If someone refuses to work weekends, even if the agency could legitimately make the case the client/ project requires it sometimes, is it possible and fair for them to get fired?

Did agency make it one of the job requirements?

Then No.

Agencies also have the right to say No to clients.

It’s the constant Yes that perpetuates the mental health problems as a whole from burnout and overworking.

It’s completely unethical to fire someone for not working on weekends. Our jobs are not curing cancer. There was 40 hours in that weeks available for this to be accomplished. It is up to the management, client, and employee to schedule their time effectively in order to get the job done in 40 hours. This would obviously be different if the contract stated different hours.


There is much more to life than working.

I think you’d be opening yourself up to a lawsuit between the hours in your handbook and laws. Bigger issue is your staffing. Someone shouldn’t have to constantly work nights, weekends or holidays. I left a boss like that and never looked back.

The comments in this thread already about it being okay to work weekends sometimes just show the state that the industry has descended into. The perpetuation that it is somehow normal and acceptable to work well past a reasonable amount of time per week is so great that we have somehow convinced ourselves it is necessary to survive.

We all have individual choices to make. If I refuse to sacrifice myself on the altar of billable hours and a client deadlines, the choice I am making is to risk my job with the agency. I must weigh that risk against accepting what I might feel to be unreasonable requests. The agency has to make a decision between forcing the issue via deciding to fire people who refuse the work and developing a spine when it comes to deadlines.

You must also look at your compensation for that time. If you are a $50,000 a year employing and you are pulling 60+ hour weeks, you are choosing to invest time into your career with a hopeful and eventual payoff. if you are not seeing positive progress towards that goal you must make a different choice to invest that time elsewhere.

The agency finance backroom will never staff your team fully. They will never pay you what you put in. They will never do anything that doesn't improve the financial equation for the agency. That is the nature of advertising holding companies - they exist to find profit. That profit does not come from overhead on the scope, it comes from understaffing, overworking, and corner cutting.

If I were you I would sit down and decide do you want to invest that time for what you think might be the payoff. Payoff might be as simple as keeping your job with a perhaps comfortable salary and otherwise reasonable working conditions. Pay off might mean that you believe that positions you better for a promotion (protip: all it positions you for is working longer hours in the future). But it is your math that you must rely on.

One thing that hasn't come up here is the frequent lack of accountability my senior leadership/ mgmt. to address this stuff when it happens. They all tend to celebrate the "crunch" and how everyone sacrificed to make X occur. When I was a Director in digital agency land,I would ask/ insist that the Partner for the account hold a post mortem so we could all discuss, as a team, how to prevent it from happening again - how to avoid a minimize the chances of recurrence. The teams I worked on valued that much more than the "attaboy" back slap emails. But you know what? The partners hated me for pushing that on them, my asking for some degree of accountability. Not all, but like 80% of them. So I got tagged as not being enough of being a "team player" and convincing more junior staff that it is all standard operating procedure for the business/ industry/culture. If it was truly a set of circumstances on our agency side that were out of our control, I would acknowledge that. But 9 times out of 10 it was wholly avoidable. Real leaders understand the value of accountability and learning from past mistakes. Unfortunately too many senior leaders in agencies + consulting have bought into the idea that they must always appear infallible, which means always rationalizing away why X occurred, requiring all the long days and weekend work cycles. In my experience this is the primary driver of the whole cycle.

Your lack of planning is not my emergency.

Reading these responses as a junior person reminds me why I'm already planning my exit after only 1 year. My longterm mental, physical, and emotional well being is worth far more to me than anything that this industry has to offer.

It’s honestly so disheartening to see all of the comments on here saying that working 60+ hours a week should be expected for our industry — yeah, maybe that’s the norm but we should all be working to put an end to that. We only have one life to live and expecting your employees/colleagues to dedicate their life to work is unacceptable in my eyes.

Wow I am surprised at the answers in this thread! Honestly our industry can be so effed up- our line of work does not constitute as emergency based work, no one should be expected to work round the clock. If you find yourself in this position its one of two- either you are doing something wrong or your management is.

Can they really make a legitimate case, though?

Weekend work is almost always the result of either: someone completely dropping the ball and needing to be rescued, lacking the ability to manage up/down, or lacking the focus and discipline to clearly define a goal and scope an accurate number of hours to achieve it during the week.

I’ve been asked to go into the office on weekends because it made someone feel good to order food in at the office and stay busy for every hour leading up to a presentation. Looking back, the best work more often than not came out of a focused, well-rested team.

If I could come in late, leave early, and work from home when things are slow, working late and on weekends would be totally fine.

We don’t work in an industry that is strictly 9-5. All the job descriptions for my staff specifically say that it [may for junior or will for senior] require additional hours outside of normal business hours. If we have a production filming on the opposite coast or on a weekend you better f-ing be available if not actively working. Last minute brief for some PR thing that happened to a client in the press, or all the concepts for next month’s production got killed by client, yep it’s probably going to involve a few late nights. Though when you do these late nights and weekends I’ll be encouraging you to take a day or two off when the project settles.

If I had a staff member that refused to participate in a critical project I would absolutely write them up first. Action plan for failure to support projects in a timely fashion and perform duties required by their job.

If working a few weekends or some late nights while a team is overwhelmed is too much then this isn’t the business for you.

At will employment laws are everywhere in the US, so if we are talking about the US, they would be fired. Doesn't matter how great their performance review were/are. Not fair, but agencies and consulting companies are run by rabid wolves at the senior mgt. levels. If they catch wind of someone refusing to do work to meet deadlines - no matter how arbritray or effed up the deadlines are - they will walk that person out the door. Because if they accomodate one person in that way, they fear more people will start to do the same. And forget about HR, the protect the business. To them people are just cattle to be managed and wrangled. Exception here would be some independent agencies. But US based agencies part of holding companies? Everything I said applies.

At the end of the day, the work has to get done. Is this for a single project or consistently? Are they able to work longer hours during the week in order to meet the deadline? It depends on the situation but on one hand, you shouldn’t be working 60+ hours a week consistently but, you also shouldn’t be bailing on important projects with deadlines. Don’t be afraid to push back but make sure you’re putting in the effort during proper business hours and have a good excuse.

Everyone has the right to say they're unavailable to work over the weekend, including and especially the agency to the client.

Leave and go work a brand directly. I left agency life after missing almost every one of my daughter’s big milestones in her first few years. When my son was born later I’d already transitioned to an e-commerce company serving brands with a far healthier expectation of hours. I get paid the same and have a greater presence in my childrens’ lives. My friends who stayed with agencies are happy, though none have kids.

Let’s be real. We’re not saving the world with our work. Most of us dreamt of becoming wandering artists, world-class authors — legends of the modern era. We might enjoy the work we’ve found, but is it everything? Hell no. We’re selling shit people don’t need. So do great work, then go home and do what actually matters. The stuff you’ll think about later in life.

Like most things, it’s just not that simple. When you blame management for not “pushing back” you don’t acknowledge they live in a competitive world where clients are more than willing to find another agency who will do the work on the timelines they demand. Not meeting client needs mean people in their agency don’t have jobs. And clients work in a world where the demands of smaller margins and higher stakes push them to use marketing and advertising to solve serious business problems. Using these tools was a long fought battle - paved by decades of agencies demonstrating its value. These a just a couple of issues that define our business model - past and present. Blaming management, or the industry as a whole, doesn’t reflect the true complexities of the buil was world. Complexities which are a part of every single job and every single industry. Luckily we can work “at will” too. If you have a bad boss - leave and find someone who inspires you. If you don’t want to work in a business with highly demanding hours - find a place that suits your life stage. Everyone has a different values and a unique career path. Taking responsibility for finding a place and/or industry lies in your hands.

I refuse to work weekends. And I expect the same from the team.

for me, it’s the absolute refusal I’ve seen from a few colleagues over the years to work any nights/weekends, even if it’s on the very rare occasion.

I get that work/life balance is crucial but we’re also a team and if someone needs me to show up occasionally when it’s not super convenient for me, I’ll do it bc they need me and that’s enough.

People are funny. If I have made unwilling sacrifices for fear of consequence, and I see another person who makes a different choice, I am far more likely to resent the person who took a stand that I wish I'd had the strength to take myself, as opposed to blaming the person who backed me into the sacrifice corner in the first place.
If I cheer for the boundary setter, I have to admit that my own choice was wrong or weak. The only way to prove that I made the right choice by allowing my own boundaries to be abused is by insisting that the other guy pay in blood, and demanding a front row seat to watch him suffer the consequence. That way, even if I can't respect the integrity of my own choice, I can be satisfied that it was necessary.
This is the mentality of peasants at a public execution. The blood lust doesn't come from love of the king, it comes from the need to feel good about having kissed his ring.
Are you the person responsible for making your project successful? If so, do what you have to do to make that happen--plan better, or change out team members if they really are uncooperative. Or are you a team member who is angry that others are able to get away with choices you feel you weren't given? In that case, worry about your own work and your own choices. I promise, their choices have a cost, and they knew it when they chose. You might not get to see them pay that cost, nor are you entitled to.