The Fallacy of 9 to 5

A recruiter I respect very much just penned an article that admonished a client company for rejecting a candidate that had a side job.  "We want our hires focused completely on our business," was the reply from the company.  The recruiter stated that if a person has a true passion; one that bleeds over into the time beyond the 9 to 5, and there wasn't a competitive component to it, why would the employer care?

Simple.  There is no such thing as 9 to 5, especially in the Midwest.

8 to 5 are "core" hours for every company I know, and it gets worse from there.  At my current employer, I'm expected to be "butt in the seat" by 7:00AM and will garner nasty glances for any departure that doesn't occur after 6:00PM.  

Those are just starter hours.  Given workloads and priorities, the work day can and often has been much, much longer than that.  Also, at least six hours over the weekend is part of our culture.  Finally, since I've been issued a company phone, I'm expected to be on-call basically 24 hours a day, and those texts and calls come at a level that is all too frequent.

Granted, the culture at the place I work isn't the norm, but for companies in the Midwest, a certain "work ethic" is expected.  That work ethic translates into leaving zero time for any other job.

9 to 5?  That's only a part of a full work day.