Has WORKING become too important in our lives?

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The other day I was talking to a friend on the phone, and in the middle of our conversation he got another call. This conversation was taking place at around 6:30 in the evening-- and after a brief pause, he came back on to tell me he had to go, that his work (a large computer company) had called and he needed to go back in for a few hours. This little incident got me to thinking about how "work" has changed, just in my lifetime. When I was a kid, my dad would leave for work at 8:00 in the morning, and be back home around 4:30. It was unheard of that his workplace would call for ANY reason, outside those hours. These days, people not only tend to work MUCH more than your basic 40-hour work week, even when they are NOT at work, many employers expect their employees to be "on call" almost ALL the time. That seems to have become standard procedure-- if you value your job, you'd better be ready to jump in the car and go back to work, if they need you. What do you think? How much do YOU have to work? Has working become TOO IMPORTANT in our lives? Does "having a job" reached a point (for many people) where it takes away our chances to "have a life?" Do our employers have too much say in how we get to live our lives? When people complain about the "breakdown of the family" do you think excessive work demands are to blame, at least in part?