Is work-life balance dead, and will you even find time to attend the funeral?

During different phases of my five-decade working career, I have worked all three shifts, toiled every holiday, struggled with doubled production quotas, accepted 48 hours as a standard work week and missed countless family events.

Still, today’s job applicants are facing unprecedented obstacles to squeezing in a little “me” time.

According to the Wall Street Journal, in the post-covid business environment, remote work, clock-watching and water-cooler gabfests are history.

Employers are bluntly (gleefully?) warning applicants that attendance at after-hours events is nonnegotiable, do-or-die projects may be dumped in their lap without warning and flinching at routine 70-hour work weeks brands employees as sissies/underachievers/traitors.

Yes, as the labor market loosens up, companies are back in the driver’s seat. Job-seekers are encouraged to apply elsewhere if they don’t lust after mandatory overtime. Some start-up companies are even stipulating retroactive mandatory overtime.

Entrepreneurs such as Mark Cuban snidely advise that workers better get on board with the new normal because unless they give 110% 24-7, that bogeyman The Competition is going to eat their lunch. (“Dude, I’d be glad if somebody actually found time to eat my meals! I can’t. And trying to catch a red-eye flight while hooked up to an IV pole is not what my high school guidance counselor prepared me for!”)

I know there’s a lot of alpha-male (or maybe “The Devil Wears Prada”) bravado exacerbating the “survival of the fittest” mentality; but it also looks desperate when you force your employees to upend their downtime for Zoom meetings with vendors/customers halfway around the world. Better to bluff your way through. (“Listen, you can make yourself available when it’s convenient for MY people or I’m buying your whole %$#@ time zone!”)

These managers and HR directors remind me of Steve Martin as Navin Johnson in “The Jerk.” You know the speech: “I don’t need this stuff and I don’t need you. I don’t need anything except this. This ashtray. And this paddle game. The ashtray and the paddle game and that’s all I need. And this remote control … .”

Except their message is more “This company can’t survive without humbly indispensable me working 80 hours a week. Well, me and my dedicated hand-picked team. And their long-lost friends from summer camp. And, oh yeah, that litigious guy who hasn’t been able to fall sleep since one of our delivery trucks hit him and … .”

Ambitious college graduates find themselves having to reconfigure time-tested life goals. The mantra used to be “Live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse.” Now it’s “Live fast, die young and leave a really good stock portfolio for … the blood relatives who forgot you were alive … um, the significant other you never asked for a date … uh, the faithful dog you never adopted … er, the museum whose doors you never darkened … .”

Don’t get too cocky, bosses. Pendulums swing both ways.

“No, you may not vacation on Mars … not until I’ve given you a raise and a footrub and let your darling rugrats rummage through my desk!”

Danny Tyree writes about politics and pop culture in his syndicated “Tyree’s Tyrades” column.

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