I recently went to Peru for a trip. We stayed at what a really, really nice hotel. It was kind of jarring, because in the Sacred Valley, you could look across t

I recently went to Peru for a trip. We stayed at what a really, really nice hotel. It was kind of jarring, because in the Sacred Valley, you could look across the street and see the hovels where the locals lived -- brick houses with no windows or insulation, no heat or air conditioning, and sometimes even no doors. But my hotel had nice sheets, windows, heat, air conditioning, Wi-fi, and really, really nice food. We got to the hotel after sundown, and it's so remote that you can't really leave. Fortunately, they had a restaurant. The waitress there was a young woman, mid-twenties. She was extremely nice and helpful, though her grasp on English was tenuous. By the time we finished our meal at approximately 10:30pm, we were ready to go to bed. She waved goodbye and say "See you in the morning!" We were up bright and early at 7:30am, and we went to get breakfast. Sure enough, the waitress was there. Needless to say, after an extremely long day of sight-seeing, we returned to the hotel and the girl was still there and served us dinner. Long story short, this woman was working 16 hour days, and she was happy to do it. The job she had was one of the nicest, cushiest jobs you could get in her region -- by far. I didn't ask, but if I had to guess, I'd say she sends most of that money home to her family so that their extreme poverty won't be quite so bad. I spend a lot of my time reading Hacker News and other non-work related websites. I can justify it -- my happiness is important -- but I'm loathe to say that I work too much at 40 hours a week, especially when I know what conditions are like in Peru and other third-world countries. I get it. I understand the argument for shorter work weeks, and I agree wholeheartedly. But my sympathies go out to this nice waitress in Peru before they go out to Joe Brogrammer who "works" 50 hour weeks or Sarah Hedgefundmanager who has 6 minutes of bathroom time a day. Then again, maybe I'm just a monster with no grasp on how hard life really is. :)