Weekend working -- I take pride in that

Recently I attended a workshop/gathering arranged by one of my team lead, this was to talk about expectation from team after winning a large contract.

This meeting was requested on Saturday , everyone was cribbing about loosing one of rest day but no one had gutts to say. finally one of us put it politely that i have some commitment on weekend , that went down with mild reaction so rest supported it. And finally meeting was arranged on Friday evening.

At the start, an agenda was placed so some of us thought it will be structured workshop and even made one line joke about it.

Meeting started with briefing about the new contract and scope of it , what is expected from teach team and so on so forth. Meeting was progressing as planned , I am impressed as every one was into it until meeting lead mentioned some thing like this.

"Guys we have to work hard as always, our partners in this contract are westerners and they not work beyond Friday, but you know that this contract will take much more than normal working day so till this is delivered we have put in everything what it takes."

Local UK employee among us raised the question "what compelled us to have meeting this late in the evening when we should be with our family"

Reaction to this statement was furious and to my dismay I heard to comments from the rest of people in the meeting in corridor

"He should not have said that in the meeting , it will work against him"

"Do not say any ting now , do what you have to do , why get in to bad books"

I was disappointed by these comments as I am aware that many of us are capable of managing the work between Monday to Friday with odd occasion of late working. But they are not managing expectations of senior managers by talking to him and demonstrating that it can be done in the same way our western partner can do.

I always doubt productivity on next working day after late night working. Many of us aware of this fact but who will be in the bad books and Seniors are aware of their powers so they use it at every possible opportunity.

One question, I would like to ask that why we take so much pride in working late nights ,weekends and then boast about it all the time. Are we forgetting about smart working.