24/7

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxx>]

< http://www.guardian.co.uk >
Washington dispatch

So long, American work culture

In his last dispatch from Washington Martin Kettle reflects on the one
thing he won't miss - America's love affair with 24/7.

Friday August 3, 2001

The President of the United States is a man who enjoys a light work
load and who likes to get his sleep. But in this, as in a surprisingly
large number of other respects, George Bush is out of touch with his
nation.

Indeed if you could select one phrase to describe modern America it
might be the one that is heard more and more often on the airwaves and
in conversation these days. The phrase? 24/7.

America's well-rested president presides over an increasingly
sleepless society. Americans no longer have to travel all the way to
Manhattan to find a place that stays up all night. All they need to do
is to go down to the local supermarket, or the local fast food
restaurant, or even to the nearest local fitness centre. They're all
there, 24/7.

"24/7 isn't just an expression. It's a cultural earthquake that is
changing the way we live," wrote Bruce Horowitz in a highly
informative survey of the spread of the "we never close" culture in
USA Today this week.

Twenty-four hours a day factory production is nothing new. Henry Ford
did it, big time, nearly a century ago. Small shops frequently never
sleep either.

Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's sometime friend and labour secretary,
tells a story about getting up in the middle of the night in a New
York hotel once and looking across the street at a tailoring shop
where the lights still burned to see employees running - running -
back and forth from their benches to the supervisor's office at four
in the morning.

Sweatshops may have been like that for decades. But what is new is the
spread of round the clock work and play into so many other areas of
the American economy and of American life. You want to drive a golf
ball or lift weights at 4am? Easy. One gym in San Luis Obispo,
California, reckons to be busier at that hour than at four in the
afternoon. In Pittsburgh even child care is available at all hours.

The idea that a place still open late at night is some melancholy
oasis for lonely people is history in the age of 24/7. Horowitz
reveals that 237 Home Depot stores are open around the clock across
the US, along with 1,298 Wal-Marts and thousands of 7-Eleven and
Safeway food supermarkets from San Diego up to Maine.

Here in Washington there is a bookshop, Kramerbooks, that opens
24hours a day at weekends. "I never thought that someone would think
to buy War and Peace at 2am on Saturday," the manager told Horowitz.
"But they do."

Why is it that Americans insist on driving themselves so ferociously?
Right now, at the height of a hot summer, you might think that
Americans would be ready to wind down and enjoy a few relaxing weeks
vacation. But summer time for most Americans is a time for work and
more work.

The average American worker gets only two weeks paid holiday a year.
As a result, he or she works around 350 hours more each year than the
average European. But that's just the average. In many jobs, there is
even less time off. Thirty per cent of all American workers never take
a lunch break. In many jobs, days off for sickness are sometimes
deducted from holiday entitelement.

Like the US there are a few countries in the world where work is
regarded as an end in itself rather than as a means to an end.
Singapore, for instance. Certainly there is no major economic nation
in which the obsession with being there is more deeply ingrained.

Last week, apparently in all seriousness, the Washington Post ran an
article weighing the difficulties which face American over-achievers
in weighing whether to take vacations at all. In the today's rat-race,
it seems, taking a vacation is often regarded as a sign of weakness.
"As some of the nation's largest firms announce fresh layoffs, workers
may be more nervous than ever about asking to use their vacation
time," the Post reported.

There is a kind of collective mania going on here. When Americans say
that they're available 24/7, they say it with pride and with a breezy
confidence that it's exactly the sort of thing that you ought to be
glad to hear. But the more often I hear the phrase the more I think
there is madness afoot. To me, 24/7 is a shorthand way of describing a
living hell.

Maybe that's why I'm off to the beach for a full two weeks.

. This will be Martin Kettle's last dispatch from Washington

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