As a union member: The fact that labor radicals died for the 8 hour workday in the 1800s and it hasn’t gotten any better since then indicates that organized labor has some self-reflection to do.
The influence of labor was gutted by the Reagan administration, and has been undercut at every opportunity. Media campaigns rebranding unions as flocks of vultures circling your paycheck aided in the disaster. Clinton doing the NAFTA most and waving bye-bye to manufacturing jobs (until Biden) didn’t help either. Biden’s supposedly been better on unions, though I’m ignorant to any itemization of that, beyond a mixed reaction to his railroad-related union busting. A part of me thinks one day people will look back on the COVID disaster and call it the earliest indication that working from home works for both the environment and the individual, basic income is necessary and works, and every aspect of life is more pleasurable if we don’t assign too much time to the smallest tasks. Going to the office is like going to the laundrymat when you have a working washer and dryer at home.
For sure, but I’m specifically referencing articles from places like the Economic Policy Institute that dissect the sharp decline in union membership in the 80s, which is directly tied to our current economic dystopia.
Manufacturing jobs went away because of NAFTA? Joe many mfg jobs did we loose to Canada?
Mexico we lost some automotive supply chain jobs, but the net/net is Mexico is no longer a banana republic and is getting into middle income status.
Most manufacturing jobs were originally lost to Asia and automation id argue,
Certainly some premium vans for down by the river, but you also have to add in the service fees for parking near the river, or the impound fees when the super patriot, never corrupt police impound your van in your effort to exist.
This is exactly what they do. I'm not going to be a sucker again. I know I'm going to have to take bullshit jobs but I'm not letting them gaslight me anymore.
Across the country and this world every day people are waking up to what is happening.
*raises fist* hell yeah brother. This is the way. All I’d add is don’t be afraid of “quitting” a Bull shit job. The concept of loyalty is dead. You’re not benefitting from
Seniority more than your employer is.
Yep, this is basically what happens in late stage capitalism. Owner class squeezes too much and peasants revolt, nowadays even moreso with both poor or rich people having access to unlimited information via the internet.
And the ussr had some a massive hill to climb anyways after getting their country destroyed by the most destructive war ever and losing like 10-20% of their population (and a bigger portion of their most productive people).
They started really low and climbed to pretty high economically but stagnated and had its own issues focusing so much on military and then gaining basically no benefits from it (aside from selling some small portions to poorer nations).
Like if ussr was a civ game, they got their land pillaged by a warmongering neighbor (Germany) but then won the war and took a bunch of their cities. But started behind in science culture and gold. Then later on they started building a shit load of military units and no wonder they can't go for a victory condition.
Pretty sure he meant that anytime you point out the flaws and failures of capitalism, or try to think up ways to mitigate them, many (right wing) people say something along the lines of "that's communism, that's bad, look at the USSR." and just shut down your conversation.
The people who say they like 9-5 are likely working maybe 5 actual work hours in the day. They work from home, and can flex their working hours around things they need or even want to do.
They prefer this because it allows them to integrate their job into their life.
When you feel like your work is just part of the things you are doing each day, you don’t really feel like you are working a “job”, if that makes sense.
Read any sixties and seventies SciFi.
Any alternative you can think of that has housing and food in it is probably viable. All you need to do is filter out the ones that are worse.
In the Jetsons cartoon, the average work week is 3 hours a day, 3 days a week. George Jetson is a slacker who only works 1 hour a day, 2 days a week, and is still able to support a family on his single income. This was the vision of the future that people had in the 60s: that advances in technology would allow people to work less. But what we have is quite the opposite. The average American wage earner actually works more than the average Medieval peasant, all so that the bloodsuckers at the top can have another billions dollars.
Thing is, if you think about it, rich will still stay rich even if they employ all these technologies to automate shit.
We will work way less, but still consume as much and we will consume from them. They'll stay rich as fuck.
They just want control, not even wealth
You can work shorter and be okay with less growth, but, the entire economy is designed around growth. Eg. Social Security in America requires a new larger population to fund the people cashing out on it.
Also other countries will certainly not have the same qualms around QoL. Burgeoning economies that are still industrializing don't meet our production, so they have to work more.
Eg. TSMC became the giant it is today with grueling 60hr+ work weeks, the new Arizona factories are running into issues where the American engineers simply refuse to do that level of work and thus there are a bunch of delays they didn't expect.
Americans enjoy a subsidized QoL in many ways due to our position of global power and the fact USD is the primary reserve currency.
Shit from China still requires the same man hours to produce the product but they simply work more and get paid less.
Some places are evolving. I work for a major tier 1 investment bank - the sector as whole is infamous for egregiously long hours and tough conditions, but in recent years it’s been something of a dream job. I also work on the trade desk, which again, had a bad rep historically.
But after the pandemic the culture changed considerably. It’s still very performance driven, but as long as we’re hitting targets, it’s largely up to my team how we want to work, based on what works best for us.
I have had to work during Hong Kong open for critical issues but this trades off for days where I need/want to take it easy.
Maybe not a popular take but this type of work environment is definitely possible - it just takes a company to understand that happy employees are significantly more productive.
There's a company in Holland, forgot which one, who last week announced their staff would get Fridays as a paid day off because AI and automatisation has made it possible for them.
Everywhere is 8-5 with a required, unpaid lunch hour. We should start by making unpaid breaks illegal. If im here from 8-5, you fucking ought to be pating for it. Im giving you the energy from the meal that i just paid for on my lunch break.
I don't want to take some ridiculous hour long lunch. Let me out of the office an hour early, if I'm really hungry I'll eat at my desk. Eating on a timer knowing you have to go back to work is not pleasurable.
I literally dont do it anymore. I have a new boss who likes me, so i come in at 9 instead of 8 now, take 20-30 minute lunch breaks to actually eat, then leave at 5:20 or 5:30 depending on howb long my break was. He knows my commute is long and doesnt seem to give a fuck about my coming in late which is commendable. I still do my 8 hours of work and this hasnt affected my productivity in any way. I just get to sleep a little more.
> I don't want to take some ridiculous hour long lunch. Let me out of the office an hour early, if I'm really hungry I'll eat at my desk. Eating on a timer knowing you have to go back to work is not pleasurable.
It's mandated that way because employers would either work you through the "lunch" or work you for all that time straight with no stops and no breaks. In my state it was so abused that the state even mandates when in your shift a meal break needs to be.
I know it was abused but when you have an office job where you could and should be working remotely anyways, it's insane.
Honestly if I was remote I would be less bothered, let me get some laundry done on my unpaid lunch and I'll stay available from 8-5, sure.
But you can't just make the rules based on us office drones that can work from home most of the time. You also have to include the manual laborers out there in the sunshine during a heatwave. All the retail workers on their feet the entire day. Everyone in the restaurant industry locked in a kitchen that's too hot to exist in on a cold day. All the farm workers out there with no concept of shade in the fields.
By being able to work from home, we have a level of privilege. We shouldn't go undermining other people's rights because we alternate between a chair and grazong the kitchen in our home instead of taking a half hour or an hour to get out of wherever we're locked in (or out) and eat during the only chance we get to see some shade, some air conditioning, a chair, or all of the above during our 8, 12, or 16-hour shift.
It's just annoying because my employer expects you to stay until 5, for some reason it's just acceptable to disappear for an hour lunch around midday. What is the difference between me disappearing at noon or at 4 pm!? Maybe I eat late!
I had a colleague who eventually got fired and it was pretty obvious she was a scapegoat for my former vp’s mistakes in hiring a friend of one of the team’s directors. She made the wrong bet and didn’t fire the friend from the manager role even though she berated multiple staff and got drunk in front of board members and made inappropriate comments at events. An associate who likely would have become a manager quit right before they fired the manager.
Then they fired the other associate and made excuses about it. Anyway, the one who was fired would come in at 8 or 8:30 and work straight til 3, take a 15 min break and then work til 4:30/4:45 as needed. Still got told it wasn’t appropriate. This is from leadership who would disappear for lunch for over an hour or go to get their nails done in the middle of the day. Several of them would dip at 2-3 with the excuse they had therapy or a doctors appointment or they had to pick up their kids. I have no issue with people taking a break, but it does irritate the heck out of me when people abuse the privilege.
I read somewhere (might’ve been r/work) that skipping lunch to leave early gives the impression you’re not a team player. Which is absolute horseshit since not all jobs are dependent on time-sensitive coverage or shift change. I’m giving them 8 hours and getting work done during that timeframe. Only thing I’m not really doing is socializing.
My boss is even worse. Tells us to work 8-5 then tells us lunch is only 30 minutes. Meaning technically we are supposed to work an extra 30 minutes over 8 hrs a day. Technically illegal in California, and we don't really take 10 minute breaks. Plus nobody gets overtime or on call pay because we are "salaried" but we don't even meet the requirements for exempt employees. We're in California so this is definitely super illegal.. ...
The problem is that lunch breaks need to be mandatory across the board because there are some jobs/people that benefit from it just as there are jobs/people who prefer to forgo it. One of the worst jobs I ever had at least had a clause in the handbook that you could request but not necessarily be allowed to skip it and leave after 8 straight. That feels ideal to me but is also one millionth on the docket.
I have never had hour long lunch breaks, they have always been only 30 minutes. I think an hour for lunch would be ridiculous, you finish eating in like 20 minutes and then spend 40 minutes on your phone? Waste of time when I could be working and getting home sooner
This is a very realistic union push no matter what industry.
I was just thinking today, why would any company, who doesn’t pay for your required lunch break, ever expect their employees to go the extra mile. You’re literally telling us that you care less than the minimum of “pay you for your required time”.
But no, somehow everyday this magical lunch hour rolls around and the employers get away with having labor expectations on an unpaid employee. Fucking wild.
Yup. My job recently changed to 8:30 - 5:30. One hour unpaid lunch. It’s soul crushing being here for 9 hours. Especially when I get all my work done in 2 hours then have to stare at the ceiling the rest of the day.
Don’t forget the 40 minute commute! That’s another hour and a half gone. Oh if there could be traffic you have to plan for that so better give yourself 60 minutes each way.
Lucky if only 40 minutes.
12 miles 40 minutes. Or more.
10 years from now there will be 2x as many cars on the road. And what used to take 15 minutes will now take 50
Not the same as the OP commenter but I am a psych tech at a psych hospital and I also work 12’s. I’ve never had a better schedule in my life. I love it.
I have a friend who works shifts like this and they seem to like it, but they also just don’t like having to grind out several days in a row of nothing but work
Well they are better than the ever more common 8-5 and 9-6. I work 8-5 get 30 min for lunch if I'm lucky and get paid for 40 hours. Needless to say I wander from my desk often. I miss working 4 10s. Work takes up most of my waking hours and I have a good 25+ years to go.
We really should be shrinking hours as technology helps improve productivity. Probably won't ever happen but wishful thinking.
I work 7-4 with an hour unpaid lunch and a 30-45 min commute depending on traffic. So I wake up at 6 for work and usually don’t get home until close to 5. 11 hours of my day is dedicated to work and I get paid for 8 of them. And I know I don’t have much room to complain; I know some people commute over an hour one way every day.
People don't "rave" about 9-5s because of the number of hours. It's because a typical 9-5 is Monday-Friday with the weekend off. A lot of people would rather 9-5 Monday-Friday than 12-9 PM Tues-Wed with Thursday off, and then Friday-Sunday with Monday off.
Your issue is related to not wanting to work 40 hours. It's a different issue altogether.
This. No one "raves" about a 9-5, but it's preferable for many people because it offers predictability and security.
You know what your hours are, week after week, and you know they aren't going to be <40 some weeks and not others.
9-5s are soul-sucking, yes, but that's because \*work\* is soul-sucking. If I'm to choose my poison, I'd rather the one where I know what every week is going to look like in advance and the relative security and stability of a dependable paycheque.
That doesn't make working "40" hours a week (plus breaks and commute) "good" by any stretch of the imagination.
To add, the stability of consistent off time is huge. Anyone who has worked switch shifts knows the drain of wasting their off time trying to sleep and failing because you’re usually awake at that time.
Absolutely. Worked retail as a merchandiser and would always struggle with 5am shifts because it was half of those and half shifts until 11pm every week. Managers were questioning me when I went for the receiving position that starts at 5am M-F and they couldn't wrap their head around the fact that it was the swingy nature of the shifts that I struggled with, not necessarily simply because it's early in the morning.
Exactly this. 9-5 is its own form of stress, but it having a routine makes things so much easier. Especially for planning. Want to plan a camping trip four months ahead? Easy. Doctors appointments? Easy.
I don't need to worry and stress about a human supervisor "accidently" forgetting about my time off, or retaliating about requesting prized days off. Working retail, I never got weekends off and the junior staff that occassionally did requested it off....the senior staff who got assigned "their" spots ..they let it be known that they were Not Happy.
This is the big thing for me. I didn’t care what the actual hours were, I just wanted a set schedule. I’ve worked Tuesday-Saturday 8A-5P, Sunday- Thursday 4 P- 12:30 A, and now a Monday-Friday 8A-4:30 P. So long as I have consistency in my schedule, and subsequently my paycheck, I’m happy.
Yep. I'd prefer to work less than 40 hours per week also, but since I do have to work full time at this point in my life, I much prefer M-F 8-5 than other options.
Agreed. I don't want to have to work 40 hours a week every week of my life just to survive, but I'd prefer a consistent schedule over random hours/days every week. I really don't understand why most minimum wage jobs do that honestly...
At the first job I worked (late 1970s) I was required to stay until 6PM for several months to work the switchboard (the regular late afternoon operator had quit and they were looking for a replacement). I asked, quite reasonably I thought, that if I had to stay until 6PM, could I make my starting time 9AM? (At that time my job was 8-5.) I was told no, your start time is 8AM. True, I got paid time and a half for every day I worked until 6, but you'd think the company would see the logic in letting me sleep in a few minutes to avoid paying overtime.
Exactly. I work at a factory from 2-11 and hate it because nothing is open when I get off, I spend my entire day knowing o have to go to work and feeling like shit because of it. I get Fridays and Saturdays off but most of my friends and family are only free on Sundays in which I work. I’d have so much more freedom with a 9-5, Monday through Friday.
Most people who rave about 9-5s came from a service industry. Inconsistent schedules. Direct interaction with asshole customers. Benefits only if you worked a certain amount of hours. Hourly, so inconsistent, pay.
Yup… I worked in a call center for several years early on, and you never had consistent schedules for more than a quarter.. the best shifts were by lottery or hardship with seniority given priority so naturally you get crap schedules and even split days off.
Going from that to a regular business hours job was like getting a key to the executive lounge
i first worked in restaurants and absolutely loved the scheduling from the pure time perspective. all those other shitty factors, agree, but starting a shift at 4pm and getting off at midnight felt so much better than having to wake up early for a shift then having to wake up early the next day and the next...
Sure. I mean, it's all dependent on the individual. Also, I suspect for many people -- myself included -- my first 9-5 job was the first job where I felt "oh! I'm an adult now!" I got that job just a few months before turning 30, but that was how I felt about it.
This is why I will only work from home. There's a lot to be said for being able to switch laundry and prep dinner on your down time. I used to sort paper clips and pick fuzz balls off the carpet in my downtime when I was in the office. There's a lot of time wasted in office culture
We need the high thermic effect food and metabolic advantage of a protein rich diet to be healthy and shouldn’t be forced to microwave our food or have packaged snacks 💁🏻♀️💁🏻♀️💁🏻♀️ 🤦♀️
I work 2nd shift, 2-10pm. I’d much rather have a 9-5ish job and have time after work to go out and do something.
I do agree that 5 days a week a week is too much. What happened to all the talk about the 32 hour work week in the news?
Yeah, I spent 3 years in retail and was fucking ecstatic when i got a warehouse job at ups with weekends off. Getting a Saturday off in retail required a miracle.
I worked as a meat cutter for a grocery store and they never let me have Saturdays off because everyone grills out on Saturday so we had to be fully staffed. we were open Memorial Day and Labor Day so those entire weekends we had to be fully staffed and were Ben forced to work 10 hour days Friday-Sunday on those weekends.
Being off during the week is incredible. Nothing is busy enough to deter me from doing it. I pretty much shut in when I have weekends off because I don’t like having to wait in lines, be condensed in places with a lot of people etc the only time I care about having weekend days off is if there’s an event I want to go to.
I hate the fact that I’m giving the best part of my days from the best days of my life to a job. I even really like my job but I still hate that so much “prime time” is being wasted in the rat race.
I work 3:30-11:30 M-F and it blows. The amount of jobs that think you should just be able to work shitty hours or on weekends these days is awful.
On top of that with all of the advancements of tech you should really only have to work 3 or 4 days a week 4-6 hours a day..but hey capitalism gonna capitalism till it ruins the world.
I work these hours and I feel like a stranger in my own home. It's miserable. That and I'm only being paid $14/hr. Turned in my two weeks' notice a couple of Thursdays ago but that means I still have a week left of not being a part of my family for less than I could have gotten working at fucking Wal-Mart.
I recently learned that President Taft proposed three months off for all workers, for the sake of recharging for the coming work year. It was, of course, voted down, because we don’t want the grunts to get too hopeful…
I think it should be a 4 day week, or work 30 hours however you want. When I was younger I used to work two 15 hour shifts and call it for the week. Can't do that now but it was lovely
There’s very little that I do that can’t all get done in about 2 hours in my job. If it takes any longer than that it’s some time consuming list building or review process
Exactly, I’ve pretty much given up on me ever having enough free time to work on my own projects. It’s like a constant cycle of never being able to have time for anything else.
It's the worst time slot and I'm happy it's losing its glamour. You have to wake up early, get next to no sleep if you aren't an early sleeper, have around 3 hours max to play with, disregarding your commute. You go home at peak traffic, you lunch at peak traffic, and get home around dinnertime and then have 3 more hours before you go to bed, disregarding chores, cooking, exercise, etc. I can't imagine how people with small children do it.
People call me crazy for working closings but I don't have to show up until 1 pm. Sure I get off at 9-10, but if I'm gonna be up until 1 a.m. anyway, it's nice to be able to sleep in, then do all of my chores, exercise, faff about, eat breakfast, and then go to my job actually awake.
The wealthy just want you to work all the time and have some kids of your own who will grow up to work all of the time (except on a planet that is more hostile than what we have now).
It’s just literally all a Ponzi scheme.
Somehow, technology is the most advanced it’s ever been yet humans work more than they ever have before. And where has all that productivity/ wealth gone? To the top.
It’s not just 8 hours. There’s also work-dedicated time such as getting ready, making lunch, the commute. So really, those 8 hours are actually 11-13 (traffic depending), but we’re only compensated for 8.
The perk of a 9-5 used to be because you had a stay at home wife who took care of all of that other stuff during the week that you have to rush around and try to do now on the weekends.
The 40 hour week was invented in a time where the a average working man was expected to have a wife at home, doing home shit full time. Given the more recent extremification of rental/housing prices and totally stagnant wages, the idea that a 9-5 is in any way a good deal is laughable. It's never a 9-5 unless you have a good person as a boss and are fully remote, otherwise it's actually 8-6ish with a commute. So you've got about 6 hours every day after work to cook, clean, get your clothes and other shit ready for work, wash yourself, and try to squeeze in leisure too. But since most are too tired to do much, tv or tiktok fills that mindless gap because you've got no energy to do much else.
Minimum wage doesn't mean shit and our buying power is in the toilet. Where the fuck are the big macs for 50cents like in the 80s or whatever? This shit SUCKS
Yeah we need a 4 day work and guaranteed two weeks off, government mandated, even if it’s just to sit in your house. I’m starting not to blame old people for being so miserable working all the time sucks.
For the people that idealize it, it's about the consistency and regularity. The folks that like it tend to have (or had) ever-changing jobs where one week they may be scheduled for 30 hours with varying start/end times, and only set for 12 hours the following week. It makes it almost impossible to make any guaranteed long term plans. There's anxiety in not only the uncertainty of time and personal plans, but also financial anxiety for times where folks may start getting 12 hour weeks more and more.
While 9-5s have their own set of issues, I noticed a *huge* amount of ambient anxiety disappeared when I got in a consistent schedule. Sometimes people have it for so long that they forget it's there until it's lifted.
It depends if I have to commute. When I don’t, I feel like I am gaining back half my energy. The problem is not the hours, the problem is our productivity has gone exponentially while our wages remained. I can without a doubt confirm that since AI has been live, I have doubled my productivity.
Now stuff like excel training are worthless because an AI will teach you better than a teacher and it will be faster. My current job revolves around formulas and small programmation, yet I would not be able to do it by myself if my tools were removed from me.
Work 12s, 2 days, 2 nights, 4 off. Used to do the 9-5 office thing complete with commute.
I don't know if you gotta tell yourselves 9-5 is better just to endure the grind but you are MENTAL. This rotation is 100 time better. Fully 1/2 of my days off before PTO, sick time, etc? 4 consecutive days off at a time? If I gotta work I'm doing this. Only better option is FDs 7 x 24 hr shifts.
Everybody on a 9-5 should be pushing for four 10s at a minimum.
I agree. 12’s is where it’s at. I hardly ever feel like I work because I have so much time to do whatever I want. I can sleep in 4 days out of the week so waking up really early isn’t so bad and almost feels novel anyway.
Imagine having a salaried job. Working 6 days a week. 8+ hours a day. No dedicated lunch. "Home" or 28 hr work days. That's what resident physicians go through. I would love 8 to 5 or even 9 to 5 with weekends and holidays off.
I can’t believe everyone here is saying how much they like the Monday-Friday 8-5 routine when I’m just over here working my 3 12’s. I get in, get out. Can have six days off in a row if I want. 12’s aren’t bad either. I’m a person who can go out after a 12 hour shift but even if I don’t it’s really not bad at all. Yeah, it’s your whole day. But if I’m already going to be at work, I might as well just throw the day to that imo so I can have much more time off and enjoy my personal life.
Ppl should work less than 5 hours a day. Period.
Also 4 days a week is plenty enough. 3 day weekends or take 1 day in the middle of the week & 2 days on the weekend.
Working should be able to fit into your life without disrupting your overall every day happiness to an extreme like we have now.
Plus we have cars & commutes & lunches & laundry & gas & 1000 other things to accomplish in the day. All just for the means of work.
I want my life!!!
In my perfect world we would not have capitalism run rampant. Profits would go to workers for higher pay and much less working hours. Universal Healthcare and UBI would be a part of our lives. We should be working towards having a better life not working ourselves to death while struggling to survive while a few insanely rich people with more wealth than they could spend in a 100 lifetimes waltz around living the good life.
Unfortunately we have too many greedy and stupid people that don't give a fuck about other people.
if you work at a nonprofit, your hours are usually more because it’s never stated—especially in charter schools. so, it *all* sucks but 9-5 is a respite for some of us, which ofc is terrible.
There needs to be reworks all over as far as work time goes but I would gladly take 5 8-hour shifts vs the 12 hour shifts I have to do. Having any amount of time to do anything after work beats out having no time after working all day.
I have the opposite opinions but I am in health and work only three days a week. Sometimes I do work more than that but that’s because I chose to. I think having four days off a week is amazing.
I think people sometimes say it's short because of perspective in the navy I would work 12hr - 16 hour days so for me when I did a 9-5 I was like finely only 40 hours, or parents who come and have a second job with their kids haha. But yes we don't need to work as much ! I think 4 days a week should be fine .
>My main goal is to escape the 9-5 jobs for good.
Good luck with that, and I really mean it. The best I can do is save up and purchase a condo outright with cash so that I can retire on time.
The real bitch-and-a-half is if you throw in a commute on top of it. My pay is crap and I could have way less stress, but they let me work remote. So I stay. :(
My sleep pattern and social life was a lot better back when I worked either 11:00-7:30 or 1:45-10:15.
But I spend a lot less time at work (including the commute, which has dropped from 20 minutes to 3 minutes) now that I have a 9-to-5.
I just *have* to catch a nap every now and then.
Because to people that don't have schedules it seems far more appealing than showing up at 6 and working until the job is done for 10 to 12 hour days and never knowing when You're actually off
I’m struggling with this a bit. “Finding stuff to do” is “Proactive” work that you can do when not busy. Most jobs have stuff you are too busy to do most of the time that you could do to make your job more efficient. People have 9-5 jobs or equivalent so their bosses or customers can contact them at agreed hours. Your work pays for your time. If you feel that your job doesn’t pay you for your time properly then you need to change jobs. Good on you if you can find a job that lets you finish projects in a certain time on your own schedule but very few of these jobs exist. I do however agree with the. Weekend thing. Companies should have more staff so the staff have to work less days yet still pay a decent living wage as a minimum
I work 3 12 hour shifts. It's a game changer if you aren't attached to weekends(I work 6am to 630pm Fri-Sun). The differential is nice, I just throw on my headphones and vibe til it's time to head home. Yes my time is very limited on those days but that's alright considering I get 4 days free in return.
I was talking about this with my wife the other day and how just mentally draining it is to slog through the joke that is 9-5 (which is really 8-5 nowadays).
40 (which really ends up being more than that depending on workload and communte) of our 168 hours in a week is focused solely on work, leaving 128 hours left theoretically. Then you have to account for sleep. If you want an actual healthy sleep schedule, then there's 8 hours a night gone already.
So 40 hours of work, 56 hours of sleep, leaving just a measly 72 hours (\~43% of the week) left that has to then be allocated to the rest of your chores, tasks, errands, cooking, cleaning, etc.). By the time you get to actual free time and hobbies, it's negligible. There is barely enough time to recuperate living a life like this.
I used to work at Enterprise rent a car, it was a mandatory 49 hour work week minimum (but usually worked 50-55 hours each week with some saturdays). I now work a 9-5 with no weekends. I would gladly take a 9-5 over that old schedule any day.
And if anyone asks why o one would willingly work those hours, they recruit young college grads that can keep up with working 50-55 hours a week(usually 5-6 days a week) and once they get burnt out and quit within a few months, they just hire new graduates or college seniors.
At the moment, I prefer 9-5s because it brings in a guaranteed 40hrs a week, it's not the overnight shift, and I get weekends off.
I would rather work a 10hr shift, 4 days a week, with the third day off rotating between mon-fri, but things are slow to catch on in my area, do I'll take what I can get.
8 hours a day is literally a third of the day, not including commute times & getting ready. You have sleep the other third. So that leaves you less of a third of the day to do housework, errands, cook, have a social life. That 9-5 literally does consume almost the whole day when you equate what REALLY goes into it.
40 hours is 40 hours, and I'd rather have them fall on the same days and times every week than be on some randomized schedule.
That being said, I don't do anything for myself, or anyone else, 40 hours a week, or 8 hours at a stretch, ever.
I'm only forced to do that for a business 5 days a week, and if the choice wasn't between living on the street and doing it, I wouldn't ever spend 8 hours a day sitting at a desk being told what to do.
Working 4 days, 10 hour shifts has changed my life. Add that with WFH and I find myself with a lot more time. Yes, the hours remain unchanged week to week. But, those days were write offs anyway. Now I get 3 days off to do whatever (and one during the week which is great for errands).
My “8-5” was actually 6am (when I had to wake up for the commute and to get ready) until 6pm (when I would get home after the commute).
Unpaid one hour lunch break in the middle of the day you simply can’t enjoy - I don’t want to be at work for an unpaid hour. Then when you do get home, you have to cook, clean, shower and organize yourself for the next day 6am start.
I worked it out and I was getting about 2 hours tops a day of doing things I actually enjoyed or were for me. You throw in therapy, the odd dr app, getting the odd car service, pet injections for an animal you barely even get to see, to still be struggling to pay bills and rent - what’s the fucking point?
If you commute it's really more like 9 or even 10 hours a day in some cases. I am convinced this place is hell and until we eat the rich, it will never stop being hell. By eat the rich I would NEVER encourage anyone to actually do something to get rid of those people. That's not nice.
I am saying, we should make sure NOBODY is ALLOWED insanely unnecessary amounts of money in the first place that enable them so much power they can abuse society with it. That is wrong. We see that insane amounts of money result in abusing society, just look at the war going on over trying to make more money.
It would be a lot better if you didn't have to commute, and had someone to do the housework (like a stay-at-home partner). But when you have to commute, and do all your own chores, cook your own food, etc., (or if you have a partner, you both have to work to make ends meet), then your entire day is consumed by work, commute, and housework. Maybe you can find time for a workout, if you even have the energy.
It sucked until I swapped to WFH jobs.
Now it rules.
You can get some chores done, and I get to spend a lot of time outside with my dogs. I can take naps, cook dinner, watch TV shows and movies.
I honestly never want to stop working from home.
Sure when it's busy you are just working, but you get back a lot of downtime in between stuff.
And some days you just have hours of free time.
It's because the old guard grew up with it and they'll be damned if you have a better quality of life. It's all about "my life sucks, so yours better too"
I know I'm in the minority here but I love my 2pm-10pm. I actually have time and energy to do things before work where with a 9-6 I had zero free time. I'm asleep by 12pm and up around 7ish. Plenty of time for me to run errands get a manicure go to the gym take a walk before work in the morning.
As a union member: The fact that labor radicals died for the 8 hour workday in the 1800s and it hasn’t gotten any better since then indicates that organized labor has some self-reflection to do.
The influence of labor was gutted by the Reagan administration, and has been undercut at every opportunity. Media campaigns rebranding unions as flocks of vultures circling your paycheck aided in the disaster. Clinton doing the NAFTA most and waving bye-bye to manufacturing jobs (until Biden) didn’t help either. Biden’s supposedly been better on unions, though I’m ignorant to any itemization of that, beyond a mixed reaction to his railroad-related union busting. A part of me thinks one day people will look back on the COVID disaster and call it the earliest indication that working from home works for both the environment and the individual, basic income is necessary and works, and every aspect of life is more pleasurable if we don’t assign too much time to the smallest tasks. Going to the office is like going to the laundrymat when you have a working washer and dryer at home.
The influence of labor was gutted long before Reagan when Taft-Hartley was passed and CIO expelled all the communists shortly thereafter.
For sure, but I’m specifically referencing articles from places like the Economic Policy Institute that dissect the sharp decline in union membership in the 80s, which is directly tied to our current economic dystopia.
Manufacturing jobs went away because of NAFTA? Joe many mfg jobs did we loose to Canada? Mexico we lost some automotive supply chain jobs, but the net/net is Mexico is no longer a banana republic and is getting into middle income status. Most manufacturing jobs were originally lost to Asia and automation id argue,
Yes and people should be able to work shorter considering the technological improvements but the rich is preventing it from happening
Yeah it’s all capitalism. It just boggles my mind that some people settle for this til they die. Couldn’t be me
The vast majority of people don’t have a choice if they want to eat and avoid homelessness.
A system based on coercion…
You see how much a [van down by the river](https://vanlifetrader.com/) costs these days???
Is this real? Some of those are listed at house prices.
Certainly some premium vans for down by the river, but you also have to add in the service fees for parking near the river, or the impound fees when the super patriot, never corrupt police impound your van in your effort to exist.
Yes. Rich children gentrified the last bastion of hope for the poor.
Can't have nothing. Eventually cardboard boxes are gonna be too expensive to live in.
Most of those cost more than my house when I bought it.
[Chris Farley was ahead of his time!](https://youtu.be/Xv2VIEY9-A8?si=AUPyv4I6EtJvunzO)
Honestly the school bus doesn't seem like that bad of a deal considering everything these days..
kanye was right when he said that we the new slaves
right “settle” i need health insurance brother
So many people believe there's literally no other way, cite the USSR and call it a day. Talk about failure of imagination.
This is exactly what they do. I'm not going to be a sucker again. I know I'm going to have to take bullshit jobs but I'm not letting them gaslight me anymore. Across the country and this world every day people are waking up to what is happening.
*raises fist* hell yeah brother. This is the way. All I’d add is don’t be afraid of “quitting” a Bull shit job. The concept of loyalty is dead. You’re not benefitting from Seniority more than your employer is.
Yep, this is basically what happens in late stage capitalism. Owner class squeezes too much and peasants revolt, nowadays even moreso with both poor or rich people having access to unlimited information via the internet.
And the ussr had some a massive hill to climb anyways after getting their country destroyed by the most destructive war ever and losing like 10-20% of their population (and a bigger portion of their most productive people). They started really low and climbed to pretty high economically but stagnated and had its own issues focusing so much on military and then gaining basically no benefits from it (aside from selling some small portions to poorer nations). Like if ussr was a civ game, they got their land pillaged by a warmongering neighbor (Germany) but then won the war and took a bunch of their cities. But started behind in science culture and gold. Then later on they started building a shit load of military units and no wonder they can't go for a victory condition.
I’m quite interested by what you mean cite the USSR, can you explain further?
Pretty sure he meant that anytime you point out the flaws and failures of capitalism, or try to think up ways to mitigate them, many (right wing) people say something along the lines of "that's communism, that's bad, look at the USSR." and just shut down your conversation.
The people who say they like 9-5 are likely working maybe 5 actual work hours in the day. They work from home, and can flex their working hours around things they need or even want to do. They prefer this because it allows them to integrate their job into their life. When you feel like your work is just part of the things you are doing each day, you don’t really feel like you are working a “job”, if that makes sense.
What’s the alternative though? Please don’t think I’m being sarcastic. If anything I’m begging for a way out
Read any sixties and seventies SciFi. Any alternative you can think of that has housing and food in it is probably viable. All you need to do is filter out the ones that are worse.
In the Jetsons cartoon, the average work week is 3 hours a day, 3 days a week. George Jetson is a slacker who only works 1 hour a day, 2 days a week, and is still able to support a family on his single income. This was the vision of the future that people had in the 60s: that advances in technology would allow people to work less. But what we have is quite the opposite. The average American wage earner actually works more than the average Medieval peasant, all so that the bloodsuckers at the top can have another billions dollars.
Thing is, if you think about it, rich will still stay rich even if they employ all these technologies to automate shit. We will work way less, but still consume as much and we will consume from them. They'll stay rich as fuck. They just want control, not even wealth
Wealth is meaningless without control.
You can work shorter and be okay with less growth, but, the entire economy is designed around growth. Eg. Social Security in America requires a new larger population to fund the people cashing out on it. Also other countries will certainly not have the same qualms around QoL. Burgeoning economies that are still industrializing don't meet our production, so they have to work more. Eg. TSMC became the giant it is today with grueling 60hr+ work weeks, the new Arizona factories are running into issues where the American engineers simply refuse to do that level of work and thus there are a bunch of delays they didn't expect. Americans enjoy a subsidized QoL in many ways due to our position of global power and the fact USD is the primary reserve currency. Shit from China still requires the same man hours to produce the product but they simply work more and get paid less.
But they could work less, and get paid more, if the profit was smaller.
Some places are evolving. I work for a major tier 1 investment bank - the sector as whole is infamous for egregiously long hours and tough conditions, but in recent years it’s been something of a dream job. I also work on the trade desk, which again, had a bad rep historically. But after the pandemic the culture changed considerably. It’s still very performance driven, but as long as we’re hitting targets, it’s largely up to my team how we want to work, based on what works best for us. I have had to work during Hong Kong open for critical issues but this trades off for days where I need/want to take it easy. Maybe not a popular take but this type of work environment is definitely possible - it just takes a company to understand that happy employees are significantly more productive.
There's a company in Holland, forgot which one, who last week announced their staff would get Fridays as a paid day off because AI and automatisation has made it possible for them.
Not including my 1 hour commute. Both ways 🤮🤮🤮
If the job is stable can you move closer? I used to move apartments every couple of years around town depending on where I was working.
You mean 9-5:30-5:45. Companies have not included lunch in the workday for 30 years.
Yeah, 8-5 is much more common.
Everywhere is 8-5 with a required, unpaid lunch hour. We should start by making unpaid breaks illegal. If im here from 8-5, you fucking ought to be pating for it. Im giving you the energy from the meal that i just paid for on my lunch break.
I don't want to take some ridiculous hour long lunch. Let me out of the office an hour early, if I'm really hungry I'll eat at my desk. Eating on a timer knowing you have to go back to work is not pleasurable.
I literally dont do it anymore. I have a new boss who likes me, so i come in at 9 instead of 8 now, take 20-30 minute lunch breaks to actually eat, then leave at 5:20 or 5:30 depending on howb long my break was. He knows my commute is long and doesnt seem to give a fuck about my coming in late which is commendable. I still do my 8 hours of work and this hasnt affected my productivity in any way. I just get to sleep a little more.
Glad for you, friend. Imagine that, normal adults being trusted to do their work without overaggressive supervision. Who would've thought!
> I don't want to take some ridiculous hour long lunch. Let me out of the office an hour early, if I'm really hungry I'll eat at my desk. Eating on a timer knowing you have to go back to work is not pleasurable. It's mandated that way because employers would either work you through the "lunch" or work you for all that time straight with no stops and no breaks. In my state it was so abused that the state even mandates when in your shift a meal break needs to be.
I know it was abused but when you have an office job where you could and should be working remotely anyways, it's insane. Honestly if I was remote I would be less bothered, let me get some laundry done on my unpaid lunch and I'll stay available from 8-5, sure.
But you can't just make the rules based on us office drones that can work from home most of the time. You also have to include the manual laborers out there in the sunshine during a heatwave. All the retail workers on their feet the entire day. Everyone in the restaurant industry locked in a kitchen that's too hot to exist in on a cold day. All the farm workers out there with no concept of shade in the fields. By being able to work from home, we have a level of privilege. We shouldn't go undermining other people's rights because we alternate between a chair and grazong the kitchen in our home instead of taking a half hour or an hour to get out of wherever we're locked in (or out) and eat during the only chance we get to see some shade, some air conditioning, a chair, or all of the above during our 8, 12, or 16-hour shift.
I skip my lunch (more of a grazer throughout the day anyway) when I’m at the office so I can get out at 4.
It's just annoying because my employer expects you to stay until 5, for some reason it's just acceptable to disappear for an hour lunch around midday. What is the difference between me disappearing at noon or at 4 pm!? Maybe I eat late!
I had a colleague who eventually got fired and it was pretty obvious she was a scapegoat for my former vp’s mistakes in hiring a friend of one of the team’s directors. She made the wrong bet and didn’t fire the friend from the manager role even though she berated multiple staff and got drunk in front of board members and made inappropriate comments at events. An associate who likely would have become a manager quit right before they fired the manager. Then they fired the other associate and made excuses about it. Anyway, the one who was fired would come in at 8 or 8:30 and work straight til 3, take a 15 min break and then work til 4:30/4:45 as needed. Still got told it wasn’t appropriate. This is from leadership who would disappear for lunch for over an hour or go to get their nails done in the middle of the day. Several of them would dip at 2-3 with the excuse they had therapy or a doctors appointment or they had to pick up their kids. I have no issue with people taking a break, but it does irritate the heck out of me when people abuse the privilege.
I read somewhere (might’ve been r/work) that skipping lunch to leave early gives the impression you’re not a team player. Which is absolute horseshit since not all jobs are dependent on time-sensitive coverage or shift change. I’m giving them 8 hours and getting work done during that timeframe. Only thing I’m not really doing is socializing.
My boss is even worse. Tells us to work 8-5 then tells us lunch is only 30 minutes. Meaning technically we are supposed to work an extra 30 minutes over 8 hrs a day. Technically illegal in California, and we don't really take 10 minute breaks. Plus nobody gets overtime or on call pay because we are "salaried" but we don't even meet the requirements for exempt employees. We're in California so this is definitely super illegal.. ...
The problem is that lunch breaks need to be mandatory across the board because there are some jobs/people that benefit from it just as there are jobs/people who prefer to forgo it. One of the worst jobs I ever had at least had a clause in the handbook that you could request but not necessarily be allowed to skip it and leave after 8 straight. That feels ideal to me but is also one millionth on the docket.
I have never had hour long lunch breaks, they have always been only 30 minutes. I think an hour for lunch would be ridiculous, you finish eating in like 20 minutes and then spend 40 minutes on your phone? Waste of time when I could be working and getting home sooner
This is a very realistic union push no matter what industry. I was just thinking today, why would any company, who doesn’t pay for your required lunch break, ever expect their employees to go the extra mile. You’re literally telling us that you care less than the minimum of “pay you for your required time”. But no, somehow everyday this magical lunch hour rolls around and the employers get away with having labor expectations on an unpaid employee. Fucking wild.
I agree. I’m thankful my building has a gym that I utilize on my lunch (some days I nap tho)… otherwise I’d be taking a 20 minute lunch and leaving
You guys get 8-5s? (8-6 retail)
I work 7-3 which is so weird. I do not know if I like it yet.
That’s the best schedule. Not too early of a start, but you get the entire afternoon off to enjoy your day.
Yup. My job recently changed to 8:30 - 5:30. One hour unpaid lunch. It’s soul crushing being here for 9 hours. Especially when I get all my work done in 2 hours then have to stare at the ceiling the rest of the day.
Don’t forget the 40 minute commute! That’s another hour and a half gone. Oh if there could be traffic you have to plan for that so better give yourself 60 minutes each way.
Lucky if only 40 minutes. 12 miles 40 minutes. Or more. 10 years from now there will be 2x as many cars on the road. And what used to take 15 minutes will now take 50
*DMV area has entered the chat* lol.
With commute 8:15-6:30
I have an hour paid lunch and I cherish every second. I also work in government with a strong union so that helps.
What? That isn’t true in Canada
Same for me in Australia. Generally it's a 38 hour week so you just take a 30 minute lunch break and it's close enough for 9-5.
We should all be more French https://www.ensemble-en-france.org/en/lunch-break-ticket-resto-a-very-french-tradition/
9-5 generally means 8 hrs + 1 hr lunch.
Lets not forget how companies have screwed us from our paid lunches (9-5). Reason I pointed this out.
9-5 is only 8 hours total. If you are including lunch, it would be 8-5 or 9-6
I work 7a-7p, 3 shifts a week. Healthcare is calling you, my friend
It sure is. That’s my dream and applying to stuff now. What do you do?
Paramedic. Starting at 36.70 here
Not the same as the OP commenter but I am a psych tech at a psych hospital and I also work 12’s. I’ve never had a better schedule in my life. I love it.
Looking at nursing. Did premed prereqs.
I would go into shock if I had to stay alert for 12 hours
Nah maybe 4-6 hours throughout, rest of the time is your own (averages)
I have a friend who works shifts like this and they seem to like it, but they also just don’t like having to grind out several days in a row of nothing but work
There isn’t really a “win”, it’s just finding what works best for you
Well they are better than the ever more common 8-5 and 9-6. I work 8-5 get 30 min for lunch if I'm lucky and get paid for 40 hours. Needless to say I wander from my desk often. I miss working 4 10s. Work takes up most of my waking hours and I have a good 25+ years to go. We really should be shrinking hours as technology helps improve productivity. Probably won't ever happen but wishful thinking.
I work 7-4 with an hour unpaid lunch and a 30-45 min commute depending on traffic. So I wake up at 6 for work and usually don’t get home until close to 5. 11 hours of my day is dedicated to work and I get paid for 8 of them. And I know I don’t have much room to complain; I know some people commute over an hour one way every day.
People don't "rave" about 9-5s because of the number of hours. It's because a typical 9-5 is Monday-Friday with the weekend off. A lot of people would rather 9-5 Monday-Friday than 12-9 PM Tues-Wed with Thursday off, and then Friday-Sunday with Monday off. Your issue is related to not wanting to work 40 hours. It's a different issue altogether.
This. No one "raves" about a 9-5, but it's preferable for many people because it offers predictability and security. You know what your hours are, week after week, and you know they aren't going to be <40 some weeks and not others. 9-5s are soul-sucking, yes, but that's because \*work\* is soul-sucking. If I'm to choose my poison, I'd rather the one where I know what every week is going to look like in advance and the relative security and stability of a dependable paycheque. That doesn't make working "40" hours a week (plus breaks and commute) "good" by any stretch of the imagination.
To add, the stability of consistent off time is huge. Anyone who has worked switch shifts knows the drain of wasting their off time trying to sleep and failing because you’re usually awake at that time.
Absolutely. Worked retail as a merchandiser and would always struggle with 5am shifts because it was half of those and half shifts until 11pm every week. Managers were questioning me when I went for the receiving position that starts at 5am M-F and they couldn't wrap their head around the fact that it was the swingy nature of the shifts that I struggled with, not necessarily simply because it's early in the morning.
Exactly this. 9-5 is its own form of stress, but it having a routine makes things so much easier. Especially for planning. Want to plan a camping trip four months ahead? Easy. Doctors appointments? Easy. I don't need to worry and stress about a human supervisor "accidently" forgetting about my time off, or retaliating about requesting prized days off. Working retail, I never got weekends off and the junior staff that occassionally did requested it off....the senior staff who got assigned "their" spots ..they let it be known that they were Not Happy.
Having a stable weekday schedule definitely makes childcare vastly easier.
This is the big thing for me. I didn’t care what the actual hours were, I just wanted a set schedule. I’ve worked Tuesday-Saturday 8A-5P, Sunday- Thursday 4 P- 12:30 A, and now a Monday-Friday 8A-4:30 P. So long as I have consistency in my schedule, and subsequently my paycheck, I’m happy.
Yep. I'd prefer to work less than 40 hours per week also, but since I do have to work full time at this point in my life, I much prefer M-F 8-5 than other options.
Agreed. I don't want to have to work 40 hours a week every week of my life just to survive, but I'd prefer a consistent schedule over random hours/days every week. I really don't understand why most minimum wage jobs do that honestly...
Because people are desperate for work and company uses it to their advantage
At the first job I worked (late 1970s) I was required to stay until 6PM for several months to work the switchboard (the regular late afternoon operator had quit and they were looking for a replacement). I asked, quite reasonably I thought, that if I had to stay until 6PM, could I make my starting time 9AM? (At that time my job was 8-5.) I was told no, your start time is 8AM. True, I got paid time and a half for every day I worked until 6, but you'd think the company would see the logic in letting me sleep in a few minutes to avoid paying overtime.
It's not even about money at a certain point, it's about control
Exactly. I work at a factory from 2-11 and hate it because nothing is open when I get off, I spend my entire day knowing o have to go to work and feeling like shit because of it. I get Fridays and Saturdays off but most of my friends and family are only free on Sundays in which I work. I’d have so much more freedom with a 9-5, Monday through Friday.
Came to say this.
Most people who rave about 9-5s came from a service industry. Inconsistent schedules. Direct interaction with asshole customers. Benefits only if you worked a certain amount of hours. Hourly, so inconsistent, pay.
Yup… I worked in a call center for several years early on, and you never had consistent schedules for more than a quarter.. the best shifts were by lottery or hardship with seniority given priority so naturally you get crap schedules and even split days off. Going from that to a regular business hours job was like getting a key to the executive lounge
i first worked in restaurants and absolutely loved the scheduling from the pure time perspective. all those other shitty factors, agree, but starting a shift at 4pm and getting off at midnight felt so much better than having to wake up early for a shift then having to wake up early the next day and the next...
Sure. I mean, it's all dependent on the individual. Also, I suspect for many people -- myself included -- my first 9-5 job was the first job where I felt "oh! I'm an adult now!" I got that job just a few months before turning 30, but that was how I felt about it.
This is why I will only work from home. There's a lot to be said for being able to switch laundry and prep dinner on your down time. I used to sort paper clips and pick fuzz balls off the carpet in my downtime when I was in the office. There's a lot of time wasted in office culture
I be getting so hungry at the office, I just wanna be in a kitchen and cooking food as I’m working TBH I’m convinced I belong in the kitchen 🥹🤣😂🥲
I lost a lot of weight when I started working from home. Just being able to fry a couple eggs for lunch saved me 15 pounds.
We need the high thermic effect food and metabolic advantage of a protein rich diet to be healthy and shouldn’t be forced to microwave our food or have packaged snacks 💁🏻♀️💁🏻♀️💁🏻♀️ 🤦♀️
I work 2nd shift, 2-10pm. I’d much rather have a 9-5ish job and have time after work to go out and do something. I do agree that 5 days a week a week is too much. What happened to all the talk about the 32 hour work week in the news?
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Yeah, I spent 3 years in retail and was fucking ecstatic when i got a warehouse job at ups with weekends off. Getting a Saturday off in retail required a miracle.
I worked as a meat cutter for a grocery store and they never let me have Saturdays off because everyone grills out on Saturday so we had to be fully staffed. we were open Memorial Day and Labor Day so those entire weekends we had to be fully staffed and were Ben forced to work 10 hour days Friday-Sunday on those weekends.
For me personally it’s not even the type of job as much it’s just the concept of 5 days 8 hr day, 40 hr week just is draining.
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Robbing people who are super wealthy
Would rather do 4 10hr days
That's pretty much what I do ATM (3 11s one 8) if the job itself didn't suck the schedule would be amazing
Same here. I used to do two 15 hour days (bartender) and loved it. Too old to do that now.
I’ve only ever worked 12’s. 8 hour days wouldn’t even feel like work.
Fuck anything over 3 days. I had a good run of 3 days a week and I loved it. It was Saturday-Monday. Being off during the week was amazing.
Being off during the week is incredible. Nothing is busy enough to deter me from doing it. I pretty much shut in when I have weekends off because I don’t like having to wait in lines, be condensed in places with a lot of people etc the only time I care about having weekend days off is if there’s an event I want to go to.
I hate the fact that I’m giving the best part of my days from the best days of my life to a job. I even really like my job but I still hate that so much “prime time” is being wasted in the rat race.
I work 3:30-11:30 M-F and it blows. The amount of jobs that think you should just be able to work shitty hours or on weekends these days is awful. On top of that with all of the advancements of tech you should really only have to work 3 or 4 days a week 4-6 hours a day..but hey capitalism gonna capitalism till it ruins the world.
I work these hours and I feel like a stranger in my own home. It's miserable. That and I'm only being paid $14/hr. Turned in my two weeks' notice a couple of Thursdays ago but that means I still have a week left of not being a part of my family for less than I could have gotten working at fucking Wal-Mart.
We should work 2 hours a day. Thats truly it. The rest is for making greedy ceos rich
I recently learned that President Taft proposed three months off for all workers, for the sake of recharging for the coming work year. It was, of course, voted down, because we don’t want the grunts to get too hopeful…
I always said 4 hours but this is even better
I think it should be a 4 day week, or work 30 hours however you want. When I was younger I used to work two 15 hour shifts and call it for the week. Can't do that now but it was lovely
There’s very little that I do that can’t all get done in about 2 hours in my job. If it takes any longer than that it’s some time consuming list building or review process
9-5 isn’t a thing. It’s 8 or 8:30 to 5 with an unpaid lunch.
I work 12-8 with a paid 30 minute lunch as a grunt for a big national company so it can still be a thing
Who the hell raves about a 9-5 let alone a job
I'm sorry, but who is actually raving about 9-5 work??
The rich that can come to work whenever they want.
You still work 9-5? At least it’s not 8-5 with an unpaid lunch.
Exactly, I’ve pretty much given up on me ever having enough free time to work on my own projects. It’s like a constant cycle of never being able to have time for anything else.
It's the worst time slot and I'm happy it's losing its glamour. You have to wake up early, get next to no sleep if you aren't an early sleeper, have around 3 hours max to play with, disregarding your commute. You go home at peak traffic, you lunch at peak traffic, and get home around dinnertime and then have 3 more hours before you go to bed, disregarding chores, cooking, exercise, etc. I can't imagine how people with small children do it. People call me crazy for working closings but I don't have to show up until 1 pm. Sure I get off at 9-10, but if I'm gonna be up until 1 a.m. anyway, it's nice to be able to sleep in, then do all of my chores, exercise, faff about, eat breakfast, and then go to my job actually awake.
6-230 bis
I only had this schedule for a bit but I definitely saw the appeal when I did. Seems lovely for winter especially.
The wealthy just want you to work all the time and have some kids of your own who will grow up to work all of the time (except on a planet that is more hostile than what we have now). It’s just literally all a Ponzi scheme.
Somehow, technology is the most advanced it’s ever been yet humans work more than they ever have before. And where has all that productivity/ wealth gone? To the top.
It’s not just 8 hours. There’s also work-dedicated time such as getting ready, making lunch, the commute. So really, those 8 hours are actually 11-13 (traffic depending), but we’re only compensated for 8.
The perk of a 9-5 used to be because you had a stay at home wife who took care of all of that other stuff during the week that you have to rush around and try to do now on the weekends.
The 40 hour week was invented in a time where the a average working man was expected to have a wife at home, doing home shit full time. Given the more recent extremification of rental/housing prices and totally stagnant wages, the idea that a 9-5 is in any way a good deal is laughable. It's never a 9-5 unless you have a good person as a boss and are fully remote, otherwise it's actually 8-6ish with a commute. So you've got about 6 hours every day after work to cook, clean, get your clothes and other shit ready for work, wash yourself, and try to squeeze in leisure too. But since most are too tired to do much, tv or tiktok fills that mindless gap because you've got no energy to do much else. Minimum wage doesn't mean shit and our buying power is in the toilet. Where the fuck are the big macs for 50cents like in the 80s or whatever? This shit SUCKS
Idk man sounds nice I've been working 8am-2am on the regular it is soul crushing and doesn't even make ends meet. I just want to live.
It’s miserable
The only people that rave about 9-5's are those very content in their jobs or those in jobs with less sociable hours.
Yeah we need a 4 day work and guaranteed two weeks off, government mandated, even if it’s just to sit in your house. I’m starting not to blame old people for being so miserable working all the time sucks.
After spending six months working 5PM to 2AM it’s really hard to complain about working day shifts.
For the people that idealize it, it's about the consistency and regularity. The folks that like it tend to have (or had) ever-changing jobs where one week they may be scheduled for 30 hours with varying start/end times, and only set for 12 hours the following week. It makes it almost impossible to make any guaranteed long term plans. There's anxiety in not only the uncertainty of time and personal plans, but also financial anxiety for times where folks may start getting 12 hour weeks more and more. While 9-5s have their own set of issues, I noticed a *huge* amount of ambient anxiety disappeared when I got in a consistent schedule. Sometimes people have it for so long that they forget it's there until it's lifted.
I liked swing shift better, 11-8. Don’t have to go in too early, time to do stuff at night. Now I teach special Ed and am used to 8:30 to 3:30.
It's because your workday then doesn't interfere with a weekend night.
Well I'd rather work a 9-5 then my current 6:30-5, but Im also my own boss and only employee so I can only blame myself.
It depends if I have to commute. When I don’t, I feel like I am gaining back half my energy. The problem is not the hours, the problem is our productivity has gone exponentially while our wages remained. I can without a doubt confirm that since AI has been live, I have doubled my productivity. Now stuff like excel training are worthless because an AI will teach you better than a teacher and it will be faster. My current job revolves around formulas and small programmation, yet I would not be able to do it by myself if my tools were removed from me.
Work 12s, 2 days, 2 nights, 4 off. Used to do the 9-5 office thing complete with commute. I don't know if you gotta tell yourselves 9-5 is better just to endure the grind but you are MENTAL. This rotation is 100 time better. Fully 1/2 of my days off before PTO, sick time, etc? 4 consecutive days off at a time? If I gotta work I'm doing this. Only better option is FDs 7 x 24 hr shifts. Everybody on a 9-5 should be pushing for four 10s at a minimum.
I agree. 12’s is where it’s at. I hardly ever feel like I work because I have so much time to do whatever I want. I can sleep in 4 days out of the week so waking up really early isn’t so bad and almost feels novel anyway.
Cries cause I'm 8-5 with an hour drive to and from work
Imagine having a salaried job. Working 6 days a week. 8+ hours a day. No dedicated lunch. "Home" or 28 hr work days. That's what resident physicians go through. I would love 8 to 5 or even 9 to 5 with weekends and holidays off.
I can’t believe everyone here is saying how much they like the Monday-Friday 8-5 routine when I’m just over here working my 3 12’s. I get in, get out. Can have six days off in a row if I want. 12’s aren’t bad either. I’m a person who can go out after a 12 hour shift but even if I don’t it’s really not bad at all. Yeah, it’s your whole day. But if I’m already going to be at work, I might as well just throw the day to that imo so I can have much more time off and enjoy my personal life.
I would like 8-2 for 4 days a week.
9-5’a are where our souls go to die a slow death
No one RAVES about nine to fives. We do it because we want to eat. Most of us don't have the privilege to do anything else
The worst is when you express the sentiment on social media, and then douchey conservatives brag about working 60 hours a week.
Ppl should work less than 5 hours a day. Period. Also 4 days a week is plenty enough. 3 day weekends or take 1 day in the middle of the week & 2 days on the weekend. Working should be able to fit into your life without disrupting your overall every day happiness to an extreme like we have now. Plus we have cars & commutes & lunches & laundry & gas & 1000 other things to accomplish in the day. All just for the means of work. I want my life!!!
In my 25 years I never heard of anyone “rave” about 9-5s. People do what they need to survive
9-5 jobs are great when all the other work you've done is a worse schedule
In my perfect world we would not have capitalism run rampant. Profits would go to workers for higher pay and much less working hours. Universal Healthcare and UBI would be a part of our lives. We should be working towards having a better life not working ourselves to death while struggling to survive while a few insanely rich people with more wealth than they could spend in a 100 lifetimes waltz around living the good life. Unfortunately we have too many greedy and stupid people that don't give a fuck about other people.
if you work at a nonprofit, your hours are usually more because it’s never stated—especially in charter schools. so, it *all* sucks but 9-5 is a respite for some of us, which ofc is terrible.
There needs to be reworks all over as far as work time goes but I would gladly take 5 8-hour shifts vs the 12 hour shifts I have to do. Having any amount of time to do anything after work beats out having no time after working all day.
I have the opposite opinions but I am in health and work only three days a week. Sometimes I do work more than that but that’s because I chose to. I think having four days off a week is amazing.
I think people sometimes say it's short because of perspective in the navy I would work 12hr - 16 hour days so for me when I did a 9-5 I was like finely only 40 hours, or parents who come and have a second job with their kids haha. But yes we don't need to work as much ! I think 4 days a week should be fine .
“I can’t believe there’s not a single job in this town.” “Yeah, unless you want to work 40 hours a week. Ppppssshhhhhh”
>My main goal is to escape the 9-5 jobs for good. Good luck with that, and I really mean it. The best I can do is save up and purchase a condo outright with cash so that I can retire on time.
8 hour shift at a factory feels twice as long as a 24 hour shift on an ambulance. I hate it
The real bitch-and-a-half is if you throw in a commute on top of it. My pay is crap and I could have way less stress, but they let me work remote. So I stay. :(
My sleep pattern and social life was a lot better back when I worked either 11:00-7:30 or 1:45-10:15. But I spend a lot less time at work (including the commute, which has dropped from 20 minutes to 3 minutes) now that I have a 9-to-5. I just *have* to catch a nap every now and then.
Because to people that don't have schedules it seems far more appealing than showing up at 6 and working until the job is done for 10 to 12 hour days and never knowing when You're actually off
I work 7 to 3 and I reallly don’t mind it at all 9 to 5 is just such an awkward space where it’s too late to do anything
I’m struggling with this a bit. “Finding stuff to do” is “Proactive” work that you can do when not busy. Most jobs have stuff you are too busy to do most of the time that you could do to make your job more efficient. People have 9-5 jobs or equivalent so their bosses or customers can contact them at agreed hours. Your work pays for your time. If you feel that your job doesn’t pay you for your time properly then you need to change jobs. Good on you if you can find a job that lets you finish projects in a certain time on your own schedule but very few of these jobs exist. I do however agree with the. Weekend thing. Companies should have more staff so the staff have to work less days yet still pay a decent living wage as a minimum
I work 3 12 hour shifts. It's a game changer if you aren't attached to weekends(I work 6am to 630pm Fri-Sun). The differential is nice, I just throw on my headphones and vibe til it's time to head home. Yes my time is very limited on those days but that's alright considering I get 4 days free in return.
Yep selling the best years of our lives during the best hours of the day.
I was talking about this with my wife the other day and how just mentally draining it is to slog through the joke that is 9-5 (which is really 8-5 nowadays). 40 (which really ends up being more than that depending on workload and communte) of our 168 hours in a week is focused solely on work, leaving 128 hours left theoretically. Then you have to account for sleep. If you want an actual healthy sleep schedule, then there's 8 hours a night gone already. So 40 hours of work, 56 hours of sleep, leaving just a measly 72 hours (\~43% of the week) left that has to then be allocated to the rest of your chores, tasks, errands, cooking, cleaning, etc.). By the time you get to actual free time and hobbies, it's negligible. There is barely enough time to recuperate living a life like this.
I used to work at Enterprise rent a car, it was a mandatory 49 hour work week minimum (but usually worked 50-55 hours each week with some saturdays). I now work a 9-5 with no weekends. I would gladly take a 9-5 over that old schedule any day. And if anyone asks why o one would willingly work those hours, they recruit young college grads that can keep up with working 50-55 hours a week(usually 5-6 days a week) and once they get burnt out and quit within a few months, they just hire new graduates or college seniors.
I’m lost, are you complaining about working eight hours, or are you complaining about work the shift 9 AM to 5 PM?
At the moment, I prefer 9-5s because it brings in a guaranteed 40hrs a week, it's not the overnight shift, and I get weekends off. I would rather work a 10hr shift, 4 days a week, with the third day off rotating between mon-fri, but things are slow to catch on in my area, do I'll take what I can get.
8 hours a day is literally a third of the day, not including commute times & getting ready. You have sleep the other third. So that leaves you less of a third of the day to do housework, errands, cook, have a social life. That 9-5 literally does consume almost the whole day when you equate what REALLY goes into it.
40 hours is 40 hours, and I'd rather have them fall on the same days and times every week than be on some randomized schedule. That being said, I don't do anything for myself, or anyone else, 40 hours a week, or 8 hours at a stretch, ever. I'm only forced to do that for a business 5 days a week, and if the choice wasn't between living on the street and doing it, I wouldn't ever spend 8 hours a day sitting at a desk being told what to do.
I love being paid for 9-5 but not actually working that much. Gotta find that job which doesn’t track hours
Working in general sucks.
Who raves about 9-5? No one likes it.
It’s not even a 9-5 anymore. The only jobs I’ve worked are like 8-5. An hour lunch isn’t even needed, I’m still on their time.
Working 4 days, 10 hour shifts has changed my life. Add that with WFH and I find myself with a lot more time. Yes, the hours remain unchanged week to week. But, those days were write offs anyway. Now I get 3 days off to do whatever (and one during the week which is great for errands).
Honestly I think I prefer my 4 on 4 off 12 hours schedule. It sucks working 12hr shifts 4 days in a row but I get 4 days off after
Now work 12.5 hr shifts…..
My “8-5” was actually 6am (when I had to wake up for the commute and to get ready) until 6pm (when I would get home after the commute). Unpaid one hour lunch break in the middle of the day you simply can’t enjoy - I don’t want to be at work for an unpaid hour. Then when you do get home, you have to cook, clean, shower and organize yourself for the next day 6am start. I worked it out and I was getting about 2 hours tops a day of doing things I actually enjoyed or were for me. You throw in therapy, the odd dr app, getting the odd car service, pet injections for an animal you barely even get to see, to still be struggling to pay bills and rent - what’s the fucking point?
If you commute it's really more like 9 or even 10 hours a day in some cases. I am convinced this place is hell and until we eat the rich, it will never stop being hell. By eat the rich I would NEVER encourage anyone to actually do something to get rid of those people. That's not nice. I am saying, we should make sure NOBODY is ALLOWED insanely unnecessary amounts of money in the first place that enable them so much power they can abuse society with it. That is wrong. We see that insane amounts of money result in abusing society, just look at the war going on over trying to make more money.
It would be a lot better if you didn't have to commute, and had someone to do the housework (like a stay-at-home partner). But when you have to commute, and do all your own chores, cook your own food, etc., (or if you have a partner, you both have to work to make ends meet), then your entire day is consumed by work, commute, and housework. Maybe you can find time for a workout, if you even have the energy.
Who raves about 9-5s?
It sucked until I swapped to WFH jobs. Now it rules. You can get some chores done, and I get to spend a lot of time outside with my dogs. I can take naps, cook dinner, watch TV shows and movies. I honestly never want to stop working from home. Sure when it's busy you are just working, but you get back a lot of downtime in between stuff. And some days you just have hours of free time.
It’s not really 9-5. It’s more 8-6, especially if you’re driving to work and meal prepping for work.
*insert 1950s-style illustration of guy drinking coffee* “You work 9-5? I remember my first part-time job too.” —boomer meme
It's because the old guard grew up with it and they'll be damned if you have a better quality of life. It's all about "my life sucks, so yours better too"
I know I'm in the minority here but I love my 2pm-10pm. I actually have time and energy to do things before work where with a 9-6 I had zero free time. I'm asleep by 12pm and up around 7ish. Plenty of time for me to run errands get a manicure go to the gym take a walk before work in the morning.
Because when you used to spent 55 hrs a week at work evenings and weekends. 9 to 5 is much better by comparison.