For people in demanding professional jobs, passing may seem like a tempting strategy. After all, passing allows one to avoid long, often unnecessary work hours, without eliciting any penalty. Career-wise, it is certainly less costly than transparency. Yet passing may not be possible for everyone. Passing effectively requires both strong relationships within the firm and the networks necessary to find local clients, and not everyone has equally strong relationships or networks. In addition, women’s work time may be under greater scrutiny than men’s: people at this firm seemed to assume that women who left the office around five went home to their children, while men who left around the same time could be, in the words of one administrative assistant “on the way to a client’s.” Thus, it may be more difficult for women to find ways to slip under the radar than men.

More importantly, however, passing is not a good strategy for the organization as a whole: not only does it involve an element of deception between colleagues, bosses, and subordinates, it also perpetuates the myth that those who are successful are also all wholly devoted to work. Yet, a critical implication of this research is that working long hours is not necessary for high quality work. The experiences of those men who passed show clearly that, even in a client service setting, it is possible to reorganize work such that it is more predictable and consumes fewer hours.

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