Satire Article: 90 Hour Work Week

Recently, Indian businessman and esteemed father-in-law, Narayana Murthy came out and expressed how, in his opinion, youngsters in India should be willing to work 70 hours a week. His statement has sparked debates over whether he was being considerate and reasonable or selfish and extreme. While we were initially thrilled to see that he was being called out for being unreasonable, it was appalling to learn that this was because a large group of people with questionable seriousness towards life advocate for even fewer working hours. In our opinion, Mr. Murthy’s suggestion leaves a lot of unaccounted hours on the table and could lead to a feeling of dissatisfaction and a selfish sentiment of prioritizing personal gain over that of the organization among the youth.

While Mr. Murthy’s heart seems to be in the right place, his math doesn’t. Basic calculation shows that a week consists of 168 hours and extreme generalization and bias reveal to us that the average young person in India does not have any hobbies, interests, or a social life and only exists to serve a higher authority. Even after removing time for essentials such as sleeping and eating, which should not take more than 70 hours for a person possessing the magic of youth that enables them to destroy their lifestyle without extreme immediate consequences, we are left with 98 hours. Discounting any more time for inconsequential activities such as taking care of their mental health, spending time with loved ones, and doing things that make them happy would be being far too lenient, for these things can also be done at an older age and are not worth wasting the physical prime of anybody’s life. In the end, this leaves us with enough room to accommodate a 90–95-hour work week, which can take our corporates and senior management to heights that a 70-hour work week could never.

To further our research efforts, we reached out to Mr. Amit, a software developer at Binfosys who can be described as a 30-year-old with the hairline of Mr. Murthy himself. Mr. Amit is a firm believer in our perspective of a 90-hour workweek and has been avidly following it himself for the past few years. He mentions in conversation, how working for over 90 hours a week has improved his life in multiple ways over the years, citing that the stress smoking subdues his diet and saves him meal money in the long run as an example. He also talks about how the highlight of his late twenties was the time when his skip manager acknowledged him in an elevator and appreciated his contribution to a project. He was so overwhelmed by the rare acknowledgment of his existence that he did not care to correct the skip manager for calling him by the wrong name.

However, before we could continue our dialogue with Mr. Amit, he unfortunately passed away from a stress-induced heart attack mid-conversation. His last words were “What about my comp offs”. To get some closure, we tried to connect with Mr. Amit’s wife but unfortunately, the couple had been estranged ever since Mr. Amit in the heat of an argument once told his wife that he married his work before he married her. The wife, in her best attempt, could only tell us to talk to his work since she was just the mistress. A last-ditch attempt at closure found us at Mr. Amit’s workplace but the company management could only identify him if we had his employee ID and not if we told them about the 90-hour work weeks he had done for the last 5 years.

All our research that was deliberately conducted in a direction that would only affirm the perspective we started with, goes to show how a 90-hour work week is the superior way for the youth to function. Even though his life might have been cut short due to clearly unidentifiable reasons, we are sure that Amit lived a fulfilling and eventful life in the three to eight hours of personal time every week that his work enabled him to have.

Written by Parth Yadav