Labor Intensive
CBS News correspondent John Blackstone reports on the story of many Americans these days. Whether a CEO like Brett Yormark, who says he works between 17 and 18 hours a day, or a guy like Jim Garretson heading to his second job at the deli counter, long hours are a way of life.
"I don't get a lot of time with my wife," Garretson says.
Pankaj Shah, trying to get a new Internet company off the ground, can't imagine working only 40 hours a week. He says he sleeps with his Blackberry.
American workaholics have a variety of motivations. Their work habits reveal how hard work can make you rich and happy, or maybe not.
33-year-old Pankaj Shah was born in Connecticut and now lives in California's Silicon Valley, where he feels right at home in the fast-paced, high-tech culture.
"Everyone here works over 40," he says. "I do not know anyone who works 40 hours a week."
Right now he's working 'round the clock, trying to raise $2 million to start a new Internet company.
On this day, he's meeting a potential investor, venture capitalist Raj Altera, who wants to know that if Pankaj gets the money, he'll never rest.
"We expect entrepreneurs to be thinking about their business 24/7," Altera says. "Wake up in the morn, they are thinking about it. In the shower they are thinking about their business."
Pankaj fits that description. He really does sleep with his wife on one side of the bed and his Blackberry on the other.
"I like staying in touch," he says. "If someone is sending me e-mail at 3:30, they are working. I want to be responsible."
He has already gone through the grind of starting two successful high-tech companies. This is his third. A lot of people do one startup. But three?
"It's like telling rock star not to make another album, journalist not to do another story. This is what I do. I love it," he says. Wife Janet does the 24/7 work with their three kids. And how would she describe his attitude toward work?
"I would call it part of him," she says. "It is ingrained in him."
So ingrained, he even tried to schedule when Janet would go into labor so it wouldn't interfere with work.
"The earliest I remember him working hard is when first child was born because he said, 'You cannot have baby on X or Y day,'" Janet says.
In New Jersey, Brett Yormark is just getting going on another of his whirlwind work days.
"For me, there is no other way than work 150 percent every day," he says. "That is what is required to be successful."
He's president and CEO of the New Jersey Nets, a basketball team he's trying to turn into an entertainment powerhouse. "Performance is what it is all about," he says. "That is why I get up early, go to bed late, and that is why I do what I do."
He hustles more than most pro players, recruiting new advertisers. He has their names plastered everywhere. Recently he pitched some new promotional ideas to MarquisJet — a private jet service for real jetsetters.
After the meeting, Yormark races back to his office to prepare for his second target of the day — recruiting potential season ticket holders. The event is at his home, but it's all work.
All-star Vince Carter may be the team's star attraction, but tonight Brett Yormark, working the crowd, is the MVP.
"I tell my team all the time, we may not be the smartest, but we will outwork everyone," he says. "At the end of the day, whatever field you are in, hard work does pay off. To me it is the difference — the differential between being successful and not successful."
While it would be easy to call Brett Yormark and Pankaj Shah workaholics, they both work hard to put some balance in their lives, taking family vacations and time to enjoy the rewards of hard work.
Some people, real workaholics, can't do that. They are truly addicted to work.
As a mother raising five children, a woman who asked us only to call her Deborah, was a workaholic even as a parent.
"I worked myself to death at home," she says. "Living in 15 minute increments. You know, 15 minutes, you get in the car, you drive somewhere, you drop a kid off, you go back home — just craziness."
Was she happy?
"I don't know that I was so much happy as I felt like I was justifying my place on the earth," she says.
Deborah says life didn't get better once she started working outside the home. Her marriage broke up, her work brought her misery.
"I was scheduling myself for six appointments with no drive time in there, literally back to back. Well, it might take 30 minutes to get from one place to another, but somehow in my mind, I can get there in 10 minutes. Well, where is that time going to come from?"
Alongside Deborah was Diane Fassel, the author of a book about the disease of workaholism called "Working Ourselves To Death."
"When I wrote the book in 1990, I wrote it because so many people were coming up to me in the course of talks I was giving on other issues about dysfunctional organizations, saying to me, 'My life is completely out of control around my work. Can you help me? Do you know what I can do to address this problem?'"
Since then, some workaholics around the country have organized their own 12-step program called Workaholics Anonymous. It is now recognized, Fassel says, as a real addiction.
"When many workaholics are just working, working, working, they get this adrenaline surge," Fassel says. "And in that adrenaline surge, you really don't feel that you — you don't feel your pain, you don't feel your tiredness, you don't feel that you're hungry. You don't even feel sleepy. So, that's a kind of a high; there's a chemical high that's produced by adrenaline — whether it's alcohol, drugs, sex, compulsive spending, gamble, workaholism, you name it. I think human beings — are — can be addicted to anything, absolutely anything. But I think that in our society, we're seeing more of it in workaholism."
Ironically, Diane Fassel says, workaholics often don't succeed at work. Their overwork can leave them too stretched to do a really good job.
For other hard workers, there are no guarantees of success. No statistics prove that if you put in the long hours, you'll do well. Jim Garretson knows that. He works a 65-hour week just to get by.
"It's a lot, but it's what's necessary to take care of kids," he says. "In today's economy, it's what you have to do."
Leaving the office after a full eight hours handling disputes for a health insurance company, his workday is still far from over. Seven years ago Garretson was thriving as a technical problem-solver in the computer industry. But then the dot-com bubble burst.
For almost a year he had no job. Now when he gets home from job number one, he turns right around to go to job number two: 6 to 10 on the deli counter.
"Six hours sleep is a good night, sometimes four," he says.
Jim Garretson is looking forward to the day when he won't have to work so much, but not this year. On Labor Day, he has to be on duty at the deli counter.
"Labor Day is a big day," he says. "Everybody works. I'll be working an eight-hour day on Labor Day.
But Deborah says she's getting her addiction under control and won't be working on Labor Day.
Brett Yormark and Pankaj Shah are both planning to take it easy on Labor Day, but don't be surprised if Pankaj answers an e-mail and Brett makes a phone call or two.
