Clockwork

By TAD BARTIMUS

"OH, NO!"

The stranger's deep male voice carried clearly through the wall from, his hotel room into mine. "I can't believe it! You let me over-sleep! Now I'm late already. This is terrible!" There was an expletive or two sprinkled in among the moans as he hung up on the hotel operator's wakeup call.

It is 5:30 a.m., but already this traveling businessman's day is running late. Still dark outside, still too early to get a cup of coffee, he is nonetheless mentally on the job. And stressed out about it.

We now put in almost two weeks' more work per year than our Japanese counterpart, whose earning habits once were held up as the epitome of energy and efficiency.

As I lay under the covers, debating whether to try for another half-hour of sleep or to shower and greet the day, I realize the nearby freeway is humming with pre-dawn commuters. The television news' traffic helicopter pilot confirms it with word of "a serious pileup" somewhere in the city. Oh well, might as well check my e-mail. So I, too, go to work.

Welcome to another American day at the office, which the International Labor Organization (ILO) says is getting longer and longer. We now put in almost two weeks' more work per year than our Japanese counterpart, whose earning habits once were held up as the epitome of energy and efficiency. The latest figures show us working an average of 1,966 hours in 1997 versus 1,883 hours in 1980, while the Japanese worker's average time dropped down from 2,100 hours a year in 1980 to 1,889 in 1995, the last year it was measured.

Americans still rate the highest productivity in the world -- an average of $49,150 worth of goods per person in 1996. Yet even though we put in fewer hours, the efficiency of the South Koreans, French, Germans, Japanese and workers in other European and emerging nations is gaining on U.S. dominance.

The businessman who barked at his tardy wakeup caller probably doesn't know that fact. Maybe he wouldn't care if he did. The national average doesn't affect us when we schedule a 7 a.m., breakfast appointment, spend the whole day on the run, and finally turn off the desk light past suppertime.

That businessman is self-driven. Sure, the boss always exhorts workers to do more with less. But there's choice. It is the individual who decides to stay late, come in early, take a loaded briefcase home for the weekend. It is the conscientious (and ambitious, driven, workaholic) employee who forgoes a walk or a swim or a tennis game to sit hunched at the computer or crunch numbers at the calculator.

When both partners in a working couple household are going flat out you wind up with two people who barely see each other, let alone do something together or -- miracle of miracles! -- for themselves. Throw in the needs of children and the stress and anxiety can't be measured in graphs or charts alone. They are best reflected in the relationships that grow out of work-driven families.

'Round and 'round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows. In the end, it comes down to personal tolerance for the long hours, the lack of sleep, the emotional and physical toll. Each worker has to decide if all those extra hours are worth it, either in money or advancement or ego. It's a simple exercise but who has time to stop and do it? Like the horse to the plow, most of us just get into harness and start pulling forward.

As I caught taxis, kept appointments and hurtled through space from one city to another the same day I'd heard the businessman's lament, I wondered about him. Was his schedule as long and hard as mine? Did he pause, fleetingly, to actually think about what he was doing with that most precious of commodities, our own time? When I finally put my feet up for the late-night news, I'd made a decision:

Tomorrow, I'm taking the whole day off.

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