Australian academics are being squeezed from all sides, facing ever-intensifying bureaucratic expectations around research output, coupled with increased teaching commitments and mounting administrative duties. These demands are occurring in an environment where most academics are still employed under traditional arrangements whereby, notionally, 40 per cent of their workload is allocated to research, 40 per cent to teaching and the final 20 per cent to service or administration. Such figures are no longer -- and perhaps never were -- a realistic representation of average workloads. This paper discusses how Australian academics in the discipline of English have been working within and around the 40/40/20 model, as well as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their workload. Discussion here is built on interviews with English academics, but the same concerns are applicable across the tertiary sector because employment conditions tend to be standardised at the institutional level rather than at a disciplinary level.