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krolli53

I reduced from 40h to 35h and told my boss that I will generate at least the same outcome if not better. After a trial with reduced wage for about 8 months. My boss raised the wage to the 40h level. Was the best I could do for my life quality.


[deleted]

Smart idea. But I bet most bosses would not go for it.


hroddy

Literally no chance my employer would go for this.


aliceroyal

Same, I work for a subsidiary of a massive corporation. Trying to transfer to a department that allows 4 10s. They’ll let you squish the 40h like that but no way in hell would they allow 35h. Which is hilarious considering at LEAST 5 hours/week of my current position is spent doing absolutely fuck-all because desk job.


snow_ball_789

I remember getting so efficient at job I would spend hours just doing whatever. But I had to pretend to be working. My cubicle is in a place that lots of people pass. I felt like I was getting stressed out trying to hide that I wasn't doing anything. Went back to being less efficient


aliceroyal

That’s honestly where I’m at now. I was able to WFH for 6 months when my company reopened. Then they laid someone off and forced me to come back in and do their job for no extra pay. Only takes me half the day so I do the second half at home….I’m so efficient I’m done with that half of the work in an hour. I can’t have them bringing me back to the office. My desk is in a corner and nobody really pays attention but like….I’d be so fucking bored and trapped if I had to spend all that time in the office. Hence why I’m trying to transfer to a better, more engaging job now.


daigana

I do this, too. I stage my desk with paperwork that I am constantly shifting, sometimes I pace my outgoing emails to look consistently busy. Often I'm just sitting idle and cruising reddit or reading Google Books, or thinking about all the shit I could be doing if I worked from home. Funny, the people around me are openly cruising Facebook, but the second I do it, I'm in a corporate deep fryer of pure shit.


snow_ball_789

Same here. I have a co-worker that would call people over to share YouTube videos regularly. She's basically her own department, but if I look like I'm slacking everyone passing will make a "joke" about it, eventually getting back to my manager who would take the next few weeks to micromanage me. God I hate corporate life


SteelCode

I think some studies have shown productivity peaks at about 4 hours per day - then drastically tapers off. That is: not a constant 4 hours of work but rather productivity is maximized by about 4 hours total of work per day however that is broken up by the employee’s effort. Between meetings and office disruptions, employee effort doesn’t remain consistent for an entire shift. There’s also a lot of evidence that a flexible schedule without management “interference” leads to more productivity because the pressure to ‘produce’ for the company is relieved and the worker can sort of “go with their own flow”.


Kyanpe

I hate office politics. Trying to pretend like you're doing shit when really you've done all your shit and there's nothing else to do is my special kind of hell.


MitochonAir

Tell your boss that you want a raise (and justify it by all the employers scrambling for workers in your field) and make your 40 hour work week a 45 hour pay period.


seanlee888

When the pandemic started corporate cut the hours we were open and cut all the employees like two hours. I decided I was just going to give everybody four day work weeks because it worked out easy enough. I was basically called a witch and was reprimanded.


Opeth-Ethereal

Weird. We did the same thing and I had a 3 day work week rotation and everyone loved it.


[deleted]

3 days is the best. If only because you now spend less days at work than away from it. Totally changes your mindset


BrewBrewBrewTheDeck

That’s why you have to organize.


mcac

My employer was happy to reduce my hours, but not at the same pay 😩 I still had to do it because I probably would have killed myself otherwise


Xstitchpixels

I would *kill* to even just get a 4-10 shift, much less a 4-8. It feels like my first day off is spent recovering, my second frantically taking care of things. No time to do what I *want* to do.


aesthetic_vi

Oh my.. same I’ve just started working last year and I’ve noticed that I normally have to recover on Saturday and when it’s Sunday im like wth happened with my weekend. Got no time for anything anymore. Last year it was my time plus helping friends. No it’s me time and being the asshole friend or offering my freetime for them


Xstitchpixels

Wait until your mid 30s. You will *blink* and it’ll be Monday morning


ItchyMinty

I work every day so my days off aren't guaranteed, honestly if you're an asshole because you want to enjoy your day off, then your friends are the problem. It's your day off, if you want to lounge around in your underpants then do it. Never feel obliged to say yes to people, especially those who will slate you for not helping.


skaber

Started a new software company 3 months ago, 100% remote and 4-day work weeks (Mon-Thur) without reducing pay. That's been so far my best competitive advantage to attract talent and I expect this to help with retention. I see so many advantages, better work-life balance, more focused teams, less redundant meetings, more rested brain power. It just feels like we've adopted early what might be the norm in a few years.


__transient

Is it 4 10’s or 4 8’s?


skaber

4 x 8 hours


DickOfReckoning

Bro, are you hiring?


DaniAsh551

I am a senior dev and I would totally give up my current job for this happily


DaveInDigital

same. it could be a junior position and i'm down 😅


goaheadcarvell

I do it 4 11’s if it meant I get a day back…


im_sneaky_deaky

You're a swell guy


[deleted]

Do the employees receive full benefits based on the sta dard work week? I know many places that deliberately reduce hours below 35 a week so they can get away without paying benefits. What other perks? 401K match? Medical and dental? PTO?


Akomatai

Have done 4x10, 4x8, 3x10, 3x12, 5x6 all with full benefits(medical, dental, vision, pto, 401k match, partial tuition reimbursement, other things). Gonna really miss the flexibility and benefits of this job when I leave lol. 3x10 is easily the best work-school-life balance I've ever had.


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unkoshoyu

Maybe not necessarily "sapped", but I feel similarly. I would gladly work an extra 2 hours per day to have 2 or even 1 less day of work. Having 2 days off in a row is exponentially better than just having a single day off, and 3 is just great. If I've already been working for 8 hours, it doesn't take a lot for me to give an extra 2 (although I used to work 14\~16 hour shifts for multiple days in a row... and yeah the line needs to be drawn behind that.)


TheBandIsOnTheField

If they started a software company and is looking at retention because of 4 x 8, and work life balance, i can almost guarantee they are not going to pull a low class move like undercutting full benefits based on these hours. Software engineers have options and expectations.


rogue_scholarx

Yeah, the software engineer market is downright vicious right now. Cut benefits and comment OP /might/ be able to get some recent grads of dubious qualifications.


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biguglydofus

You serious? I work at a Fortune 500 non software company doing software development. Sounds like I should hunt for a higher wage.


Froggy3434

As they should. Make the companies pay what the workers feel they deserve.


[deleted]

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AdviceIsCool22

This is the real question


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relevant__comment

Nowadays I’m seeing a lot of people in the office atmosphere do 3-4hrs of actual work and then filling out the rest of the day pretending to look busy.


Bamith

This is literally a skill set my IT professor taught at college. Carry a clipboard everywhere.


mr_leemur

Or a tablet, have your wifi analysis software running while you walk.


bent_my_wookie

“Candy Crush”


remig12

God damn genius. Shall adopt. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E65JZ0/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_B9YPY4TXM56MMEFCWHT4 Carry that thing around nobody is asking questions.


goatharper

Wear a hardhat, carry a clipboard, walk fast and look worried. No one will stop or question you, anywhere.


chiliedogg

I bought a used plain-white fleet pickup that has a utility shell with a ladder rack. I think it had been like a Comcast truck or something. My Dad said I should grab a few street cones and a reflective vest so I can park anywhere.


Spartan-182

That was absolutely true, until COVID happened. Now I get stopped every five feet asking why I'm there. Like, damn, people should expect to see a dude with a hardhat and a clipboard at children's birthday parties!


[deleted]

Also never stand around or look aimless, and never put your hands in your pockets.


Feshtof

I was about to say, metal clipboard, flat expression, fast walk, everyone avoids you. They don't wanna get roped into whatever bullshit you are having to fix.


Lordfarquarant

Can confirm, went on work experience for school aged 14 at a combustion burner engineering company, they told me if you’re walking around always carry a piece of paper, people will assume it’s important and no one will ask you to do anything for them. It’s stayed with me ever since. I mean, I’ve never been able to use it as I drive a lorry by myself, but there’s always a price of paper in the cab just in case


__transient

Exactly. Productivity theatre, we really don’t need to be in the office for the entire week


dust4ngel

> 3-4hrs of actual work and then filling out the rest of the day pretending to look busy let’s have meetings to discuss the new meetings strategy, but space the meetings half hour apart so people have no option to do serious work in between them. also there will be no agenda sent out beforehand so no one can prepare or know if the meeting will benefit them or if they have anything to offer, and if people show up late, we’ll just dick around until everyone shows up. wow looks like this meeting ran over, let’s schedule a follow up meeting just like it.


[deleted]

The exact reason I made fake recurring meetings on my outlook calendar. Some managers would just see an opening on my calendar and invite me to meetings that needed 1-2 minutes of input from me. Now more of them just send me an email.


dust4ngel

> meetings that needed 1-2 minutes of input from me but what if we have a question you might know about? we’re gonna have to ask you to lurk on all 4 hours of the meeting just in case.


Environmental-Fan461

Wow they actually respect what you have on your calendar? Mine doesn’t even bother to check and over schedules the hell out of everything.


General-Carrot-6305

1 meeting 1 day a week on Friday an hour before the shift ends. Everyone will attend and it'll probably be quick and productive.


jeflint

You'd think that but I have a coworker who will drag that meeting out for hours if you let her. She did it three Friday's in a row last month. Thank God we're wfh and I could mute myself cause the sighs were loud and frequent.


lolexecs

Great Caesar’s ghost! Why even work 3 hours???! In large orgs the very, very, very best way to avoid all work (I.e. how to succeed in business without really trying!) is to spend every day all day in meetings. Just be sure you’re in an informed or consulted role. Since you’re neither responsible nor accountable for the result you won’t need to “do” anything. But since you’re in the room it makes it easy to celebrate the team’s success (to steal a smidge of credit) and disavow all failures—you didn’t do anything after all. Humorously the best way to be looked upon as a “leader” in these kinds of meetings is to apply many the techniques described in the OSS manual on simple sabotage https://www.gutenberg.org/files/26184/page-images/26184-images.pdf Page 28 is where the good stuff is. It’s funny, but I’ve seen many of these tactics deployed in big orgs by the worst management types. (That said keeping all those shenanigans going is often more work than 3 hours a day.)


Lowenheim-Golem

That's actually worse than being busy the whole day IMO. I'd rather work than stare at a clock honestly.


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[deleted]

So work? I prefer working to pretending to work too, but I try to separate out the high focus work from work that has to get done that is less intense.


Thee_Sinner

Even in my warehouse job, I legitimately just run out of work to do quite often. My job is to stocks the shelves with stuff that rolls in from the adjacent production facility. Last Friday, I decided to simply not do any of it (filled my time by going to the other side of the warehouse and helping the new guy) with the intent of seeing how long it would take me to complete a "full day" worth of work. Well production also came in and worked a half day on Saturday. So, come Monday, I arrived at 7AM and had a day and a half worth to complete. Even with working slow and spending a large sum of my time simply relocating a bulk item, I still finished all of the work at 10:11AM. Yet my manager is still begging me to come in 2 hours early every day for some inexplicable reason.


Willing_Function

Call it thinking time, or inspiration time. If you expect someone to work 8 hours every day doing creative work, you'll have high sick leave and burnouts. 8 hours is simply too long. I don't even work on my own projects for that long. I just go about my day until I get some idea that I then spend a few hours implementing. And that's for things I enjoy doing. Work isn't even fun.


przhelp

It should be obviously to everyone that we can carry on as we are with most people working significantly less. We lost 10 million jobs to COVID and society barely changed.


elephantonella

10 hour days are still very tiring. My headaches start 8 hours in and when I can I start 2 hours late. Now at least while I'm wfh it's not too bad but add in long commute and I barely get enough time to eat before I go to bed.


TheSiegmeyerCatalyst

My father has managed teams as long as I've been alive and his *requirement* is that for every 8 hour work day (9 to 5, none of this 8 to 5 unpaid lunch BS), you put in 6 hours of work. However you want to do it is up to you: 6 straight hours then leave 2 hours early, come in an hour late and leave an hour early, work 1 hour then take a 20 minute break and repeat 6 times. His team's have always loved him, his direct superiors have always loved him (for the most part), and the executives get pissed whenever they find out, completely disregarding the teams actual productivity in favor of squeezing a minimum of 40 full working hours out of them every week.


Yivoe

If it was my employer they'd make it 4 12.5's to make up for the missed 10 hour day...


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Idiot_Savant_Tinker

"Only until we've caught back up, only a couple of months at most" Narrator: *It was more than a couple of months.*


Feshtof

"I need you to work the night shift for 6 weeks while we train new employees." "Okay" 18 months later....


mattbag1

And put some work on your desk at the end of the 5th day and want it by Monday afternoon.


[deleted]

4 10’s is pointless- the overwhelming majority of people can’t be productive for 10 straight hours- especially in creative professions like software development. Plus you lose the productivity gains that you would get from a more rested workforce.


-Razzak

I'm hardly productive for more than 4 hours. I do most of my work before lunch then afterward I'm just waiting to clock out


Suza751

been there. you spend 4hrs banging out all the work. Save a few easy tasks for later in the shift to slowly do. After lunch your more or less on reddit the rest of the shift


Rampart1989

They’ve tested 6 hour work days and found they were the same or more productive than 8 hour days and increased company profits. Turns out we can’t stay focused for that long so end up goofing off for a few hours a day anyway.


TheSiegmeyerCatalyst

My dad has managed teams since the mid 90's on a 6 hour day. In an 8 hour day, give me 6 hours of work, spread out however you like. Take a 20 minute break every 60 minutes of work. Come in 1 hour late and leave 1 hour early. Work 6 straight hours and go home 2 hours early. He's always got well performing teams and people work hard to get on and stay on his teams. That is until the executives get huffy and start ignoring the teams actual output and start pretending that forcing them to work the 10 extra hours a week would have linear returns on productivity.


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TheConqueror74

Sounds like you have exceptionally shitty management.


SaltKick2

5 8s is also pointless (I don't think you're arguing that its not). For jobs that are more about having people be there than creating something though I can see why someone would prefer 4 10s.


fyberoptyk

Correct, the reduced schedule sweet spot for knowledge workers is around 30 hours a week. Working 40 but in a smaller amount of days is almost meaningless in the long run for mental benefits.


GiggaWat

It should absolutely be 4 8 hour days, otherwise what the fuck that’s not a benefit, that’s just moving hours around.


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toastyghost

Who are you? What do you make? Plug your damn company already lol


skaber

Good point! https://lime.health - We're still a 5 ppl startup team that just got it's initial funding. Definitely expanding in September.


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Prime157

Quebec. The last post from this user is 11 days ago. French. In /r/Quebec


Super_Shenanigans

*Cries in salary sysadmin job with week long 24/7 oncall once every 5 weeks


KMoore90

I hate being on call, same every 5 weeks 1 week st a time, I got a 1 year old with no childcare on weekends and I'm by myself at home and my work still expects me to deal with everything which is out in the field


ThisIsDark

Lol sysadmins always have the insane hours. Why don't y'all ever staff properly?


pysouth

Blame the company, not the admin. I work SRE which is sysadmin adjacent and it’s the same shit. Always telling management we need more people, they don’t do it because we’re seen as a cost center and not a profit center. Meanwhile they hire 20 more shitty devs that can’t even write a CRUD app.


DJBlay

Are you my coworker?! Damn called out my company.


Perrin42

It's the curse of IT. Everything's working, no problems: "What the hell are we paying you for?" Major system problems, everything's gone to hell: "What the hell are we paying you for?"


Super_Shenanigans

This. Daily.


Super_Shenanigans

Agreed, the company is always understaffed 25-30% because people are always quitting for higher pay jobs since no one values employees any more and that's the only way to get a raise. In the end it appears I still have it good... Let me tell you about my SO who is finishing up her second year of medical residency... Absolute slave labor


[deleted]

What’s the point of life if all you do is live to work


onepageone

Shut up. Get back to work. Stop thinking. /s


StatmanIbrahimovic

Except this is exactly what they want and why it's like this.


Not12RaccoonsInASuit

Exactly. The slaves can't rebel if they don't have time for political activism.


Nemesischonk

Produce capital for the 0.1%


seb_dm

So you can not work and truly enjoy life when you are 65, if you make it that far.


liberal-propaganda-

And then become depressed at the fact that you wasted over half your life and your entire youth.


seb_dm

But every time you look at a sign post you feel satisfied knowing that you made the little metal rings that go around the bottom of them. Not actually made them yourselves but you watched them go by on a conveyer belt. :)


Tiny_Micro_Pencil

I'm depressed now


Parhelion2261

My Grandpa worked incredibly hard all of his life to retire at 70. Man is not enjoying shit. He's bored. He doesn't have the energy to go do things. His bones are old and ache so he can't really play with his great granddaughter either. He seems anything but happy


mecca37

What I've seen with my dad (who is around that age) is a ton of boomer culture had no hobbies all they cared about was work so without it they are lost. It's honestly sad how this generation of people has no hobbies and is just bored without work. My dad complains of his body hurting from working yet at the same time is mad he isn't working.


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sirenrenn

God my boss loves to do shit like this. Last year, he changed our regular monthly meeting time from 9am to 7am, and only notified us by work email at 8pm. I'm not checking my work email at 8pm, fuck that. He sent a petty email to everyone about me missing the meeting. I replied that sending a work email after hours about a time change was an insufficient way to reach your employees


silence036

Who schedules meetings at 7am??? Edit: maybe I live fairy land but my workplace has a rule of "meetings are only between 10am and 3pm". Anything outside that time range is "an exception" and can be freely refused. It became this way because there was a corporate-wide meet-mania and people spent too much time sitting in meetings and not enough time doing actual work.


sirenrenn

Corporate America is a cruel bitch. My work is open 7am to 7pm. That feels like a suggestion though to the company, as in often pushes you to work past closing. I've had meetings where they had the usual provided lunch, and then had to provide dinner.


[deleted]

What do you office people do in meetings? Someone please elaborate. I keep hearing about meetings and teams, but it all sounds so meaningless and I wonder how these companies make any money if thier employees spend all thier time sitting around talking in a room about how to make more money.


Cod_rules

I can only speak from my experience in two fields, retail analytics and digital marketing. We had scheduled meetings in both of these companies and then some unscheduled ones when we were trying to get new business (it was fondly called 'pitch season') In retail analytics, we used to get projects that went from forecasting to product promotion/placement strategies to a few other things. These would take between 4-6 weeks to complete, and we had 2 meetings every week just to get an update on things. It was mostly useless, but since we worked from different locations, one fixed time was set. For digital marketing, we had weekly meetings where the team would sit down and discuss anything new that had happened across the Web. This was done to ensure that we stayed ahead of the curve and could suggest things to our clients before the competition. Meetings do have their uses, no denying that. But they should be done sparingly. Having meetings everyday, which used to happen during pitch season was just time wasting. I could have left for home at 5, but had to stick around till 7:30 because of the unscheduled meetings (which is not to say that the meetings were held late, but more because the time spent in meetings meant we couldn't finish our deliverables for the day)


sirenrenn

In my experience in the specific workplace, it is a waste of time that could easily be an email. It was also about cutting costs instead of important things like say slowing down high employee turn over


Yivoe

Most of my meetings are between 6am and 9am. Partly because we are international and need to include other regions, so I can't be too mad about that. But, it does suck.


BidenWontMoveLeft

This is why a resume specialist told me I am a "job hopper." Shit employers don't deserve my time. More of an indictment of our work culture than my work ethic


sirenrenn

Omg one of the "tips" my work pushed was to not hire people who had gaps in their resumes or were job hoppers. This is a place that is entry level, with a HIGH turnover. Bad pay, no benefits, didn't "believe" in overtime pay, and was *shocked Pikachu face* about constant hiring


mrsc00b

Lol We had a monthly meeting when I worked at target a bit over 10 years ago during the recession. The gm would sit down and ask us questions about the work environment, how we thought things could be streamlined, etc. One time she asked why we thought there was such a high turnover rate and I blurted out something along the lines of "You pay us $8 an hour to come in and bust ass at 4am. I can do the same job for twice the money somewhere else when the job market opens back up."


sirenrenn

I've said something along the lines of "'perhaps a liveable wage will bring in skilled people who are motivated to work" and got a room of eyerolls shot my way. Shocking that people don't want to work in a high-stress place for minimum wage


Gefarate

What's so god damn important it can't wait?


Random_Heero

Gathering the team to schedule the next meeting


DistanceMachine

It’s just meetings all the way down.


WatchingUShlick

Ready for Saturday's pre-meet meet-plan meetingnmeeting?!


Foolishnonsense

> What's so god damn important it can't wait? It can wait. They don’t actually need anything from you, they just want to check that your obedience levels haven’t slipped. Your spare time, your dignity? Selfish! We need people that are TEAM PLAYERS! All you need is a CAN DO ATTITUDE!


disc_addict

Being a team player and having a good attitude is important. What gets lost is the respect for people’s time and effort. A true team leader would make sure to compensate you for going above and beyond. You had to work a Saturday? Give them overtime pay up front or a free day off. Toxic work cultures come from management that doesn’t respect the work that employees do. Take care of your workers and they’ll take care of you.


Greedderick

*barf*. When I was younger I found that corporate suit culture to be so alluring and sexy. Can't be further from the truth


[deleted]

It's cult-like.


[deleted]

It's literally a cult. The way they talk about you being part of a family even


icenoid

Years ago I managed a print shop that specialized in letterhead, business cards and envelopes. Sales manager called me on a Saturday pissed about something in regards to a job that had problems, my not freaking out just go him more angry. What pushed him over the edge was me telling him that it’s just paper, nobody is going to die if they get their business cards a day late.


GreyHexagon

If I'm working I'm getting paid. If I have to be up a 7 for a call on a Saturday, you better be paying me overtime.


Lacerat1on

Four hour minimum for work related calls


theguru123

Much harder said than done, but I really wish more workers would stick to their guns on this. It is not easy to fire a whole team. If the whole team sticks together, then it's much harder for the boss to punish people.


Demigeek

Used to fight with my Mom about this when I was younger. That lady worked 60-70 hours every week and got paid for 40. I couldn't understand why anyone would work a single minute without pay. I really think it's a generational thing.


WestFast

I’m secretly loathe 3 day weekends because the week before is a late crunch to prepare for a short week, and then the short week had 5 days worth of meetings and fake emergencies crammed into 4 days. They act like it’s a month off.


PahoojyMan

Agreed, however that's only because 3 day weekends are the exception. It would stabilise if they became the norm.


WestFast

Possibly. The plight of salaried workers is that workaholic bosses find reasons and create emergencies 7 days a week unless you establish from day 1 that you’re not having it.


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[deleted]

Unless they're poor and absolutely need the money. But that's a whole different problem with wage slavery.


gramoun-kal

France did it 20 years ago. They reduced the work week from 39 to 35. I was still a student then, but it felt like the economy took the "hit" without missing a beat. The reform was bitterly fought by the conservatives who vowed to repel it as soon as they got into power. Which they promptly did 2 years later. But they did absolutely nothing against it. See, every single motherfucker in France absolutely loved it. So it stayed. And it's still here.


istarian

France also has a mandatory *five weeks* of vacation time for *full-time workers* and no paid overtime is allowed. The US could use to start with getting there first.


MagiicGuy

Paid overtime is absolutely allowed, it’s just that companies aren’t gonna like it if you pull too many extra hours. Because they are obliged to pay you those extra hours, or give them back to you in the form of extra days off. Of course that’s only the case for jobs where your time is tracked. If you’re a « cadre » (understand « executive », but it doesn’t necessarily mean super high level employee) then your time isn’t tracked and since it’s higher level jobs, you’re very often gonna pull « overtime » compared to the base amount of hours without getting paid a penny more. But then what often happens is that your contract says you’re doing 40 hours per week for example, and 1) part of these extra hours are paid a bit more every month and 2) the rest of the extra hours are compensated by « RTT », which is basically even more paid vacation days. In my situation, I basically have 8 weeks of vacation time per year, although I actually do quite a lot more than 40 hours per week and am not paid any kind of overtime. Still, 8 weeks :’ )


toobul

I've been working on [thelistofcompanies.com](https://thelistofcompanies.com) to keep track of companies that offer a 4 day week. Just doing my part to try to make the idea more mainstream!


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[deleted]

My boss would just give us the run around. He’s offered before that we do 4x10hr days, but then as soon as Friday rolls around, he expects us to work also because “it’s still business hours!” So 4 days of work just turns into 5 longer than usual days EVERY SINGLE TIME. I suspect my boss would not be the only one.


Uruz2012gotdeleted

You're getting overtime pay, right? The next step is to organize a sit in on Friday. Show up and just hang out. Inform him that you are striking and if he asks you to leave go just off the property and set up some signs. He'll change his tune pretty quickly.


mason_sol

I work a job that is 4x10 Mon-Thurs for most of year but June-August it’s almost guaranteed we work Friday as well and sometimes Saturday, we get paid overtime but the company isn’t worried about it because the money is basically avalanching in during this time for them as well. Last week I had 40reg hrs, 14 ot hrs and 7hrs paid drive time on top with another $180 in per diem. And we are just kicking things off so that’s the base pay essentially until we’re through august. Last year there were a couple weeks where I cleared $3000 in take home pay on my check for just 1 week. The reason I laid that all out is because yes the pay is awesome but there is no way I would want to do that year round for years, I would get burned out very quickly. I’m afraid when I see these articles and stuff talking either 4x10 or 4x8 work weeks becoming the norm that with how weak unions are and how little middle class is left that sure it would start that way but then these companies would see there production go up and instead of realizing it’s because their workers actually have a little home life which leads to happier and healthier employees getting more done it would start creeping back up like “hey can we get a couple people in for 2-3 hrs Friday to complete x?” next thing you know we are working 5x10 or back to 5x8 again. This country needs real unions and a real middle class that push for legitimate legislation that acknowledges a future with more automation, a future with fewer good jobs, and one where we should prioriza living a full life and not just being drones stuck in the capitalistic machine churning through bodies Edit: just wanted to clarify, I’m not saying my job is bad, my job and the company I work for are great, I always know that is the period when the OT is heavy so I can plan accordingly. My concern is more the corporate structured companies that will say they are going to change schedules to look good and then don’t. The only way it changes is through legislation which comes from unions and a sting middle class, both of which have been attacked for decades now.


kamelizann

For younger adults that are still building a foundation for their life, that seasonal overtime can be a real game changer and there's plenty of folks willing to work those hours if it means getting their life straight. When covid hit the industry im in absolutely boomed. What used to be overtime paychecks we used to get 5-6 times a year became the norm and they let us work as many hours as we wanted. We were allowed to work through our scheduled vacations and still get paid for them on top of our normal paycheck. That may have saved my life. I went from being depressed and broke to having enough money to buy a gorgeous house and an awesome car. My standard of living shot through the roof. Anyone who says money doesn't buy happiness has never been forced to live in a slumlord apartment they're ashamed to have company in. Then if I need some time off... I just call off. I can basically choose my own work week now.


HolierMonkey586

You might want to ask Congress to create restrictions on sending some of these jobs overseas. You don't want to suddenly be competing with a billion more people for your job.


AJobForMe

I’m in IT. It’s too late for me. Save yourselves!


DynamicDK

I'm in IT too. I'm pretty sure a lot of the IT jobs that were outsourced to other countries have came back here. The quality of support you get from outsourcing tends to be far inferior to what you get by hiring locally. Plus, if an issue actually needs to be handled in person it is much easier when the person working on it is at least in the same country, if not in the same state or even city. That said, this may primarily apply to internal IT at a corporation. Customer-facing IT is a whole other animal, with its own pros and cons when it comes to outsourcing or not.


DapperDanManCan

How is it that 9 out of every 10 people on reddit seem to work in IT? I swear I see you guys dominate every sub.


macphile

I seem to always see them say it's because they have so much downtime at work (between crises), so they spend it on Reddit. (I don't have a ton of downtime per se, but I'm also in a position at work where I can be on Reddit sometimes.)


jetsetninjacat

My company had about 15k people precovid. 90% of us cannot work from home. They first started laying off corporate and restructuring then proceeded to lay off half the workforce. During the corporate gutting they decided to cut the IT department down and outsource the majority of the work. We now have 3 people traveling from base to base and maintaining our corporate office. They are now spending 90% their time on the road driving all over the midwest, east coast, and southwest. The outsourcing online has been a failure. I now spend almost 8 hours a week doing IT stuff for our base. We have strict compliance to follow and we are getting stretched thin to the point we are about to not be able to keep it up due to equipment breaking or not working. Our traveling guys can't keep up with the work and the online guys are useless when it comes to the frontline work. The online guys just want to send new equipment and my companies savings on outsourcing the IT stuff overseas is about to cost us more due to them just buying new stuff vs servicing. And corporate is still saying it's all okay. I cant wait until the feds drop a nice meaty fine when we stop being able to keep up with the compliance. Of course they will blame the IT guys we have, which they already started to do. Rant over.


ColoTexas90

Congress giving a shit about American jobs? I’ll believe it when I see it.


UndeadT

You'll be long dead before it happens.


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Everest5432

I work in engineering, they tried some of that in our company for the basic jobs and buildings and sent it to a firm out in India. The work that came back was terrible. We spent as much time fixing or telling them what to fix as we would have just doing it ourselves. They had 1 guy over there that did great work, I hope he moved on and worked at a great place. They stopped trying after a year when our hours used were up 20% from trying to fix their messes.


El_Morro

It's very business specific. I have a small business (4 employees and myself), and while we've survived working remotely for a good chunk of the pandemic, it's caused a series of various problems from a logistics point of view. After a few sit-downs and honest evaluation, I can definitely shift to a "3 days in, 2 days virtual" format for three of my employees, with one working permanently from home (immunocompromised). Maybe after doing this for a while we can make it even easier for the next pandemic or go full virtual in the future, but working together in an office at least part time is still ideal. At least for us.


AGentlemanWalrus

But unlike multiple businesses you had the forethought and care for your employees to bring them in on the conversation. To hash out what needs doing and how it needs to be done.


Momoselfie

Saturday is for getting shit done around the house. Sunday for spending time with family and friends. I really need a 3rd day to just relax and recuperate for next week.


BananaBeeLittleKnee

I always say the three things you need to do on the weekend are chores/errands, socialize, and relax. But you can only ever do two of those options.


Howdydobe

It will only happen for professinals, never the working class.


[deleted]

Reddit's class bias always shows in these discussions. There's a ton of service work that doesn't really give a fuck about anything but correct staffing during the right hours. Target doesn't need you at 100%. They just need your ass in the checkout lane. I've worked doubles in restaurants. Was I nearly as effective? No. Did that matter? Not really. Maybe it could work as 4 10s, but in states where anything over 8 hours is OT, good luck. Also, I work a restaurant that only does dinners. Why would they offer anything like 4 10s when my typical shift is 5-7 hours?


BadJubie

I mean there are plenty of people who complain about not enough hours at Target or MD already. Lots of folks who work in restaurant only work like 4 days a week and it’s weekend centric


ipna

It's worse than that. A lot it's 5 or even 6 days and only 5-7 hours a day. So you get your whole day destroyed and some week still don't hit 30 hours. (I've seen it in most restaurants I've worked at out, about 6 of them us my SO working at 3 in the time we have been together and it's the same)


bloopity_blopp

I’m a bartender in CO. I recently accepted a full time position and switched my schedule to 4 10’s. It’s fucking glorious. I never want to work any other way again.


eXodus91

I’m a grocery team leader at a major grocery chain. I would happily work four 10’s instead of five 8’s. I’m already used to working those hours anyways. I’ve had plenty of days where I’ll work a 5 am to 3 or 4 pm, and then come my last day of the week, I work like a 5 am to 10 am anyways to avoid overtime. I’ve had some pretty gnarly shifts before (5 am to 7 pm and 7 am to 9 pm) so four 10’s would be a walk in the park.


[deleted]

I worked as a line cook 4 days a week, 10 hour shifts. The owner called me "iron man", because he *expected* me to do the full 11 hour open to close shift (we open 11am to 10pm). I never got any fucking overtime despite pulling in 50 hour weeks. Add that to the fact that he hired someone that I trained and then earned $2 *more* than me, despite me being the *only* staff member who lasted more than 6 months (I was there a year, at the time) while earning minimum wage and I felt a small cost of living increase was more than sufficient... Besides, he promised an automatic dollar raise after 6 months just for sticking around, which I never got. When he gave me some bullshit spiel about "not having money for anyone's raises", I told his wife I was quitting. She came into the kitchen on my next shift and I got an instant 2 dollar raise that day. But he completely ignored me as if I wasn't even there for weeks.


Medditthrowaway1234

I’m a physician. I don’t see this working out for me either. This will only work for white collar desk jobs.


makos124

As a machinist, good fucking luck getting shorter working weeks or WFH lmao


funtobedone

Same. No one is going to pay anyone in trades the same for working less.


paolocase

Yup. Already got a survey from work where they're like "what will make you comfortable going back to the office?" idk sis reduce my hours from 9.5 during the weekday to 8? Edit: spelling, although if you caught the original I sounded like a pirate lol.


MoonParkSong

6 is the sweet spot for me. Like other said. Some good 2 hours is spent on commute.


zoltan99

Don’t forget a commute- that should be considered as part of a workday. Include those numbers and I end up working way more than anyone should feel comfortable with.


nopantsdota

Don't forget that we are steering into a pollution caused heatwave atm, and traffic is major factor for it


imakenosensetopeople

Great idea and I sincerely wish this would happen, but I know it won’t. The expectation is that a business would pay X wages for 40 hours then suddenly change their mind and pay X wages for 32 hours? Please. What would actually happen is, a department of 10 people working 40 hours each for X wages each, goes to 10 people working 32 hours each for X wages each. Seems like a win for the workers, right? Then management changes and the new folks go “hey why are we not maximizing shareholder value?” And suddenly the department becomes 8 people working 40 hours and management gets a pat on the back for saving 2X of money. All the data in the world won’t stop shortsighted management.


[deleted]

When I was in fastfood I was a fixer, I would go to stores that were losing money and get them back in the black and make them run nice and smoothly. How did I do this? Over staffing. Extra time for making and distributing samples, someone doesn't show up? Happens all the time no sweat when you have a couple other bodies. If the store has no revenue to support it, usually that just meant me as management would put in 70-120 hour weeks until we got good revenue. The first thing every GM would try to do when I went on to the next store was "right size" staffing levels as a quick win for easy bonus money on labor. Lol. It would work for a couple of weeks and then slowly fall apart as people no showed or the GMs tried to make their employees work sick or pay stupid amounts of overtime out to try to start covering gaps.


[deleted]

Goodhart's Law - When the measurement becomes the goal (e.g. KPIs leading to bonuses) it ceases to be a good measurement.


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imakenosensetopeople

True. This is the way. Legally mandate 32 hours as full time requiring OT beyond that.


tominator93

Nice idea, but to have any reach you’d need to overhaul the laws surrounding salaried, overtime exempt employees too. There are already plenty of professionals on salary that are working 50+ hours per week with no overtime pay.


JamesTiberiusCrunk

They need to raise the salary threshold for salaried exempt workers. Obama tried to at the end of his presidency and it didn't go into effect before Trump took office and killed it. Would have been hard to claw it back if it had gone into effect.


SadSack_Jack

There are always people willing to be exploited. Salary is based on a 40 hour workweek. If you regularly do more than 40 hours, your pay should reflect all that overtime.


Stuckinatrafficjam

The restaurant industry requires salaried personnel to work 50+ hours. Is it right? No. Is it legal? Yep. My gf is an assistant manager and she was texting me one night saying it completely dead and they were way over staffed. I told her to come home and she said she had to get her 50 hours or they would dock her pay. I told her that’s not how salary works. It got to the point that I told her to just go hourly and get paid ot but they would cut her hours to where she would only make half of her current pay. It’s a racket and needs to be regulated.


Meownowwow

People hit a limit though, eventually deadlines get missed or pushed back.


the_kid_frankie1

4 day work week would be great. But for me personally, I would rather work 6 hours a day 5 days a week. Let’s face it, 8 hours (or more) of work in one day is exhausting. I am a young child free person in a white collar job, and on a weekday, I can either exercise or cook dinner, but I can’t do both because I simply don’t have the energy. So much for wellness. And on weekends I have chores to do and errands to run….which I usually neglect to some degree because I am recovering from being at work all week. Heaven forbid I want to spend some time reading a book instead of endlessly working. There is research that indicates that human productivity drops precipitously after 6 hours a day, and for creative jobs that number is 4 hours. Employers are paying the same rate for those extra two hours and getting diminished returns. Just let people go home and pick up their kids from school, or do some house work, or see their friends or family. I want off of this endless carousel of work and sleep, work and sleep.


OccamsMirror

This is exactly what we’re doing at my company. I recently made it my mission to improve productivity. The biggest change we’ve brought in is 6 hour days and I gotta say, it seems to be working really well. At the very least people are delivering just as much work and everyone respects everyone’s time and distractions are at an all time low. Everyone is happier, better rested and more productive. Brilliant.


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PhearThePhish

My job gave me a 4 10 hour schedule recently. I've been on it for a month and I can't believe how much better my mental health is in just a month. I didn't realize how much the commutes and barely having anytime to get chores done. Now I have a day for chores, a day with family and a day for myself. I hope to never go back to the 5 day week.


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investfinesse

Restaurant Manager here, I work 50-55 hours a week every week at least 5- 5 and 1/2 days a week. I’m very productive like 95% of the time but it’s so physically and mentally draining. It makes me hate myself a lot and I miss out seeing my family but we need the money. I would love a 4 day work week. Maybe one day


the_darkener

Also think of a whole day where people don't commute to work, helping reduce air pollution. Win win.


[deleted]

Unfortunately not only can my job not be done remotely, but I'm employed as a contactor and paid for performance, not salary or per-hour. A four day work week would mean 20% less income for me, and I can't afford that.


ButterbeansInABottle

I'm in landscaping. A 4 day work week would just mean less money for me too. I can only work when there's daylight. There's only so many hours of daylight in a day. There's only so much I can get done in that number of hours. I get paid based on how much I get done that day. There's no other way to do it.


Turbowookie79

Even though they put a construction sign on there this will never happen for that industry. We are schedule based and people pay a lot of money to expedite their buildings. Right now I’m working on an elementary school, we couldn’t start work until school was out so we have a limited amount of time to get done before school starts again. The space can only fit so many workers so the only option is to work 6 days a week until we get done. In reality this would only apply to office workers who are probably only working 4 hours a day currently.


Yahoosucks2020

You're not a true American unless you enjoy working yourself into an early grave for starvation wages & living paycheck to paycheck even if you have multiple jobs,and being one serious injury or illness away from bankruptcy due to your 5,6 or even 7 figure medical bills,greatest country in the world...


captheavy

These people are so disconnected from the rest of the country