Harrop: How early is too early for a work meeting?

But what made 8 a.m. such an outrageously early hour?

To a lot of working Americans, 8 a.m. is practically lunchtime. Firefighters, police, nurses and emergency room doctors work the entire night. (Some are lucky if they get home by 8 a.m.)

In rural America, the cows have already been milked by 6 a.m.

About 16 percent of full-time employees work on “alternative shifts,” according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Meanwhile, a gust of entitlement blows from some of these squawks about early meetings.

“If I have to push myself to an 8 o’clock meeting,” 36-year-old Jake Rudy is quoted as saying, “I really had better have a good reason for being there.”

Keeping his job could be a good reason.

If an early meeting has to happen, Lorna Hagen said, managers should notify workers well in advance. Fair enough, when possible. But speaking in Gen-Z, she added, “companies have to be very intentional about what conditions they set.”

I once had an editing job that started at 6 a.m. As part of my interview, the boss sternly asked me, “You are going to be here at 6 a.m., right?”

I answered, “Yes, that’s the job” and was hired.

I’ve since developed enormous respect for those who rise in the early hours to serve the 9-to-5ers.

During a stay in Kirkland, I recall visiting the only place that served coffee at 6 a.m. It was a downtown Starbucks where two young women served pre-dawn lattes with unforgettable cheer. They had opened the place at 5:30.

As for my 6 a.m. editing job, true, I didn’t like having to haul out of bed at 4:30 a.m. to dress and catch a downtown bus to the office. But navigating pre-dawn Manhattan remains one of my most fabulous dreamscapes.

Because of the early hour, buses were few, so I’d catch the same one every day. I got to know the bus driver (when did he get up?) and also the janitors on their way to opening downtown office buildings. We formed something of a club.

The bus passed through Times Square at around 5:45 a.m. — a strange bewitching hour where late night met early morning. You could look up at the second floors and see revelers still dancing under disco balls.

On street level, meanwhile, a small army of trucks was bringing danishes to the city’s coffee shops preparing to open for the morning commuters.

Look, workers can rightly fight off demands to answer non-urgent emails after dinner. But the boundaries they draw have to be consonant with the terms of employment.

If someone routinely working 9 to 5 is expected to show up at 8 a.m. for a special meeting, well, that’s the job. As the song goes, take it or shove it.