Maybe at a cushy white collar office job. I work at a hospital. There is no down time when you are on the clock, that’s true for nurses, doctors, housekeeping, pharmacy, lab, food service - I’d imagine the same is also true for all sort of service industry workers, and also factory workers, farmers, construction, and so so many others. Let’s stop pretending that everyone just sits in front of a computer all day.
I just posted the same thing. I used to be a bartender/ server and work in retail. You DON’T rest. Not on your own schedule at least
My work is hybrid these days and I have tasks to complete instead of just drink from the firehose of task garbage being thrown my way. I can control the ebb and flow of my workday and slack or be a champion as needed.
Oh, I work 4 9 hour day weeks too. My quality of life is better in every way and i STILL dick around certain days. You probably make a lot more than I do but it’s not worth it to get home and have zero bandwidth
To be fair, for those jobs the 5 day workweek, as it is known traditionally, has never been true. They were always either doing starnge shifts like 24 hours twice then 2 free days, repeat or working way more than 5 days a week, based on demand (which of course has been increasing since businesses hire less and less for some fuckin reason).
Those are the first jobs we need to change into 4 hours for 3 days shifts or something. It’s dangerous for everyone to work without sufficient recovery
Exactly. I definitely would not want a nurse or a doctor to operate on me when there on the last stretches of a 12 hour shift, running on 5 hours of sleep. The only question I ask any doctor, nurse or dentist before they start any procedure on me is “how many hours of sleep did you get last night”… Anything less than 6-7 hours puts me in more risk than I’d accept!
It’s criminal how you are all treated because of purposeful under-staffing. Everyone needs downtime. The human mind does not go full throttle for 8-12 hours straight, and I’m well aware you often have longer shifts than that in a hospital! If medical staff had some downtime during their shifts, patient outcomes would improve, and not just by a little bit.
I’m a doctor and intentionally set my own hours to four day work weeks whenever I can, because I run my own practice and can do that. Let’s not pretend it’s a badge of honour to grind ourselves into a twitching mess.
This is exactly my problem as well… We wanted to try a 4 day work week at my factory but they said no because we need to ship things 5 days a week… Except for the fact that we almost never ship more than 1 or 2 things in any given day and they are rarely things that need to go asap… One day wouldn’t kill them but they’re stuck in the past.
I work five days in a warehouse. If I go more than five minutes without scanning a box then it alerts the manager and they’ll come down and see what’s occurring.
So yeah. I feel like this stat is more for office sorts who (and I may be wrong here) spend a lot of time on Reddit and Facebook during the work day.
Yo same. I’m burning out after 3 years of this. I’ve gotten to the point I don’t care anymore and I’m going to less than half ass shit until I make them fire me or I get a new job.
This has been known for decades (probably as long as the 5 day work week has been a thing)
And this is “fine”. Because not everyone has the same slack day. Hell, at my current job, me and a buddy outright acknowledge this and he takes the brunt on Fridays when I am just done with everything and I do Mondays when he is usually distracted with whatever his kids told him they need last minute.
Same with meetings. Some weeks, the ONLY thing I do on a wednesday is go to a few meetings. Or maybe me and someone else set a friday lunch meeting because that is the only time we both have a chance, and so forth.
For people who have “real jobs” where they actually work hard (so retail, construction, etc): You tend to not get the “easy” day for the most part. You are busting your ass and being overworked all week long.
For office workers and the like? I think there should be a lot of thought put in. Someone doing data entry might not need to be there all five days. Someone who is doing more design/planning role… we already end up working closer to 6. And efforts toward “flex time” and just general “We don’t care when you are ‘at work’ so long as you are available for meetings and get stuff done” go a long way toward that. Because, for example: I busted my ass for what amounts to a 20 hour shift yesterday getting stuff working for a customer. Today? I am basically checking my email but made it clear that even that is “I might not answer”. And I’ll probably take a few afternoons off next week to even it out.
But, with the shit world we live in: that would map to people who “don’t have to work all 5 days” getting paid 20% less. So pretending you are busy on a Friday afternoon is probably still the better option.
I know what you mean. I spent 10 years as a chef. But i dont fully agree.
Sure, some weeks you would work 6 or 7 days, but others only 4. And when you did work 6 or 7 you often only work a morning or an evening. If i was doing 4 days i would work 3 afd’s (all fucking day) and then one morning or evening. Sometimes your days off were split up so you get a few little breaks throughout the week.
If im working evenings i get my whole morning and afternoon to do what i want when i feel my most fresh and energetic. If i work mornings i get all afternoon and evening to do what i want. If im working afd’s i get an extra day off to to what i want. Plus early week, monday, tuesday, wednesday was always less busy so you could be cleaned up and out of the kitchen by close (10pm) and alot of the shift could be spent in prep, cleaning, organising and having a laugh with the other chefs and smoking. Lots of smoking.
I work in an office now and i realise that the two are completely different beasts.
My 9 to 5 leaves me with zero energy mentally which affects me physically by making me not want to do anything with my evenings knowing i need to be up early so in bed early. I get my weekends but i spend them doing housework or something else responsible :(
Both job types could benefit from a 4 day work week. We need time to recharge and relax. We are just humans.
Edit: just to add. Life as a chef was hard. Lack of social life, working crazy hours. Bad diet and no discernable sleeping pattern.
Like i said above. They are different but equally exhasting.
I think it’s really important to acknowledge the way an office job can completely destroy your day just due to mental exhaustion, boredom and lack of purpose (or a combination of 3). Thanks for your comment because that was an interesting perspective for someone who only ever worked “office jobs”.
The fact that you are sit in front of a computer doesn’t mean that when you are finished you have all your energy left to do what you want, because even if you are not physically tired, if you are exhausted mentally, all you want to do is being passively entertained.
We could argue at length which job is worse or more tiring, etc. Or we could simply agree on the general principle that everyone should have more time to do what we like.
People have known it since at least 1999 when Office Space was released. If you're not slacking off at work, especially if you're salaried, you're being exploited even more than usual.
Wouldn’t this be the same for school then? If we don’t give kids the 4 day work week as well then you’re just fucking over a large group of adults that don’t get the five day work week and I bet your bottom dollar that you’ll have tons of staff leave across the country to get that sweet five day work week. What’s more precious than time? You can’t win against that.
That’s besides the point. You have to be there so you don’t have enough time to achieve your hopes & dreams, ensuring you don’t build up any wealth, let alone generational wealth, and therefore can never challenge their dominance & authority.
I agree, this is more than whether we work more or less efficiently with 4 or 5 days in the office. The ruling class wants us in our white cages (office walls) for as long as possible so, as you said, they can ensure we can’t work on other stuff that truly satisfies us and gives us a chance of generating actual wealth rather than depending on whatever measly income they want us to live paycheck to paycheck on…
It’s highly unlikely that any of my dreams would make me wealthy, because they all involve having fun, improving myself, and/or making the world a better place. I think most other people are the same way.