the same time, Joe says, "You know, this is not neurosurgery we're talking about here … but you can do a lot of that simultaneously."

Joe may be able to pull that off, but many corporate executives say the volume of voicemail and e-mail they get has become unmanageable — eating up an average of three hours a day.

Combine that with a corporate culture that values endless meetings and "face time" with the boss, and you can see why so many employees toil into the night just to get their "real work" done.

60 Minutes visited the corporate headquarters of Best Buy, the electronics retailer, in Richfield, Minn. Employees Stacy Verstraight, Jason Dehne and Marissa Plume say that putting in 60- to 80-hour weeks got them pats on the back.

"You know, you'd send an e-mail at nine o'clock at night. And the next thing your co-workers would say, 'Hey, wow, were you working that whole time? Wow. Great job,'" says Marissa.

But if you weren't there at the crack of dawn, you were put down.

"You know, if I come in at nine o'clock or 10 o'clock, I was at a doctor's appointment, you know, people are saying, 'Oh gee. Glad you could show up today.' You know, so it felt [like] a little bit of a dig," says Stacy. "And people were just watching other people. So it felt like a lot of unnecessary pressure."

"I canceled booked vacations. I mean I booked vacations, and I'd cancel 'em because I had to work," Jason recalls.

In 2002, after a jump in people quitting and filing stress-related health claims, Best Buy launched an experiment: employees would be allowed to work wherever and whenever they wanted, as long as they got their jobs done.

That means the BestBuy.com unit that Chap Achen manages often looks like a ghost town.

"Some folks literally don't come in the office for weeks at a time," says Achen.

If asked where a specific employee physically is, Achen says he doesn't know. "I couldn't tell you if he was in his basement or he was at a Starbucks with a wireless connection."

Since the Best Buy experiment started, Jason's health has improved. Normally at his desk by 7:30 a.m., he now jogs to his local coffee shop and takes his 8 a.m. conference call by cell phone.

Marissa, a night owl, now does her best work around midnight from her bedroom.

"I have to trust that my team is going to get the work done in this environment," says Achen. "And the ironic thing about it is that it's that trust factor that actually makes them work harder for you."

"And just as long?" Stahl asked

"And just as long," he replied.

Or longer. Stacy, Jason and Marissa say they often work more hours than they did before. Not a bad deal for the company. Productivity among employees in the program has jumped a healthy 35 percent.

"We can spread out our work over seven days of the week," explains Stacy.

Asked why that's a positive, Jason says, "It's the way I choose to work."

"But if it takes 70 hours to do your job, why doesn't Best Buy go hire more people?" Stahl asked.

"You know, I am a happier employee, with the trust," says Stacy.

Asked if she wants to work the 70 hours, Stacy replied, "I love what I do."

The group all said they didn't think they were working too much when asked by Stahl.

"You're brainwashed," Stahl said, laughing.

"Maybe we're all crazy," Jason said. "Maybe we are," Stacy added, laughing.

Maybe they are: They don't even make more money for the longer hours. But when you try to cut back on the hours, it's not that easy.

Mike Moody and Jeff Ward left high stress, six-day-a-week jobs as big-city lawyers because they wanted to spend more time with their wives and children. They decided to do what more and more working mothers are doing — share a job.

"Well, for the first six months of the job, I was referred to as the new Joanne," says Jeff.

The job of assistant in-house counsel at Timberland in Stratum, N.H. had been filled by two women for years.

"I have two weekends a week. Yeah," says Mike. "And I have a four-day weekend," Jeff adds.

It is a pretty sweet deal. They each work three days a week, overlapping on Tuesdays.

How do they keep the office from pulling them back in on their days off?

"It's a constant struggle," Jeff admits. "We're always on call because of the BlackBerry."

"The crackberry," Mike jokes.

The BlackBerry is practically attached to Mike's body — even on his days off, when he's the house-husband in the kitchen and in the laundry room.

The company pays them 75 percent of full-time pay, because, as it's turned out, they each end up working about 40 hours a week.

"That's a full-time job," Stahl remarked.

"It's not many people's full-time job though," Mike replied.

"But it's what we used to think of as a full-time job," Stahl said.

"Absolutely," Jeff agreed.

With so many Americans working more than 40 hours a week, it may surprise you to learn that when it comes to productivity, the U.S. is not No. 1. In fact, workers in four European countries, including France, are more productive per hour of work than Americans — that's the key: "per hour of work" — even though the Europeans work less and take more vacation.

Joe Hurd thinks all these gadgets and technology are helping him be more productive. "If you want to measure productivity by, for me, for example, keeping the e-mails flowing, you know, multiple conversations going, then yes, the technology does facilitate that."

"The downside, however, is that oftentimes we really don't have substantive conversations when we come home. We will be sitting on our couch, each doing work," his wife says.

It turns out Joe and Christina e-mail and instant-message each other, even if they are at home.

"But what about your relationship? I'm not trying to get too personal here...," Stahl asked.

"Well, that's what I mean, that's the downside. It would be nice to have a conversation even once a week and not be, I mean, really be concentrating and listening to each other. But we've got one eye on our computers," Christina replied.

Christina says she does tune out everything once she gets home from work, to play with their 8-month old daughter Amina. She even turns her cell phones off.

But when Amina gets fussy, they both reach for her favorite toy: the BlackBerry.

"I can have her on the bed with a bunch of toys," Christina says. But her daughter will always pick the BlackBerry.

Which means when Amina grows up, she may have a house like Greg Shenkman's.

Shenkman is such a workaholic that he has wired his house with Internet, telephone and television in every single room. As CEO of the global high-tech firm Exigen in San Francisco, he feels he has to be available to his customers at all hours.

"Well, you lose something. You lose some days of your kids' lives. You lose — some of those tender moments with the family," Shenkman says.

When he stops working, he says he aches.

"If you go on vacation, sometimes, in order to sort of relax, it takes a little bit of an effort," Shenkman says. But he always stays connected.

He's so obsessed, he has wired his shower. When Greg soaps up, he doesn't daydream — he watches the business news, checks his e-mail, and answers the phone.

60 Minutes arranged for the producer to call Shenkman, with his shower running. When the speaker phone picked up, the water was turned off automatically, and Stahl and Shenkman could talk to the producer from the shower.

The electronics are waterproof — but not foolproof.

"Whoa, what happened!" Stahl said, laughing, as she got a little wet.

"We forgot to turn it off," Shenkman said.

"Well, I usually don't have Lesley Stahl in the shower with me. That would be an unusual occurrence for me," Shenkman added, laughing.

For the record, Stahl says it was her first interview in a shower — and her last.
Produced by Karen Sughrue