WORKAHOLICS FIND A HOME IN WASHINGTON

LONG HOURS, STRESS THE NORM

Every city has an activity that defines it: In Los Angeles, people go to the beach. In Boston, they go to college. In Washington, they go to work.

What sets Washington apart, according to a variety of measures, is that more people work longer hours and in more intense jobs than in other large metropolitan areas of the country.

They're like business executive Ronald Norman, who is on the job at 5 a.m, plugged into a computer in the basement of his Falls Church home. Or Eugenie Allen Blanchard, who works an eight-hour overnight shift five days a week at a District nursing home, then heads to a hotel laundry to work another eight hours.

"I'm not a person that goes out to parties a lot, right?" said Blanchard, whose second job pays the mortgage on her family's small row house. "I just like working, I guess."

The Washington area is a workaholic's paradise partly because so many people are working but also because of the nature of the jobs.

Washington has a bigger proportion than any other metropolitan area of jobs that are managerial, administrative or professional -- 40 percent -- and those jobs often demand long hours to move up the ladder. According to an annual survey by Altman Weil Pensa Publications Inc., law firm partners in Washington bill more hours than those in New York, although associates bill fewer hours.

Unpublished figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics also put Washington at the top in the length of the average full-time workweek -- 48 hours in 1991, the latest year available. And a larger percentage of women work in Washington than in any other metropolitan area except Minneapolis.

"This is where the people who are the strivers all their lives end up," labor economist Marc Bendick said.

The area also is one of the nation's magnets for foreign immigrants, who often work long hours at low wages.

Late hours are part of employment in the White House and on Capitol Hill, fueled by the knowledge that there may be only two, four or six years to make your mark. The same is true for the advocacy groups and think tanks in Washington's cause industry, for which fighting poverty or representing peanut growers can require boundless time.

Some people put in long hours because their work demands it or they need more than one minimum-wage job to live in this expensive area. Others say they love their jobs or cannot stand to be idle.

What it adds up to is a local culture in which, for many people, work is king.

So much so that when the three-person car-pool lane requirement on Interstate 66 recently was lowered to two inside the Capital Beltway, sponsors called it "family friendly" because husbands and wives now could drive to work together. Or consider that last Monday, the first day for working parents to apply for spring-break child care in Prince William County, a completed application was on the fax before the program's secretary got to work at 8:30 a.m.

Work can be a lifestyle choice in Washington. Edwin A. Locke, chairman of the management faculty at the University of Maryland's business school at College Park, said he and his wife had only one child because they decided their long work hours did not allow more.

Locke, 56, works until 10 p.m., except for Friday and Saturday. His wife also works long hours running a Montessori school. Their grown daughter resented not having her bed made for her but turned out "to be a good kid with good values and good common sense," Locke said.

Locke said he works long hours because he loves it and thinks he is making a contribution to his field.

"I'm in what I think is the best job in the world," he said. "I learn something new every day."

Washington has many others like him -- people who say they thrive on their work and reject the idea that long hours are something to be ashamed of.

"At the end of the day, you're pretty mentally exhausted, but that didn't mean you didn't like your job," said Charles Miller, managing partner of Covington & Burling, the city's second-largest law firm. "We get nice rewards in this business, and not just the money. You're looked up to; people respect your judgment. . . . The price is, you've got to work hard. I don't find that payoff a bad one."

"It's the feeling that you're actually accomplishing something," said Jonathan Hall, 24, a spokesman for the environmental group Greenpeace, who estimates he works 55 hours a week. "You're changing world events. It's not like you're pushing a product."

Having a satisfying personal life does not necessarily require a lot of time, said Catherine Chambliss, chairman of the psychology department at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania. Some people, she said, can cram more living into fewer hours.

But for many, it's a tough balancing act.

Amy Schwartzman, associate rabbi at Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church, said she knows more people in Washington with too much to do than when she lived in New York, which she left five years ago.

"I feel that many of my congregants, who are involved in mid- and upper-government stuff and politics and advocacy work, it's almost as if they're overwhelmed," she said.

It would be a mistake to say everybody's frantic, though. There are plenty of work and stress at the top and the bottom of the economic and power heap. It's calmer in the middle -- a group that includes most federal workers, said Constance Horner, former director of the federal Office of Personnel Management.

"That means there are people who actually have lives," she said. "They have highly developed avocations and hobbies, and their children are enormously well-raised. . . . The lifestyle of the federal workplace is the way it used to be in most big companies."

Government downsizing will boost workers' stress levels but might not increase their hours, she said. That's because layoffs usually are based on seniority, so "you can protect your job only a bit by working longer and harder," Horner said.

For those working night and day in the private sector, though, the situation might be worsening.

Many companies stopped hiring during the recent recession, so a smaller work force is putting in more hours to carry the same load, said regional economist Stephen Fuller, of George Mason University. And most new jobs added in the area in the last few years are self-employment -- everything from running a mom-and-pop store to setting up a consulting company. Those jobs often demand long hours to get established, he said.

The spread of faxes and cellular telephones means more people can work from home, and that extends the work day too.

"I think there is less fun," Fuller said. "I don't think people are really richer out of this, but they certainly are running harder."

Norman, the 31-year-old business executive, balks at taking his cellular phone on vacation. But he still calls in daily to Fieldston Co., a consulting and publishing business where he is vice president.

Norman began getting up earlier and going home earlier after his son was born two years ago, but he doesn't work less. That schedule leaves him less time to relax with his wife in the evening -- but no time to himself anymore.

"By the time I get home, I'm a blob," Norman said. "I haven't read a novel in a couple of years."

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.