Originally Posted by
gleff
What is this bright-line distinction between personal time and work time of which you speak? This will be controverial, and I don't mean to be normative about it, but I tend to think of that as a concept more appropriate to an industrial era, when we were working at work, maybe in a factory or with machinery.
I think that
more people's jobs adhered to the "work/non-work" dichotomy in earlier times and that more jobs today are more flexible and there are more grey areas (mine included), but it is certainly reality for plenty of people still.
Any sort of hourly/service job has a very strong "on-the-clock/off-the-clock" component and likely always will, as long as there are hourly jobs out there.
Personally, I am similar to you. I work a lot outside of the traditional 8:30-6:00 time slot (I travel a great deal for work) and thus I, too, have little compunction about taking a little extra time here and there. My employers have no problem with this as they know I perform just as well. I treat my team members the same and it works for us - but we are professionals working in a professional environment. This type of arrangement certainly would not work everywhere.