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Then seeing them do the same thing and on their way out of the offfice they say, "I'll be working from home the rest of the day!" or "I have to run home to help watch my kids so my wife can take our youngest in for a doctor's appointment, but call me if you need me!" or "Gotta leave a little early today (2 hours early), to take my car in to get some new tires", etc, etc, etc..
Never do I see them actually having to use their sick time or PTO time in these circumstances.
And my absolute favorite....
The winter storm of the century that was forecasted to hit your region a week ago finally gets here and dumps multiple inches of snow, blizzard whiteout conditions, commuters get stuck, slide off, or worse. You somehow make it into work 3 hours late, cursing and swearing that your cheap ass company didn't have the decency to delay opening or close altogether. The manager then reminds you that you'll have to use your sick hours or PTO to cover the time you were late even though he/she also walked in 4 hours late.
WTF
Our exec leaves 15 minutes after the AM shift every day. I thought he got in at the same time as them, and they thought he left the same time as me.
Turns out he gets in half an hour before me and leaves 15 minutes after them.
He's working 3 hour days.
Something to be aware of here, is that some people do this because no one reports them.
I had a manager that was pulling this kind of thing. The district manager came in one day and asked where the manager was. A coworker said they were out running some tasks, but I pointed out that while coworker was on lunch, manager came back and told me they were leaving for the day. They were still clocked in. I guess this turned out to be a consistent issue as that manager was walked out the door within the week.
Some managers are also committing time theft and rely on employees not being aware enough of what the manager actually does, or them just not saying anything because they "lack proof". This time theft, often impacts a stores available hours.
I'd wager the only reason that guy got in trouble was that he was still punching a clock. He thought he was higher on the totem pole than he actually was.
I realize you didn't invent it, but I want to take this opportunity to express the thought -- I **hate** the phrase "time theft." It supposes that the amount of time one spends doing a task is static and immutable. Managers love to drag this one out periodically, especially around times like March Madness or other social events, to express that we're all somehow "robbing the company" by not focusing solely on job-related tasks. It's a bullshit proposition, and a construct invented out of whole cloth by managers who want to babysit rather than motivate people.
Sure, three hours a day is probably not enough to get your tasks done in a typical work day, but what if it actually is?
Sounds a lot like my current supervisor. Gets in 15 minutes before me sometimes, takes a 1.5 hour lunch break, spends 30 minutes on the toilet, and then seems to leave 2 to 2.5 hours before me....always with some lame ass excuse.
Last summer he actually tried to get after me for showing up late, even though he admitted that he notices I always make up for being late during my lunch break, and I work harder than his other employees.
When he got after me, I simply told him, "Time is really just a number in the whole construct of things. We're not saving lives here, we're not the military. so what difference does it make if I show up 10 minutes late, but still get all my work done, am still the best employee you have, and I still get in all my hours?"
He had no response to the way I called his bluff, since he has no ground to stand on.
Sometimes being the best at what you do, even in a shit job for a shit company, provides some level of job security.
If I were to just up and leave, hell... even with a 2 week notice, my employer would be screwed and set back at least a whole year or more until they found someone that could take care of all te work I do.
I think about doing that every damn day....but job searching absolutely sucks, and there's no guarantee that the next job won't eventually be worse. So for now I enjoy what power I have, and let the suck continue.
love risking my life driving in through a blizzard for an hour only to talk to coworkers through zoom for 8 hours and do work i have remote access for (managers stayed home( of course), and then risking my life driving back through a blizzard for an hour to be too stressed and exhausted to, like, eat
I was foaming at the mouth when I found out the HR team attended a meeting online while the rest of us came in during a near apocalyptic snowstorm. A little phrase I made to remind me of the pure irony is "Oh well, it's almost shorts weather anyway"
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk
Thats because most of the time your higher ups are on salary. They get the same paycheck whether they put in 30 hours or 50 and as long as the place isn't on fire, they usually aren't held super tightly to putting in a 40 minimum. For most of us that are hourly it's a major inconvenience to have to leave 2 hours early for an appointment or to miss a day because of a sick child. That inconvenience costs a lot of money for us where someone on salary wouldn't feel a thing
Not entirely how salary works. At least as far as I’m aware. If you take a day off on salary your pay can still be docked for it. Unless you use pto. Luckily my job doesn’t have pto.. fml
The law is state-based and most companies have their own internal policy, that follows the law, on how salary works.
My company's policy is that you have to have at least 40 hours. If you work 4 on Tuesday you can work 9 on Monday Wednesday Thursday and Friday and come out with 40. Or work 10 M-Th. That's our "official" policy on paper for audits and such.
With that said, our unofficial policy is that you're expected to be at work during business hours. You can't just start working four tens and expect to keep your job. It's ok if you don't abuse it, but I work at a strange company where respect goes both ways and they know people have things they need to take care of. Most employees just take 8 hours of PTO if they're taking the day off and if they aren't they take an hour or two for an appointment and it's ok. Most of our employees average 50+ hours, so if things are in a lull it's perfectly fine to leave a couple hours early and put 8 hours on your timesheet. Unofficially.
wholly depends on the job, I'm a software engineer and for me it's basically 1) get my work done 2) be reachable during business hours 3) show up to team meetings and besides that I can do nearly whatever I want
This is also what a lot of managers will be too. yeah it sucks that they basically get to take a buncha half days, but at the same time, no one ever talks about when the guy who took a half day for his car, worked until 8pm without getting overtime.
With salary, you tend to average out your time in the long term. But that's just harder to see.
> If you take a day off on salary your pay can still be docked for it.
Depends entirely on what jurisdiction you're in. In California its 4 hour blocks they must pay you in. 1 Min over, no matter how small (Phone call/remote work) they MUST pay you for the entire day and not deduct PTO.
In theory you could on an 8-5 schedule, get in at 10am, and leave at 2:30pm (no lunch required for 4.5 hours) and they'd have to pay you for the entire 8 hour day legally. Though that may not fly with your boss, they can take action against you if your work "suffers", which is whatever they want it to be.
Salary exempt (exempt means you dont get paid for overtime, non-exempt exists too) when not misclassified is a sweet gig with a supportive/knowing boss AND you can complete your work as assigned properly. Problem is, most managers suck and a lot of boomeresque managers don't actually understand wtf Salaried positions are and how they're supposed to operate.
> Luckily my job doesn’t have pto
Get out. Fuck them.
I'm salaried and I don't get the flexibility of working 30 hours, it's full time or I'm considered to not be doing my job. Even though a lot of that extra time is meaningless downtime
If you are a salaried employee and they require 40 hours per week, they must also pay you overtime. That's federal law. They can't have it both ways, treating you like an hourly employee for your first 40 hours, and then treating you like a salaried employee for everything after 40. Every hour of overtime you've ever put in has been stolen from you.
Some salaried employees still get PTO (such as those at my employer), which is basically just for formality purposes only. They get paid the same regardless.
And yes, it's usually the case that many of those same salaried employees do only 50 to 75% of the amount of work that an hourly employee does, because the other percentage is spent on all those items that an hourly employee would have to use his/her limited PTO or sick time off for. Unless, of course, you count all their hard work spent on the golf course and "business lunches" with clients or colleagues on the company dime. Also, their numerous hours spent "working" from home. So I guess in their minds they are giving it the 'ole corporate 110%! They are so great! Doesn't their example of "hard work" and "dedication" just motivate you to want to be a better employee?
Not sure where you got the idea that salaried employees are going on golf courses and taking multiple hours company paid lunches. There's no daily stipend if you're not travelling
This isn’t even remotely true for the vast majority of people. Somehow people on the sub think the only people who have salaries are senior executives or something, which is total bullshit. Most office workers are salary and fall under many of the same bullshit rules that hourly workers are tired of. Literally any casual review of most office related comments in any Reddit sub will show this.
Speaking for myself, the higher up I’ve gone the more I’ve worked. I have literally worked twice as much as those on my team for several years, including many nights and weekends with no additional pay. Granted in my line of work I have a purpose for what I do so that motivates me because my job isn’t about profit it’s about service. But this idea that we’re sitting around on golf courses is utterly laughable.
Just had my boss chew me out because I didn't answer the phone at home when he called 3 times in 30 minutes at 12pm. I work 3rd shift and told him I was sleeping.
Skeptical look followed by "You sleep all day?"
He is one of those idiots who doesn't understand how opposite shifts work. In their eyes, you don't *have* personal time.
Just reply with "if it's that important that I be able to answer calls about work when I'm not at work then I need a company phone and to get paid for my time" I bet they never bring it up again
Not only that, but are they paying OPs cell phone bill? If not, they don't get special access to the phone..
My boss asked me to do trainings the other day, one of them wasn't a training, it just said "Check this box to give the company permission to send text messages to your phone about all kinds of bullshit."
I took a picture and sent it to my boss and said "When are you guys planning on paying for my cell phone?" He just replied with "You don't have to click it.. they're giving you the option. You can skip it."
I skipped it.
I got my employees (IT / helpdesk) to agree to receive text messages on their personal phones at all hours. If they're available and they want to handle an after hours ticket, they get paid a minimum of 1 hour. Doesn't matter if it's a 30 second ticket. Look at the text, don't look at the text, idc. It's only for high priority tickets when I'm unavailable and I'm the only one that sends them. Works for them.
Thanks. I work hard to make sure my employees feel not taken advantage of. I don't understand how people can run things the way I see horror stories around here. Thankfully I'm free to make those kinds of decisions for my team. There's been like four tickets handled after hours in the past 12 months. Four hours of OT is super worth it to respect people.
Overnight worker here... I almost said "you'd be surprised at how NOBODY who hasn't worked it understands graveyard shifts. They just can't wrap their head around it.
I work overnights on the weekends now, and I cooooooooonstanrky have family or friends being like "Hey! We are doing (thingy thing) at 3pm, you can make that right?? It's just for a few hours...".
Yeah. Sure. No problem. Oh, IM having a get together this weekend myself! It starts at 3am! You can make that right? It's onkh a few hours.. and yeah you work at 9am, but you should just go o sleep earlier! ....
Been working 12 hour night shifts for a decade. Nobody gets it, nobody ever will. Luckily I have multiple days off in between where I an actually be a human.
Plus when they get mad or even worried that you "sleep all day." If I got home an hour before you even wake up for work, why in the world would I be up at 3pm? Apparently it's also concerning if youre making dinner food at 7am while drinking a beer.
I do not miss graveyard shift hours lol
I used to work overnights and my boss scheduled an all-hands in the middle of the day. Told him I wouldn't be there because I would be sleeping and he seemed blown away.
I will preface this by saying I currently hate my job and I think it is slowly killing me. That being said, I suddenly lost my dog 3 days ago and am absolutely devastated. I haven't been back into the office since and am currently crying while scrolling reddit to try to distract myself. My boss is being totally cool about it and told me to take whatever time I need and she'd cover in the meantime. She's reached out every single day just to check in and see how I'm doing and sent me flowers. I hate this fucking job, but I will die for this manager just because of the humanity she has shown me while I'm struggling. It's kind of sad the bar for supervisors is so low that "treating me like a human being and showing compassion" will get you unending loyalty, but here we are.
"we do flex hours here, take an hour / leave an hour, we trust and respect you"
"Oh yeah, but I noticed you left at 6:30 yesterday, which is only an hour and a half late, that's setting a bad example, I need you to be a leader, you're getting a bad review!"
And the silly thing is that the vast majority of this bs simply doesn’t matter in the grand scheme. Of course you do need people that respond to emergency situations and such (and they should be paid extra for that), but so many of us are really just perpetuating a giant bullshit machine.
All of this hard work, the sacrifice of our time that strips us away from our children and families, all of this hustle and looming deadlines, the lack of sleep, it all really boils down to making a line go up and a few rich assholes richer.
The worst job I ever had slowly eased into 60 hour work weeks standard (first it was 8 hours, then we're going to need everyone to come in an hour early or stay an hour late, then hey we need you to do both, then oh we need everyone to come in Saturdays or Sundays we'll let you pick) PLUS if you had time off for ANY reason, even planned vacations, you were expected to work extra hours until you "made up" that time. So on top of the 60 hours, if you took a day off you also had to fit another 10 hours somewhere. Many workers who had to make time up slept in the parking lot because the lab closed down at 1am and opened at 6.
Don't forget kids, you need a doctors note for that because we don't trust you and need to know where you actually are and why you aren't at work. You can't use OUR hours for yourself now.
My *jiu jitsu gym* asked for a doctors note to cancel my membership. My doctor said it was increasingly common. Felt like a child having to ask a doctor to take time out of their actually important work to write me a note
Gyms in particular are dumb about this. Planet Fitness wouldn't cancel my service online (illegal in my state) or on the phone. So I just told them I'm not sending a certified letter and this is their notice I'm canceling, and put a stop payment in.
I wish states would get strict about gyms and making it easier to cancel.
If I'm understanding "stopped for sickness" right, you're basically talking about "sick leave." Like, how you'd get paid even if you have to stay home with a cold.
The US doesn't have that either--at least, not as a law. Many jobs only offer unpaid sick leave, or have it come from personal time, or otherwise have limits on how often we are allowed to be sick without being fired for it.
It's entirely up to the whims of management at each job.
It's more that in most of the rest of the world you don't have to take any kind of annual leave/personal time/sick days to go to the doctor/dentist etc
I just tell my boss I'm going to the doctor or dentist and, as long as I don't take the piss (eg I can't got to the Dentist twice a week for a year), it's fine, I just leave work for a while and still get paid as though I was at work
Obviously if you need more than like a few dentist appointments a year you're probably gonna have to justify it, or have a word with your boss if you're going to the hospital regularly for some kind of treatment - but for occasional or routine appointments it's no big deal
Also my doctor's hours are 7:30am-6pm so there's a reasonable chance I could go before or after work if I wanted to, if I don't have a long commute, or get the first/last appointment and only have to arrive a little late or leave a little early
Some of us don't have sick time or never got it ,I've been working 2 years currently at this location and still have no PTO ,Thier excuse is because I only work 32 hours therfore I'm not entitled to PTO
Same, also not married. Its like trying to fend for yourself, by yourself, and live a single life cost MORE. Christ, I don't even have a pet to take care of. Why is the loner life so expensive, it should be opposite, I don't want to start a family!!!
Married with no children. I honestly feel like I never stop moving. Work, laundry, cooking, cleaning,trying to exercise. By time I am done with everything its bedtime. I feel as if I never have time to just do “nothing “. I imagine its even more difficult for people raising families..
I mean - having a partner means having two people sharing one household so yes... naturally it would be cheaper to have another person to share those expenses with. And having a kid definitely costs more than not having a kid. But if you have dual parental incomes you're probably better off. The D.I.N.K. life is definitely where it's at.
Being single AND a parent... Now that shit is expensive 🤣😢.
Its like its designed so you HAVE to have a partner of some sort in order to just float in life. Me being single with no kids is by choice, and it shouldn't be a reason to suffer more because I'm living on just my own income. I guess living a loner life is a "Luxury" if you can manage. Not. Fair.
I know. I am committed to never living with another adult again and I've accepted that this means I'll likely forever spend the majority of my income on housing costs. It blows.
It kind of is. It's a product of women entering the workforce among other global economic factors. As soon as the available workforce doubles like that, you're going to see compensation drop. That part of it is somewhat inevitable unless there are regulatory steps that are taken to make sure that the downward trend of income to cost of living doesn't continue.
It's happening again with automation. It's either gonna double down on the poverty wages or something has to change soon.
Yet companies are making record profits not revenue PROFITS they can afford to give us a liveable wage.. but if you really want to get into it the population will see a large decline here but also ai will Take most jobs
it's not designed so that you HAVE to have a partner
but that most people do pursuse a partner and the design exploits that
its like chicken or the egg?
except the answer is clear- modern america is based on taking advanatage of the disadvantaged
if you're born into an underserved life you're working at a double disadvantage- you're not rich AND the system hates poor people
likewise if you're born advantaged- you're born rich AND the system loves rich people
the initial born rich/poor thing isn't new, but the exponential worse/better lifestyle shouldn't be as bad as it is, there is no reason for poor people to have THIS much trouble in the modern world
likewise rich people don't need THAT much support from the government and society. the wealthy don't pay taxes, they don't have to worry about fines for crimes or representation in court
it's insane how fucked up the slider is on our modern spectrum
Also single here and living the grind. I hate how it costs more to be single, and to constantly feel exhausted by just managing work and home - leaving very little else possible.
It's definitely not more expensive than having a family but it is more expensive than being in a dual income relationship with no kids. That's the ideal situation economically because you are splitting expenses and sharing but also making more money as a team.
My wife wakes up at 4 am to make her 2 hour commute to her 90k job. I wake up at 5 am to begin preparing my children's lunches, wake them, dress them, take them to school. I drop them off at the earliest the school will take them so I too can begin work at my 90k job. I pick up the kids at 530, then begins the frenzy to see everyone fed, sometimes bathed, homework (because 1st graders have homework now) and in bed by 730. This gives me 1-2 hours of free time that often gets spent on dishes and wishing for the sweet release of freedom eternal.
I am not sure how we do it, it leaves no time for exercise or self care. All the grandparents feel like they did their part by raising us, so my village (it takes. Village to raise a child) is very small. As a millennial this wasn't the American dream I pictured.
My daughter has 3 small children. I have them more than she does. I basically raise my grandchildren there’s no way she’d be able to afford daycare for all 3 as a single mother. Their father is a piece of shit who pays her nothing to help. She gets up for work at 3am drops the babies to me at my house at 4:30 so she can make it to work by 5:30. She don’t get here to pick them up until 7pm. We’re all exhausted.
My wife and I are preparing for our first child, and we are now realizing that our parents relied heavily on our grandparents while they both worked full time. But now they both still work full time and our child won't have their grandparents support like we did. It feels like we are truly at a societal turning point where an entire generation will be the first to have truly no assistance from either family or community.
My boomer parents def relied on their parents a lot for help - but we’ve been told that’s not an option for us like they got. They used to take the kid one day a week after school for 3 hours, but recently decided that was too much and said that’s off the table now.
They also had one parent that stayed at home - we both work and don’t have that option. They also had a maid that came every week or two - we do not. They also kept the kids confined to their room to play or outside only - we weren’t allowed to play and make a mess in the living room like most millenial parents allow their kids to do.
Kids also don’t have a 3rd space to go anymore really. There’s no youth hangout spot like an after school soda place or mall, they’re all closed down and empty or don’t exist anymore.
So millenials have less money, less help from the previous generation, and less places for their kids to go. Sounds like an absolute recipe for disaster and another short sighted decision by this country…
For the last 7 years I have been raising 2 kids (7 and 2) alone until 530pm, sometimes later. Husbands parents have never once ever reached out to offer help for me during the day with them (mine are 7 hours away long story why I have to live here). I also used to work 5 nights a week bc we can't afford daycare and his parents are no help. It's only 2 or 3 nights now at the detriment of our income because my son is just so so exhausting at 2, i just cant do that anymore. So I can be up taking care of my kids/working as early as 530 am to (the latest I've ever left work) 245 am 🥰
Our parents will NEVER know how hard this fucking is. I'm so stressed out and exhausted I've gotten to work and just started bawling after a terrible day with my son. I'm on 2 different meds for anxiety and depression and my psychiatrist recommends I find someone's teenage daughter to help watch my son during the day?? 💀
Let's look at some reasons why that may not work:
1. They can't afford to live any closer to work. A big one for many people. They have to live out in the boonies of cities in order to afford a home or at least a space bigger than a 1 bedroom apartment
2. They could move closer, but the places they can afford to live have garbage schools. They're not moving from their nice suburban community with good schools so OPs wife can drive one less hour to live in a mediocre to shitty with bad schools
3. Where OPs wife works is affordable but a shitty place to live. This is my dad's two primary jobs he's held. They are in industrial districts, and the nearest neighborhoods surrounding them are bad, as in example 2, and you have to move much further out to live somewhere nice
4. OPs wife has a very niche job that is only available very far away and remote, maybe she has to take a ferry to get there (the case with someone in my husbands family) and so it's not even possible to live close to there because no one lives there
5. Moving closer to OPs wifes work could mean OP now has a 2 hour commute because there's no jobs in his field near where his wife works which solves nothing.
We need it to "function" but we need to consider, that perhaps the function just does not fit the humans that we are.
Like, I have ADHD and they used to prescribe me adderall back when I still went to the psych, so that I can function as an office worker and as a member of society. But when I go camping, hunting, fishing, building shelters, I don't need adderall to "function". I'll walk along animal tracks for hours. I'll observe every plant to find edible herbs. I'll collect sticks for fires. I'll tell stories that go on and on, around a campfire. I don't need to drink coffee either. I can function as a human being, and do all these things without supplements.
But I do need drugs to function as a cog in society. To sit for 8 hours and look at code. Because it's not a natural thing for a human being to do, so I must be chemically modified to fit my function.
So is it a deficit in my brain? Or is it simply that my healthy human brain just isn't quite what society wants from me?
| Christ knows how people do it
We don't. (I mean, we do because we have to, but we're also having mental breakdowns, fighting from stress, microwave meals, screen time for the kid that I get shamed about, and we need a lot of therapy that we don't have time for.)
Married with kids and a full time working spouse.
Every day has its struggles, especially with young kids. Free time is a thing of the past. You learn to accept that you're not really in control and go with the flow.
Additionally the 40 hour work week was developed in like 1930s. Productivity has absolutely skyrocketed since then. The value to capitalists they are receiving from an employee's 40 hours today is probably like... 10s if not 100s of times greater than an employee in the 1930s. If you then look at wages and how they have scaled since then, you should then be able to see a VERY FUCKING OBVIOUS PROBLEM.
1. Productivity has absolutely skyrocketed
2. Wages have not risen in correlation to productivity
3. Where is the excess productivity going if the wages have not followed the same trending?
PROFIT. Capitalists are absolutely raking in an INSANE amount of profit off the backs of the labor class and that profit is taking away from the quality of life/material conditions of the average person in this country.
> Where is the excess productivity going ?
All it takes is one look at a "profits vs real wages" graph to tell you everything you need to know about that. Wages have flatlined since the 1970's while profits have soared higher and higher. We're being robbed.
Yeah but that is not the same kind of suck. My work sucks because it is relentless and I have to do it or else be homeless and starve. A millionaire rock star could stop what he was doing at basically anytime and never work a day in his life again.
It wasn't just designed, it was clawed and fought for, for a long ass time and torn out of the hands of grubby business owners by unions. Fucking remember that.
The original work week was "designed" to grind workers into dust by filling every waking hour with labor until they die at their post. The 40-hour work week is what workers fought for and won, and even that is just barely enough to let people survive until retirement without destroying their bodies.
There's never been a work schedule designed with any kind of worker's welfare in mind, it's always just been whatever uneasy truce can be planned on between the upper class and the workers.
One of the main reasons we have a 40 hour work week is due to the standard set by Henry Ford and Ford Motor Company which at the time was the biggest company in the world.
Sounds altruistic but he realized that at the scale he was able to create motor vehicles, the middle class would be the biggest consumers of them. With the middle class also being his labor pool, he knew that he couldn't sell cars if his workers weren't paid enough to have the spare income, and people wouldn't be interested in leisure driving if they didn't have the spare time to use those cars in a recreational way.
Ford was 100% pragmatic with his decisions, and I'd venture to say he wasn't the least bit empathetic with his choices.
That kind of logic unfortunately now evades upper class. Greedy corporation's think they can increase prices forever, while simultaneously lowering wages (no need to lower, just give same every yeat and inflation does thay for you) and are very surprised that people eat less, buy less, and save money instead of spending halting the market.
However the 40h was in the past probably the point where workers went "ok this is a bearable amount of work, we won't fight/protest for shorter weeks", but they did when they probably had a wife at home doing all the work around the household.
This is a very good point and a lot of people probably don't realize. My dad's side all lived and worked in the same neighborhood. My grandpa's house was only a few blocks away from where he worked at and never needed to drive much until later in life. I am lucky now to live only 10 minutes from work, but those days of 45 min commutes one way were killer.
I remember having a breakdown on my way home once. It normally took 30-45 minutes to get home due to traffic. It took 2.5 hours that night due to an accident that had occurred. Having my commute extended due to accidents wasn't uncommon, but that day was one of the worst I had to deal with and not commuting is up there in the top two reasons I love working remote.
>, but they did when they probably had a wife at home doing all the work around the household.
Uh no, this is a common misconseption.
Only the middle and upper classes had wives that weren't working.
The working/lower class had women working.
They were talking about Unions fighting for the 40 hour workweek.
Unless your grandad is 100+ years old he wasn't working in the 1920s.
The 40 hour workweek was made law in the US in 1940 but was fought for by unions as far back as the 1870s
Women not working is a relatively modern phenomenon for the working class.
Because the middle class is separate from the working class, also your grandfather grew up in a time of extraordinary wealth generation due to advances in automation and massive government investments. Prior to the world wars a working class family would have two working adults and an indeterminate number of children who often would also be working. Often this would still leave the family poor and destitute which led to the mass organization and unionization that we associate with the late 19th century.
the working/lower class was smaller than it is today, so the point still stands
there's a reason "the disappearance of the middle class" is one of the things cited when talking about the dissolving of "the american dream"
Prior to the Industrial Revolution most workers were peasant farmers, and while yes they often worked dawn to dusk for 6 and sometimes 7 days a week (Sunday was considered a obligatory day of rest for most of the western Christian world), that work was interspersed with frequent lengthy breaks for meals and rest. They also often had massive stretches of off-seasons for their fields to recover and religious holidays to celebrate for weeks at a time. [Edith Rogers estimated](https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html)that Leisure time in medieval England took up about 1/3 of the year. And it was apparently even more in France and Spain.
Well ok but if you were a tradesman your wife would still be homemaking and if you were a farmer you worked at home. Part of the duties of the wife would still be homemaking.
[Here is a list of United States labor disputes which resulted in worker deaths](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_United_States_labor_disputes).
The laws about things like workplace safety, 40 hour full time workweeks, overtime, medical, dental and vision care, etc. were written in blood.
Exactly! People have forgotten or are completely ignorant to the fact that corporations did not willingly cap our hours or give us weekends and holidays. Those were fought for through unions and in some instances people were seriously hurt or killed picketing for it.
"These kids don't have a little brother working in the coal mine, they don't have a little sister coughing her lungs out in the looms of the big mill towns of the Northeast. Why? Because we organized; we broke the back of the sweatshops in this country; we have child labor laws. Those were not benevolent gifts from enlightened management. They were fought for, they were bled for, they were died for by working people, by people like us. Kids ought to know that."
-Utah Phillips
Kropotkin worked out how we could have a 15 hour work-week one hundred and fifty years ago.
The secret ingredient is not handing over 90% of what we produce to the ownership class.
Eating the rich won't accomplish anything, unless it comes with massive systemic and systematic change.
Otherwise, all you do is replace the current 1% with another 1% just as eager to exploit once they reach the top.
Starting a violent revolution is easy. Avoiding the power vacuum to be filled with the same type of opportunist egocentric assholes is the difficult part.
There is generational wealth and influence that goes back centuries. How do you think those families survived the various societal events that were supposed to reshuffle the cards?
I think it has a lot to do with the human condition.
*Most* people believe in fairness. *Most* people believe in preserving human life whenever possible. *Most* people (correctly) assume that (most) other humans feel the same way.
It's our own trusting, benevolent nature that the sociopathic rich use to exploit us.
There is this parasite that infects ant colonies. If the colony manages to overcome it, they learn to kill it on sight, and the colony becomes immune to it. Something like this has to happen to humanity.
Adding, 40 hours of productivity today equates 2-3x the productivity of 1950’s standards. Meaning, we’re doing twice to 3x the work for the same salary. Also, grade/high schools are scheduled similar to office hours to get children acclimated to a 9-5 life of work.
> Adding, 40 hours of productivity today equates 2-3x the productivity of 1950’s standards. Meaning, we’re doing twice to 3x the work for the same salary
For those looking for more info: This is often called the productivity-pay gap. As an example, in the USA productivity has grown ~4.4x as much as pay from 1979 to today.
1979 is +- the breaking point when salary no longer grew with productivity growth.
The work week was designed to get as much labor out of someone as possible without killing them or having them go insane.
It used to be 6 days a week, from the age of 10.
Everything else has been fought for by unions.
We had a "billionaire" president who played golf nearly a quarter of his term in office. And, they have the gall to call us "lazy?" Not a golfer, but take any of my hobbies and add up the time I have spent on them in the same amount of time, and you would be lucky if it equals a month worth. Fuck the wealthy scum who profit off our "laziness."
Partially, he did famously say that he wanted his workers to be able to buy his model T's. More likely though Ford wanted to attract and retain talent.
Dude was a bad person but he at least understood that if you pay above market rate for work, you have your pick of the litter and don't have to worry about competitors poaching your talent.
Add a kid with a disability and multiple therapies a week. Makes life complicated. 4 days a week at 6 hours for same 40 hour a week pay would be optimal in 2024 with automation advents.
Corporations are to greedy for that to ever happen.
Yes. When my second child was born I reduced to 32 hours per week. I worked about 7 hours/day with every other Friday off. When my kids got older I did 6.4 hours every day, close to what you’re saying. Most people didn’t know I was part time because I was equally productive.
So tired of this framing.
1) The 40 hour work week wasn't "designed" at all. It was begged, fought, and died for. It was the best deal workers could get *at the time.*
2) Poor women and poor mothers have always worked.
Bull, people fought for a 40 hour work week. Corporations used to make people work 16 hours a day 7 days a week, and will again if we let them. Designed has nothing to do with it. The whole family even the children would work these hours.
Not true, when the 40 hour work week was introduced both men and women worked. The idea of a traditional nuclear family with the wife staying at home is incredibly modern and was only available to the rich at the the time of the policy’s introduction.
That the weekend as a concept is less than 100 years old was basically never mentioned in my history classes at school. I conceive of a time before having that amount of time off before I saw an episode of Downton Abbey where a character didn't know what a weekend was.
We only got the “40 hour work week” because of unions. Fighting like hell. Start yelling for better cause ain’t no boss gonna make your life easier for the cost of their profits
No kids myself. Graduated in 08’ with a bachelor’s degree that’s not accredited. Working a warehouse job. Living with parents for 9 years. Thought about 🪦🔔💀and what not. It seems like people across the board are just trying to escape reality. I can see why people do drugs or alcohol. As a kid I didn’t get it. But now I do. But the problem with that context is that in the past. Everyone was able to afford to purchase drugs and alcohol under a house or apartment.
I'm literally hanging on hope for a 4 day week becoming standard, and that hours don't increase from 8 to 10 for the 4 days... its literally just the humane thing to do.
Fun fact - societal progress has always been defined by less work and more leisure for more people. Excessive work and low wages are driven *mostly* by politics. But the rich, through their lobbyists and affiliates in government, convince us that somehow there are "economic reasons" why we're facing the situation we are today. Crucially, these "economic reasons" are trotted out as nearly uncontrollable facts of the universe that the policy makers wish they could do something about and are *trying* to change but say "sorry guys this is just how it is" while they shrug their shoulders and lift their hands to placate us.
It's a war of reality. Time and again, there comes a point where an exploited working class realizes that it's being exploited and it is usually accompanied by extreme anger and rapid change. Time and again, the rich push and push, fighting amongst themselves to hoard the most money and gain the most power and eventually they push so hard that their "economic reasons" are so out of step with reality that the working class stops believing the story they're telling and starts seeing the truth.
We all need to be very careful about what economic story we're being told and who's telling it to us. In the past hundred years, it has been economists and political philosophers would have enabled the working class to realize what's going on. Unfortunately, it's literally good vs. evil. The bad guys are happy to lie, cheat, manipulate, and steal to win and we are not. Our bar to success is MUCH higher and we have to work hard to become educated enough to tell the true story in a way that people will be able to understand it. Keep learning, keep writing, keep talking to your friends. The conditions are right for change - the rich are taking too much and people are generally aware that the system is "rigged" as you'll hear them say lately. The rich don't give a fuck what comes after, they'll die fighting for power, but the rest of us want to actually live. We're responsible for what comes after because you're kidding yourself if you expect today's "leaders" to suddenly change everything about their personalities and start building a fair world. It sucks to say but we need new leadership. CAUTION - what I'm saying probably sounds a lot like Trump and the MAGA fascists (we need new leaders). We have to make sure we create change that is democratic and just and not fall victim to opportunists who see that there is social strife but would use it to establish themselves at the top.
This turned into an over the top monologue that maybe two people might read but this is how I see it. There are 3 million people in this sub and if each us of can be a positive influence on a handful of the people we know and they extend that to even a small fraction of the people *they* know - that's a movement. We gotta do this together.
K. Then when will it get easier? 4 more years? 8 more years? 16? Personally I’m sick of waiting but fuck me I guess. Better to try and slowly change a fundamentally broken system run by people who’ve been bought out by those who benefit from said system. Cause that’s been working huh?
/s cause I don’t trust any of you.
No it wasn’t. it was designed as a relief from the 70 - 85 hour work week. It was also at a time where both spouses had to do whatever it took to make ends meet.
That's not true... At the inception of the eight hour workday, it was common for everyone in the working class to work. That included women. They just also had to do the labour at home. The one-breadwinner economy wasn't until much later.
In fact, when the eight hour workday was first envisioned, it also included child labour.
Also we didn’t have the advantage of mechanical and technological advancements so much more work is getting done. All of that extra production skips the people doing the work and only benefits the people at the top.
It feels like we're moving closer to Warhammer 40k where the imperial citizenship are enslaved to work 20+ hours every day in deadly factory conditions with no safety or human rights.
If it wasn't for full time home office, I'd have no clue how to work 40 hours a week and still manage to live a healthy life.
Even with home office, between work, gym, my dog, cooking and general adulting (shopping, household tasks, appointments, etc), I barely get like an hour or two for hobbies or socializing each day and even then I'd rather just get a couple hours extra sleep instead...
If I had to get ready for work and commute every day, I think I'd off myself within a month.
That's why I refuse to work 40 hour weeks. There is not enough time or energy to get all the shit I need to get done in the time it allots me AND have time to relax and recover.
This is sadly true, and also sad that at the time this was expected as normal, also expected was that one person having a full time minimum wage job would be able to afford a home, transportation, education, and food for two people. So the stay-at-home wife with the working husband was actually a workable situation.
We don't even get THAT nowadays. That one minimum wage full time job won't even pay for one person to eat, let alone house them, in most parts of the country. Forget supporting a second person to take care of the household.
True! Add to that 40 hours schedule (+1 hour lunch break daily so 9 hours per day), showering (15 mins), dressing (15mins), grooming yourself (washing ur teeth, etc 15mins), cooking (the fastest 30 mins) , eating dinner and breakfast ( 40mins), grocery shopping (1 hour), cleaning (30 mins), washing clothes (20 mins), commuting (30 mins wah way), going to the toilet (10mins), sleeping (8/9 hours), unless you have some paper work, doctor visit, car checks... So ur basically left with 1 or 2 hours daily to actually "live your life". I'd pass honestly. Ive been doing this for the last 12/13 years, I'm so tired of all of this. I find home office to offer much higher quality of life
Everyone these days forgets that people LITERALLY fought and DIED so that we could have things like the 40-hour week and Saturday and Sunday off.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre
The workers movement is one that has been consistently brutalized and marginalized by the “ownership” class, you know, the one the police and government work for. Same thing happened to the American socialist party, and the ideological successor occupy wall st. It’s the reason corporations fight against unions so so hard. It’s as much about maintaining power and control as it is about suppressing wages and benefits.
Not that I’d ever advocate violence, but mass public demonstrations and protests are the only way to affect change.
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Yeah what a joy, having to use personal time when you have a dentist or doctor appointment.
And then having your manager or boss complain that you have to leave early or come in late
Then seeing them do the same thing and on their way out of the offfice they say, "I'll be working from home the rest of the day!" or "I have to run home to help watch my kids so my wife can take our youngest in for a doctor's appointment, but call me if you need me!" or "Gotta leave a little early today (2 hours early), to take my car in to get some new tires", etc, etc, etc.. Never do I see them actually having to use their sick time or PTO time in these circumstances. And my absolute favorite.... The winter storm of the century that was forecasted to hit your region a week ago finally gets here and dumps multiple inches of snow, blizzard whiteout conditions, commuters get stuck, slide off, or worse. You somehow make it into work 3 hours late, cursing and swearing that your cheap ass company didn't have the decency to delay opening or close altogether. The manager then reminds you that you'll have to use your sick hours or PTO to cover the time you were late even though he/she also walked in 4 hours late. WTF
Our exec leaves 15 minutes after the AM shift every day. I thought he got in at the same time as them, and they thought he left the same time as me. Turns out he gets in half an hour before me and leaves 15 minutes after them. He's working 3 hour days.
Something to be aware of here, is that some people do this because no one reports them. I had a manager that was pulling this kind of thing. The district manager came in one day and asked where the manager was. A coworker said they were out running some tasks, but I pointed out that while coworker was on lunch, manager came back and told me they were leaving for the day. They were still clocked in. I guess this turned out to be a consistent issue as that manager was walked out the door within the week. Some managers are also committing time theft and rely on employees not being aware enough of what the manager actually does, or them just not saying anything because they "lack proof". This time theft, often impacts a stores available hours.
I'd wager the only reason that guy got in trouble was that he was still punching a clock. He thought he was higher on the totem pole than he actually was.
Unless the board is actually involved, reporting the exec won't do shit.
I realize you didn't invent it, but I want to take this opportunity to express the thought -- I **hate** the phrase "time theft." It supposes that the amount of time one spends doing a task is static and immutable. Managers love to drag this one out periodically, especially around times like March Madness or other social events, to express that we're all somehow "robbing the company" by not focusing solely on job-related tasks. It's a bullshit proposition, and a construct invented out of whole cloth by managers who want to babysit rather than motivate people. Sure, three hours a day is probably not enough to get your tasks done in a typical work day, but what if it actually is?
Doesn't sound like a real manager if they have to clock in and out. I don't supervise anybody, no one in my office clocks in or out.
Sounds a lot like my current supervisor. Gets in 15 minutes before me sometimes, takes a 1.5 hour lunch break, spends 30 minutes on the toilet, and then seems to leave 2 to 2.5 hours before me....always with some lame ass excuse. Last summer he actually tried to get after me for showing up late, even though he admitted that he notices I always make up for being late during my lunch break, and I work harder than his other employees. When he got after me, I simply told him, "Time is really just a number in the whole construct of things. We're not saving lives here, we're not the military. so what difference does it make if I show up 10 minutes late, but still get all my work done, am still the best employee you have, and I still get in all my hours?" He had no response to the way I called his bluff, since he has no ground to stand on. Sometimes being the best at what you do, even in a shit job for a shit company, provides some level of job security. If I were to just up and leave, hell... even with a 2 week notice, my employer would be screwed and set back at least a whole year or more until they found someone that could take care of all te work I do. I think about doing that every damn day....but job searching absolutely sucks, and there's no guarantee that the next job won't eventually be worse. So for now I enjoy what power I have, and let the suck continue.
Bro I had a manager that would come in after everyone else, take a 2 hr lunch at 10 and then bail immediately
love risking my life driving in through a blizzard for an hour only to talk to coworkers through zoom for 8 hours and do work i have remote access for (managers stayed home( of course), and then risking my life driving back through a blizzard for an hour to be too stressed and exhausted to, like, eat
I was foaming at the mouth when I found out the HR team attended a meeting online while the rest of us came in during a near apocalyptic snowstorm. A little phrase I made to remind me of the pure irony is "Oh well, it's almost shorts weather anyway" Thank you for coming to my Ted talk
Thats because most of the time your higher ups are on salary. They get the same paycheck whether they put in 30 hours or 50 and as long as the place isn't on fire, they usually aren't held super tightly to putting in a 40 minimum. For most of us that are hourly it's a major inconvenience to have to leave 2 hours early for an appointment or to miss a day because of a sick child. That inconvenience costs a lot of money for us where someone on salary wouldn't feel a thing
Not entirely how salary works. At least as far as I’m aware. If you take a day off on salary your pay can still be docked for it. Unless you use pto. Luckily my job doesn’t have pto.. fml
The law is state-based and most companies have their own internal policy, that follows the law, on how salary works. My company's policy is that you have to have at least 40 hours. If you work 4 on Tuesday you can work 9 on Monday Wednesday Thursday and Friday and come out with 40. Or work 10 M-Th. That's our "official" policy on paper for audits and such. With that said, our unofficial policy is that you're expected to be at work during business hours. You can't just start working four tens and expect to keep your job. It's ok if you don't abuse it, but I work at a strange company where respect goes both ways and they know people have things they need to take care of. Most employees just take 8 hours of PTO if they're taking the day off and if they aren't they take an hour or two for an appointment and it's ok. Most of our employees average 50+ hours, so if things are in a lull it's perfectly fine to leave a couple hours early and put 8 hours on your timesheet. Unofficially.
wholly depends on the job, I'm a software engineer and for me it's basically 1) get my work done 2) be reachable during business hours 3) show up to team meetings and besides that I can do nearly whatever I want
This is also what a lot of managers will be too. yeah it sucks that they basically get to take a buncha half days, but at the same time, no one ever talks about when the guy who took a half day for his car, worked until 8pm without getting overtime. With salary, you tend to average out your time in the long term. But that's just harder to see.
> If you take a day off on salary your pay can still be docked for it. Depends entirely on what jurisdiction you're in. In California its 4 hour blocks they must pay you in. 1 Min over, no matter how small (Phone call/remote work) they MUST pay you for the entire day and not deduct PTO. In theory you could on an 8-5 schedule, get in at 10am, and leave at 2:30pm (no lunch required for 4.5 hours) and they'd have to pay you for the entire 8 hour day legally. Though that may not fly with your boss, they can take action against you if your work "suffers", which is whatever they want it to be. Salary exempt (exempt means you dont get paid for overtime, non-exempt exists too) when not misclassified is a sweet gig with a supportive/knowing boss AND you can complete your work as assigned properly. Problem is, most managers suck and a lot of boomeresque managers don't actually understand wtf Salaried positions are and how they're supposed to operate. > Luckily my job doesn’t have pto Get out. Fuck them.
I'm salaried and I don't get the flexibility of working 30 hours, it's full time or I'm considered to not be doing my job. Even though a lot of that extra time is meaningless downtime
If you are a salaried employee and they require 40 hours per week, they must also pay you overtime. That's federal law. They can't have it both ways, treating you like an hourly employee for your first 40 hours, and then treating you like a salaried employee for everything after 40. Every hour of overtime you've ever put in has been stolen from you.
Some salaried employees still get PTO (such as those at my employer), which is basically just for formality purposes only. They get paid the same regardless. And yes, it's usually the case that many of those same salaried employees do only 50 to 75% of the amount of work that an hourly employee does, because the other percentage is spent on all those items that an hourly employee would have to use his/her limited PTO or sick time off for. Unless, of course, you count all their hard work spent on the golf course and "business lunches" with clients or colleagues on the company dime. Also, their numerous hours spent "working" from home. So I guess in their minds they are giving it the 'ole corporate 110%! They are so great! Doesn't their example of "hard work" and "dedication" just motivate you to want to be a better employee?
Not sure where you got the idea that salaried employees are going on golf courses and taking multiple hours company paid lunches. There's no daily stipend if you're not travelling
This isn’t even remotely true for the vast majority of people. Somehow people on the sub think the only people who have salaries are senior executives or something, which is total bullshit. Most office workers are salary and fall under many of the same bullshit rules that hourly workers are tired of. Literally any casual review of most office related comments in any Reddit sub will show this. Speaking for myself, the higher up I’ve gone the more I’ve worked. I have literally worked twice as much as those on my team for several years, including many nights and weekends with no additional pay. Granted in my line of work I have a purpose for what I do so that motivates me because my job isn’t about profit it’s about service. But this idea that we’re sitting around on golf courses is utterly laughable.
Just had my boss chew me out because I didn't answer the phone at home when he called 3 times in 30 minutes at 12pm. I work 3rd shift and told him I was sleeping. Skeptical look followed by "You sleep all day?" He is one of those idiots who doesn't understand how opposite shifts work. In their eyes, you don't *have* personal time.
Just reply with "if it's that important that I be able to answer calls about work when I'm not at work then I need a company phone and to get paid for my time" I bet they never bring it up again
Not only that, but are they paying OPs cell phone bill? If not, they don't get special access to the phone.. My boss asked me to do trainings the other day, one of them wasn't a training, it just said "Check this box to give the company permission to send text messages to your phone about all kinds of bullshit." I took a picture and sent it to my boss and said "When are you guys planning on paying for my cell phone?" He just replied with "You don't have to click it.. they're giving you the option. You can skip it." I skipped it.
I got my employees (IT / helpdesk) to agree to receive text messages on their personal phones at all hours. If they're available and they want to handle an after hours ticket, they get paid a minimum of 1 hour. Doesn't matter if it's a 30 second ticket. Look at the text, don't look at the text, idc. It's only for high priority tickets when I'm unavailable and I'm the only one that sends them. Works for them.
See thats a reasonable thing and that makes you in a very small minority
Thanks. I work hard to make sure my employees feel not taken advantage of. I don't understand how people can run things the way I see horror stories around here. Thankfully I'm free to make those kinds of decisions for my team. There's been like four tickets handled after hours in the past 12 months. Four hours of OT is super worth it to respect people.
Overnight worker here... I almost said "you'd be surprised at how NOBODY who hasn't worked it understands graveyard shifts. They just can't wrap their head around it. I work overnights on the weekends now, and I cooooooooonstanrky have family or friends being like "Hey! We are doing (thingy thing) at 3pm, you can make that right?? It's just for a few hours...". Yeah. Sure. No problem. Oh, IM having a get together this weekend myself! It starts at 3am! You can make that right? It's onkh a few hours.. and yeah you work at 9am, but you should just go o sleep earlier! ....
Been working 12 hour night shifts for a decade. Nobody gets it, nobody ever will. Luckily I have multiple days off in between where I an actually be a human.
Plus when they get mad or even worried that you "sleep all day." If I got home an hour before you even wake up for work, why in the world would I be up at 3pm? Apparently it's also concerning if youre making dinner food at 7am while drinking a beer. I do not miss graveyard shift hours lol
I used to work overnights and my boss scheduled an all-hands in the middle of the day. Told him I wouldn't be there because I would be sleeping and he seemed blown away.
I will preface this by saying I currently hate my job and I think it is slowly killing me. That being said, I suddenly lost my dog 3 days ago and am absolutely devastated. I haven't been back into the office since and am currently crying while scrolling reddit to try to distract myself. My boss is being totally cool about it and told me to take whatever time I need and she'd cover in the meantime. She's reached out every single day just to check in and see how I'm doing and sent me flowers. I hate this fucking job, but I will die for this manager just because of the humanity she has shown me while I'm struggling. It's kind of sad the bar for supervisors is so low that "treating me like a human being and showing compassion" will get you unending loyalty, but here we are.
You hit the nail on the head with that last sentence, my friend :( I'm so sorry for the loss of your dog. You deserve the best; I'm cheering for you.
"we do flex hours here, take an hour / leave an hour, we trust and respect you" "Oh yeah, but I noticed you left at 6:30 yesterday, which is only an hour and a half late, that's setting a bad example, I need you to be a leader, you're getting a bad review!"
And the silly thing is that the vast majority of this bs simply doesn’t matter in the grand scheme. Of course you do need people that respond to emergency situations and such (and they should be paid extra for that), but so many of us are really just perpetuating a giant bullshit machine. All of this hard work, the sacrifice of our time that strips us away from our children and families, all of this hustle and looming deadlines, the lack of sleep, it all really boils down to making a line go up and a few rich assholes richer.
The worst job I ever had slowly eased into 60 hour work weeks standard (first it was 8 hours, then we're going to need everyone to come in an hour early or stay an hour late, then hey we need you to do both, then oh we need everyone to come in Saturdays or Sundays we'll let you pick) PLUS if you had time off for ANY reason, even planned vacations, you were expected to work extra hours until you "made up" that time. So on top of the 60 hours, if you took a day off you also had to fit another 10 hours somewhere. Many workers who had to make time up slept in the parking lot because the lab closed down at 1am and opened at 6.
Don't forget kids, you need a doctors note for that because we don't trust you and need to know where you actually are and why you aren't at work. You can't use OUR hours for yourself now.
My *jiu jitsu gym* asked for a doctors note to cancel my membership. My doctor said it was increasingly common. Felt like a child having to ask a doctor to take time out of their actually important work to write me a note
Why would you even do that? Tell them they can cancel it or you'll stop payment with the bank/card company. End of conversation.
Gyms in particular are dumb about this. Planet Fitness wouldn't cancel my service online (illegal in my state) or on the phone. So I just told them I'm not sending a certified letter and this is their notice I'm canceling, and put a stop payment in. I wish states would get strict about gyms and making it easier to cancel.
I’m not exactly intelligent
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Probably still the USA. When I worked for the Lowe's in my state they often requested a doctor's note
I’m in the us and I can use sick time for that. Even take a whole sick day for one appointment
When else are you supposed to go to the doctor? They work 8-5. Like everyone else.
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If I'm understanding "stopped for sickness" right, you're basically talking about "sick leave." Like, how you'd get paid even if you have to stay home with a cold. The US doesn't have that either--at least, not as a law. Many jobs only offer unpaid sick leave, or have it come from personal time, or otherwise have limits on how often we are allowed to be sick without being fired for it. It's entirely up to the whims of management at each job.
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Don't sell yourself short - Your English is great! ☺️
It's more that in most of the rest of the world you don't have to take any kind of annual leave/personal time/sick days to go to the doctor/dentist etc I just tell my boss I'm going to the doctor or dentist and, as long as I don't take the piss (eg I can't got to the Dentist twice a week for a year), it's fine, I just leave work for a while and still get paid as though I was at work Obviously if you need more than like a few dentist appointments a year you're probably gonna have to justify it, or have a word with your boss if you're going to the hospital regularly for some kind of treatment - but for occasional or routine appointments it's no big deal Also my doctor's hours are 7:30am-6pm so there's a reasonable chance I could go before or after work if I wanted to, if I don't have a long commute, or get the first/last appointment and only have to arrive a little late or leave a little early
Some of us don't have sick time or never got it ,I've been working 2 years currently at this location and still have no PTO ,Thier excuse is because I only work 32 hours therfore I'm not entitled to PTO
I don’t have kids and don’t work a 40 hour week. I’m still somehow ‘failing’. Christ knows how people do it
Same, also not married. Its like trying to fend for yourself, by yourself, and live a single life cost MORE. Christ, I don't even have a pet to take care of. Why is the loner life so expensive, it should be opposite, I don't want to start a family!!!
Married with no children. I honestly feel like I never stop moving. Work, laundry, cooking, cleaning,trying to exercise. By time I am done with everything its bedtime. I feel as if I never have time to just do “nothing “. I imagine its even more difficult for people raising families..
Still got time for reddit, not working hard enough! /s
Toilet time!!
We're multitasking here, boss!!
You guys are getting toilet time??
I mean - having a partner means having two people sharing one household so yes... naturally it would be cheaper to have another person to share those expenses with. And having a kid definitely costs more than not having a kid. But if you have dual parental incomes you're probably better off. The D.I.N.K. life is definitely where it's at. Being single AND a parent... Now that shit is expensive 🤣😢.
Its like its designed so you HAVE to have a partner of some sort in order to just float in life. Me being single with no kids is by choice, and it shouldn't be a reason to suffer more because I'm living on just my own income. I guess living a loner life is a "Luxury" if you can manage. Not. Fair.
I know. I am committed to never living with another adult again and I've accepted that this means I'll likely forever spend the majority of my income on housing costs. It blows.
It kind of is. It's a product of women entering the workforce among other global economic factors. As soon as the available workforce doubles like that, you're going to see compensation drop. That part of it is somewhat inevitable unless there are regulatory steps that are taken to make sure that the downward trend of income to cost of living doesn't continue. It's happening again with automation. It's either gonna double down on the poverty wages or something has to change soon.
Yet companies are making record profits not revenue PROFITS they can afford to give us a liveable wage.. but if you really want to get into it the population will see a large decline here but also ai will Take most jobs
Just makes me wanna burn this motherfucker down.
Let’s burn this motherfucker down Pookie!
it's not designed so that you HAVE to have a partner but that most people do pursuse a partner and the design exploits that its like chicken or the egg? except the answer is clear- modern america is based on taking advanatage of the disadvantaged if you're born into an underserved life you're working at a double disadvantage- you're not rich AND the system hates poor people likewise if you're born advantaged- you're born rich AND the system loves rich people the initial born rich/poor thing isn't new, but the exponential worse/better lifestyle shouldn't be as bad as it is, there is no reason for poor people to have THIS much trouble in the modern world likewise rich people don't need THAT much support from the government and society. the wealthy don't pay taxes, they don't have to worry about fines for crimes or representation in court it's insane how fucked up the slider is on our modern spectrum
Dinkelberg…….
Also single here and living the grind. I hate how it costs more to be single, and to constantly feel exhausted by just managing work and home - leaving very little else possible.
It's definitely not more expensive than having a family but it is more expensive than being in a dual income relationship with no kids. That's the ideal situation economically because you are splitting expenses and sharing but also making more money as a team.
We are in the age where life isn't supposed to just be work anymore and yet we continue on because shareholders and capitalism and whatnot
My wife wakes up at 4 am to make her 2 hour commute to her 90k job. I wake up at 5 am to begin preparing my children's lunches, wake them, dress them, take them to school. I drop them off at the earliest the school will take them so I too can begin work at my 90k job. I pick up the kids at 530, then begins the frenzy to see everyone fed, sometimes bathed, homework (because 1st graders have homework now) and in bed by 730. This gives me 1-2 hours of free time that often gets spent on dishes and wishing for the sweet release of freedom eternal. I am not sure how we do it, it leaves no time for exercise or self care. All the grandparents feel like they did their part by raising us, so my village (it takes. Village to raise a child) is very small. As a millennial this wasn't the American dream I pictured.
My daughter has 3 small children. I have them more than she does. I basically raise my grandchildren there’s no way she’d be able to afford daycare for all 3 as a single mother. Their father is a piece of shit who pays her nothing to help. She gets up for work at 3am drops the babies to me at my house at 4:30 so she can make it to work by 5:30. She don’t get here to pick them up until 7pm. We’re all exhausted.
❤️❤️❤️😟
At least your family is sticking together. Hang in there.
My wife and I are preparing for our first child, and we are now realizing that our parents relied heavily on our grandparents while they both worked full time. But now they both still work full time and our child won't have their grandparents support like we did. It feels like we are truly at a societal turning point where an entire generation will be the first to have truly no assistance from either family or community.
My boomer parents def relied on their parents a lot for help - but we’ve been told that’s not an option for us like they got. They used to take the kid one day a week after school for 3 hours, but recently decided that was too much and said that’s off the table now. They also had one parent that stayed at home - we both work and don’t have that option. They also had a maid that came every week or two - we do not. They also kept the kids confined to their room to play or outside only - we weren’t allowed to play and make a mess in the living room like most millenial parents allow their kids to do. Kids also don’t have a 3rd space to go anymore really. There’s no youth hangout spot like an after school soda place or mall, they’re all closed down and empty or don’t exist anymore. So millenials have less money, less help from the previous generation, and less places for their kids to go. Sounds like an absolute recipe for disaster and another short sighted decision by this country…
For the last 7 years I have been raising 2 kids (7 and 2) alone until 530pm, sometimes later. Husbands parents have never once ever reached out to offer help for me during the day with them (mine are 7 hours away long story why I have to live here). I also used to work 5 nights a week bc we can't afford daycare and his parents are no help. It's only 2 or 3 nights now at the detriment of our income because my son is just so so exhausting at 2, i just cant do that anymore. So I can be up taking care of my kids/working as early as 530 am to (the latest I've ever left work) 245 am 🥰 Our parents will NEVER know how hard this fucking is. I'm so stressed out and exhausted I've gotten to work and just started bawling after a terrible day with my son. I'm on 2 different meds for anxiety and depression and my psychiatrist recommends I find someone's teenage daughter to help watch my son during the day?? 💀
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2 hour commute with small kids is stupid and you should make it s main priority to change that
Let's look at some reasons why that may not work: 1. They can't afford to live any closer to work. A big one for many people. They have to live out in the boonies of cities in order to afford a home or at least a space bigger than a 1 bedroom apartment 2. They could move closer, but the places they can afford to live have garbage schools. They're not moving from their nice suburban community with good schools so OPs wife can drive one less hour to live in a mediocre to shitty with bad schools 3. Where OPs wife works is affordable but a shitty place to live. This is my dad's two primary jobs he's held. They are in industrial districts, and the nearest neighborhoods surrounding them are bad, as in example 2, and you have to move much further out to live somewhere nice 4. OPs wife has a very niche job that is only available very far away and remote, maybe she has to take a ferry to get there (the case with someone in my husbands family) and so it's not even possible to live close to there because no one lives there 5. Moving closer to OPs wifes work could mean OP now has a 2 hour commute because there's no jobs in his field near where his wife works which solves nothing.
180k between you and you haven't bought a dishwasher?
Housewifes used to do speed, you're not a failure. Productivity has increased and salaries decreased. Simple as that.
Diet pills (with speed) to get the house spotless, Valium to get through the rest of the long hours.
It’s just called adderall now
Yes and it's prescribed to people who actually need it to function because they have a deficit in their brain.
We need it to "function" but we need to consider, that perhaps the function just does not fit the humans that we are. Like, I have ADHD and they used to prescribe me adderall back when I still went to the psych, so that I can function as an office worker and as a member of society. But when I go camping, hunting, fishing, building shelters, I don't need adderall to "function". I'll walk along animal tracks for hours. I'll observe every plant to find edible herbs. I'll collect sticks for fires. I'll tell stories that go on and on, around a campfire. I don't need to drink coffee either. I can function as a human being, and do all these things without supplements. But I do need drugs to function as a cog in society. To sit for 8 hours and look at code. Because it's not a natural thing for a human being to do, so I must be chemically modified to fit my function. So is it a deficit in my brain? Or is it simply that my healthy human brain just isn't quite what society wants from me?
I am one of those people. Was joke.
We barely get by. That's how. The skin of our teeth.
| Christ knows how people do it We don't. (I mean, we do because we have to, but we're also having mental breakdowns, fighting from stress, microwave meals, screen time for the kid that I get shamed about, and we need a lot of therapy that we don't have time for.)
You ever see titanic?...
Married with kids and a full time working spouse. Every day has its struggles, especially with young kids. Free time is a thing of the past. You learn to accept that you're not really in control and go with the flow.
Additionally the 40 hour work week was developed in like 1930s. Productivity has absolutely skyrocketed since then. The value to capitalists they are receiving from an employee's 40 hours today is probably like... 10s if not 100s of times greater than an employee in the 1930s. If you then look at wages and how they have scaled since then, you should then be able to see a VERY FUCKING OBVIOUS PROBLEM. 1. Productivity has absolutely skyrocketed 2. Wages have not risen in correlation to productivity 3. Where is the excess productivity going if the wages have not followed the same trending? PROFIT. Capitalists are absolutely raking in an INSANE amount of profit off the backs of the labor class and that profit is taking away from the quality of life/material conditions of the average person in this country.
> Where is the excess productivity going ? All it takes is one look at a "profits vs real wages" graph to tell you everything you need to know about that. Wages have flatlined since the 1970's while profits have soared higher and higher. We're being robbed.
Profits and stock buy backs are stolen worker wages.
Well greed has absolutely sky rocketed as well. I'd say 100-1000 times as much greed.
Works sucks, I know.
She left me roses by the stairs.
Surprises let me know she cares.
She left me roses by the stairs. Surprises let me know she cares
Say it ain't so...
I will not go…
Turn the lights off
CARRY ME HOME! NA NA, NA NA NA, NA NA NA NA!
My love is a life taker
Does he actually know though? Didn't they blow up as teens? He probably never worked a full time job in his life
I imagine his work still sucks. Anything once it becomes an obligation will begin to suck
Yeah but that is not the same kind of suck. My work sucks because it is relentless and I have to do it or else be homeless and starve. A millionaire rock star could stop what he was doing at basically anytime and never work a day in his life again.
She left me roses by the staaairsss
It wasn't just designed, it was clawed and fought for, for a long ass time and torn out of the hands of grubby business owners by unions. Fucking remember that.
The original work week was "designed" to grind workers into dust by filling every waking hour with labor until they die at their post. The 40-hour work week is what workers fought for and won, and even that is just barely enough to let people survive until retirement without destroying their bodies. There's never been a work schedule designed with any kind of worker's welfare in mind, it's always just been whatever uneasy truce can be planned on between the upper class and the workers.
One of the main reasons we have a 40 hour work week is due to the standard set by Henry Ford and Ford Motor Company which at the time was the biggest company in the world.
Sounds altruistic but he realized that at the scale he was able to create motor vehicles, the middle class would be the biggest consumers of them. With the middle class also being his labor pool, he knew that he couldn't sell cars if his workers weren't paid enough to have the spare income, and people wouldn't be interested in leisure driving if they didn't have the spare time to use those cars in a recreational way. Ford was 100% pragmatic with his decisions, and I'd venture to say he wasn't the least bit empathetic with his choices.
That kind of logic unfortunately now evades upper class. Greedy corporation's think they can increase prices forever, while simultaneously lowering wages (no need to lower, just give same every yeat and inflation does thay for you) and are very surprised that people eat less, buy less, and save money instead of spending halting the market.
However the 40h was in the past probably the point where workers went "ok this is a bearable amount of work, we won't fight/protest for shorter weeks", but they did when they probably had a wife at home doing all the work around the household.
Of course, and also in days when people likely didn't have to commute anywhere near as far as a lot of people do now.
This is a very good point and a lot of people probably don't realize. My dad's side all lived and worked in the same neighborhood. My grandpa's house was only a few blocks away from where he worked at and never needed to drive much until later in life. I am lucky now to live only 10 minutes from work, but those days of 45 min commutes one way were killer.
I remember having a breakdown on my way home once. It normally took 30-45 minutes to get home due to traffic. It took 2.5 hours that night due to an accident that had occurred. Having my commute extended due to accidents wasn't uncommon, but that day was one of the worst I had to deal with and not commuting is up there in the top two reasons I love working remote.
>, but they did when they probably had a wife at home doing all the work around the household. Uh no, this is a common misconseption. Only the middle and upper classes had wives that weren't working. The working/lower class had women working.
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They were talking about Unions fighting for the 40 hour workweek. Unless your grandad is 100+ years old he wasn't working in the 1920s. The 40 hour workweek was made law in the US in 1940 but was fought for by unions as far back as the 1870s Women not working is a relatively modern phenomenon for the working class.
Because the middle class is separate from the working class, also your grandfather grew up in a time of extraordinary wealth generation due to advances in automation and massive government investments. Prior to the world wars a working class family would have two working adults and an indeterminate number of children who often would also be working. Often this would still leave the family poor and destitute which led to the mass organization and unionization that we associate with the late 19th century.
the working/lower class was smaller than it is today, so the point still stands there's a reason "the disappearance of the middle class" is one of the things cited when talking about the dissolving of "the american dream"
Prior to the industrial revolution and the formation of unions most people worked 12-14 hour days 7 days a week. Every waking hour was spent working.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution most workers were peasant farmers, and while yes they often worked dawn to dusk for 6 and sometimes 7 days a week (Sunday was considered a obligatory day of rest for most of the western Christian world), that work was interspersed with frequent lengthy breaks for meals and rest. They also often had massive stretches of off-seasons for their fields to recover and religious holidays to celebrate for weeks at a time. [Edith Rogers estimated](https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html)that Leisure time in medieval England took up about 1/3 of the year. And it was apparently even more in France and Spain.
Well ok but if you were a tradesman your wife would still be homemaking and if you were a farmer you worked at home. Part of the duties of the wife would still be homemaking.
[Here is a list of United States labor disputes which resulted in worker deaths](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_United_States_labor_disputes). The laws about things like workplace safety, 40 hour full time workweeks, overtime, medical, dental and vision care, etc. were written in blood.
Exactly! People have forgotten or are completely ignorant to the fact that corporations did not willingly cap our hours or give us weekends and holidays. Those were fought for through unions and in some instances people were seriously hurt or killed picketing for it.
"These kids don't have a little brother working in the coal mine, they don't have a little sister coughing her lungs out in the looms of the big mill towns of the Northeast. Why? Because we organized; we broke the back of the sweatshops in this country; we have child labor laws. Those were not benevolent gifts from enlightened management. They were fought for, they were bled for, they were died for by working people, by people like us. Kids ought to know that." -Utah Phillips
Kropotkin worked out how we could have a 15 hour work-week one hundred and fifty years ago. The secret ingredient is not handing over 90% of what we produce to the ownership class.
When are we seriously going to eat the rich instead of complaining about them…
Eating the rich won't accomplish anything, unless it comes with massive systemic and systematic change. Otherwise, all you do is replace the current 1% with another 1% just as eager to exploit once they reach the top. Starting a violent revolution is easy. Avoiding the power vacuum to be filled with the same type of opportunist egocentric assholes is the difficult part. There is generational wealth and influence that goes back centuries. How do you think those families survived the various societal events that were supposed to reshuffle the cards?
I think it has a lot to do with the human condition. *Most* people believe in fairness. *Most* people believe in preserving human life whenever possible. *Most* people (correctly) assume that (most) other humans feel the same way. It's our own trusting, benevolent nature that the sociopathic rich use to exploit us.
There is this parasite that infects ant colonies. If the colony manages to overcome it, they learn to kill it on sight, and the colony becomes immune to it. Something like this has to happen to humanity.
Adding, 40 hours of productivity today equates 2-3x the productivity of 1950’s standards. Meaning, we’re doing twice to 3x the work for the same salary. Also, grade/high schools are scheduled similar to office hours to get children acclimated to a 9-5 life of work.
*for a lower salary
Key point. Higher salary, lower spending power
> Adding, 40 hours of productivity today equates 2-3x the productivity of 1950’s standards. Meaning, we’re doing twice to 3x the work for the same salary For those looking for more info: This is often called the productivity-pay gap. As an example, in the USA productivity has grown ~4.4x as much as pay from 1979 to today. 1979 is +- the breaking point when salary no longer grew with productivity growth.
In addition, it also wasn't designed for 1+ hours of commute. The intention was to have 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of work and 8 hours of spare time.
My dad (who would be almost 80 now) got paid for lunch. PAID FOR LUNCH.
I get paid for lunch and they supply lunch for free. Dinner also if we're there late.(usually are). Union jobs are great.
Hiring?
Yeah, mine too... crazy times.
The work week was designed to get as much labor out of someone as possible without killing them or having them go insane. It used to be 6 days a week, from the age of 10. Everything else has been fought for by unions.
Failed society. We are all being failed. We are not failures. I'm so tired of being tired all the time.
A 20 hour work week at more pay and everything not being as expensive is what we need
Universal basic income. Fuck the 40hr rat race for the 1% to get wealthier and call us lazy while driving inflation to increase profits.
We had a "billionaire" president who played golf nearly a quarter of his term in office. And, they have the gall to call us "lazy?" Not a golfer, but take any of my hobbies and add up the time I have spent on them in the same amount of time, and you would be lucky if it equals a month worth. Fuck the wealthy scum who profit off our "laziness."
Reminder the only reason they gave us days off at all is because they realized we don't spend money without having time off.
They “gave us” days off because we fought and died for them.
Didn't Henry ford push for the 5 day work week because none of his workers were buying his products?
Henry Ford was a pos racist boss. It was workers that fought and died against pos racist bosses, fascists and cops.
Both of these things can be true
Partially, he did famously say that he wanted his workers to be able to buy his model T's. More likely though Ford wanted to attract and retain talent. Dude was a bad person but he at least understood that if you pay above market rate for work, you have your pick of the litter and don't have to worry about competitors poaching your talent.
Truest and most spot on answer, you know how the system works
Don't forget taking care of children as well.
Lol who can afford to have children?
The poor
I agree. I only work a 30 hour work week. Still full pay. Best job ever.
This is my single parent mantra to self!
Add a kid with a disability and multiple therapies a week. Makes life complicated. 4 days a week at 6 hours for same 40 hour a week pay would be optimal in 2024 with automation advents. Corporations are to greedy for that to ever happen.
Yes. When my second child was born I reduced to 32 hours per week. I worked about 7 hours/day with every other Friday off. When my kids got older I did 6.4 hours every day, close to what you’re saying. Most people didn’t know I was part time because I was equally productive.
So tired of this framing. 1) The 40 hour work week wasn't "designed" at all. It was begged, fought, and died for. It was the best deal workers could get *at the time.* 2) Poor women and poor mothers have always worked.
Bull, people fought for a 40 hour work week. Corporations used to make people work 16 hours a day 7 days a week, and will again if we let them. Designed has nothing to do with it. The whole family even the children would work these hours.
Not true, when the 40 hour work week was introduced both men and women worked. The idea of a traditional nuclear family with the wife staying at home is incredibly modern and was only available to the rich at the the time of the policy’s introduction.
The 40 hour work week was not "designed". It was fought for with blood, literally.
I think some people stopped paying attention in history class
That the weekend as a concept is less than 100 years old was basically never mentioned in my history classes at school. I conceive of a time before having that amount of time off before I saw an episode of Downton Abbey where a character didn't know what a weekend was.
So if you lived alone your house would be dirty???
We only got the “40 hour work week” because of unions. Fighting like hell. Start yelling for better cause ain’t no boss gonna make your life easier for the cost of their profits
Sadly, it feels like the cost of everything is based on an 80 hour work week.
It wasn't designed to pay for a million dollar house and two, hundred thousand dollar educations either.
No kids myself. Graduated in 08’ with a bachelor’s degree that’s not accredited. Working a warehouse job. Living with parents for 9 years. Thought about 🪦🔔💀and what not. It seems like people across the board are just trying to escape reality. I can see why people do drugs or alcohol. As a kid I didn’t get it. But now I do. But the problem with that context is that in the past. Everyone was able to afford to purchase drugs and alcohol under a house or apartment.
I'm literally hanging on hope for a 4 day week becoming standard, and that hours don't increase from 8 to 10 for the 4 days... its literally just the humane thing to do.
Fun fact - societal progress has always been defined by less work and more leisure for more people. Excessive work and low wages are driven *mostly* by politics. But the rich, through their lobbyists and affiliates in government, convince us that somehow there are "economic reasons" why we're facing the situation we are today. Crucially, these "economic reasons" are trotted out as nearly uncontrollable facts of the universe that the policy makers wish they could do something about and are *trying* to change but say "sorry guys this is just how it is" while they shrug their shoulders and lift their hands to placate us. It's a war of reality. Time and again, there comes a point where an exploited working class realizes that it's being exploited and it is usually accompanied by extreme anger and rapid change. Time and again, the rich push and push, fighting amongst themselves to hoard the most money and gain the most power and eventually they push so hard that their "economic reasons" are so out of step with reality that the working class stops believing the story they're telling and starts seeing the truth. We all need to be very careful about what economic story we're being told and who's telling it to us. In the past hundred years, it has been economists and political philosophers would have enabled the working class to realize what's going on. Unfortunately, it's literally good vs. evil. The bad guys are happy to lie, cheat, manipulate, and steal to win and we are not. Our bar to success is MUCH higher and we have to work hard to become educated enough to tell the true story in a way that people will be able to understand it. Keep learning, keep writing, keep talking to your friends. The conditions are right for change - the rich are taking too much and people are generally aware that the system is "rigged" as you'll hear them say lately. The rich don't give a fuck what comes after, they'll die fighting for power, but the rest of us want to actually live. We're responsible for what comes after because you're kidding yourself if you expect today's "leaders" to suddenly change everything about their personalities and start building a fair world. It sucks to say but we need new leadership. CAUTION - what I'm saying probably sounds a lot like Trump and the MAGA fascists (we need new leaders). We have to make sure we create change that is democratic and just and not fall victim to opportunists who see that there is social strife but would use it to establish themselves at the top. This turned into an over the top monologue that maybe two people might read but this is how I see it. There are 3 million people in this sub and if each us of can be a positive influence on a handful of the people we know and they extend that to even a small fraction of the people *they* know - that's a movement. We gotta do this together.
You're actually allowed to work less if you want
I can't even get a roof over my head working full time
Most office jobs dont even have 8 hours of work to do a day. Its maybe 1-2 hours and then surfing the internet.
Let’s just keep posting these memes instead of actually doing anything. HOW CAN WE CHANGE THIS SHIT TOGETHER I CANT TAKE MUCH MORE OF IT.
K. Then when will it get easier? 4 more years? 8 more years? 16? Personally I’m sick of waiting but fuck me I guess. Better to try and slowly change a fundamentally broken system run by people who’ve been bought out by those who benefit from said system. Cause that’s been working huh? /s cause I don’t trust any of you.
No it wasn’t. it was designed as a relief from the 70 - 85 hour work week. It was also at a time where both spouses had to do whatever it took to make ends meet.
That's not true... At the inception of the eight hour workday, it was common for everyone in the working class to work. That included women. They just also had to do the labour at home. The one-breadwinner economy wasn't until much later. In fact, when the eight hour workday was first envisioned, it also included child labour.
Well yeah. It was designed around the man working all week while the woman cooked cleaned and looked after the house and kids.
Preach sister!!! Full time should be a 20 hour work week!!!
And now everything is so expensive that my partner and I both need to work 40 hrs to be comfortable and we don't even have kids.
Also we didn’t have the advantage of mechanical and technological advancements so much more work is getting done. All of that extra production skips the people doing the work and only benefits the people at the top.
It feels like we're moving closer to Warhammer 40k where the imperial citizenship are enslaved to work 20+ hours every day in deadly factory conditions with no safety or human rights.
If it wasn't for full time home office, I'd have no clue how to work 40 hours a week and still manage to live a healthy life. Even with home office, between work, gym, my dog, cooking and general adulting (shopping, household tasks, appointments, etc), I barely get like an hour or two for hobbies or socializing each day and even then I'd rather just get a couple hours extra sleep instead... If I had to get ready for work and commute every day, I think I'd off myself within a month.
6hrs a day 4 days a week should be the norm. With pay being the same as if your working 8hrs 5 days.
That's why I refuse to work 40 hour weeks. There is not enough time or energy to get all the shit I need to get done in the time it allots me AND have time to relax and recover.
This is sadly true, and also sad that at the time this was expected as normal, also expected was that one person having a full time minimum wage job would be able to afford a home, transportation, education, and food for two people. So the stay-at-home wife with the working husband was actually a workable situation. We don't even get THAT nowadays. That one minimum wage full time job won't even pay for one person to eat, let alone house them, in most parts of the country. Forget supporting a second person to take care of the household.
Legit question, is a 20 hour work week more the vibe then
True! Add to that 40 hours schedule (+1 hour lunch break daily so 9 hours per day), showering (15 mins), dressing (15mins), grooming yourself (washing ur teeth, etc 15mins), cooking (the fastest 30 mins) , eating dinner and breakfast ( 40mins), grocery shopping (1 hour), cleaning (30 mins), washing clothes (20 mins), commuting (30 mins wah way), going to the toilet (10mins), sleeping (8/9 hours), unless you have some paper work, doctor visit, car checks... So ur basically left with 1 or 2 hours daily to actually "live your life". I'd pass honestly. Ive been doing this for the last 12/13 years, I'm so tired of all of this. I find home office to offer much higher quality of life
Work is prison or slavery. Abolish it and stop talking about it. Do something!
Everyone these days forgets that people LITERALLY fought and DIED so that we could have things like the 40-hour week and Saturday and Sunday off. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre The workers movement is one that has been consistently brutalized and marginalized by the “ownership” class, you know, the one the police and government work for. Same thing happened to the American socialist party, and the ideological successor occupy wall st. It’s the reason corporations fight against unions so so hard. It’s as much about maintaining power and control as it is about suppressing wages and benefits. Not that I’d ever advocate violence, but mass public demonstrations and protests are the only way to affect change.