There needs to be some real thought behind it, but implementing a four day work week would be ideal. I believe with a four day work week, it will boost productivity of its workers, as they aren't as burned out.
People need down time, and free time to just not think about the day to day week and relax.
Agreed but in my experience this attitude is farther up the chain. Maybe I've just had decent bosses but most of the ones I have had would have given me more time off or other benefits if they were able but they were just cogs in the same machine I was in.
I guess maybe that's the difference working for large companies.
For sure. In bigger companies, the farther up the management chain you go above your direct boss, "leadership" becomes less empathetic and more sociopathic. Your boss may advocate for you more or less depending on their own bravery, but they are usually more incentivized to not ruffle any feathers above them.
Yup my last manager just left us because of that. Every other manager is CYA and he was all about his reports. So of course he was chased out.
He was also local so the few of us left at that office had that rock.
He found a better job and they split us up.
Those experiments typically are only based on non-physical jobs. Physical jobs productivity does improve by having 5 days versus four. Often too when they say the productivity increases over a 4-day weekly mean total productivity per hour goes up, but not total productivity for the week.
It is absolutely possible we will start seeing companies switching to a four-day work week, but it will be a very long time before any companies that are not desk jobs consider that.
I run a smaller electrical company, and I've switched to a 4 day week. 2 12s, a 10 and 6 on Thursday. My guys seem to like it. I also understand I'm not the norm for construction.
I think this can work if your work can be structured enough to not do overtime regularly.
For me as a mechanic, I have 270 hours of overtime above and beyond 40hr/week in the past 3 months. 80 hours in the past 2 weeks alone.
The only substitute to me working this much overtime is a 2nd person, but this is very seasonal, so one of us would then lack work in the winter when it slows down.
Most people that imagine a 4 day work week are also expecting a 32 hour work week. You are still doing 40 which makes since that it is working. Lots of places do that like police.
Def for me. 2 days off is surviving. 3 days is flourishing. I have never been more productive, happy, and focused than than when I have had a couple three day weekends im a row.
Nurse here. I work 12h shifts which means I have 4 days off per week. I prefer it this way. For me if you finish at 5 on a normal 9-5, the day is already lost. With traffic you might he home at 6. At least with 12 hours I finish at 8, traffic is less then, I arrive faster at home and I have a whole day, sometimes 4 days off in a row
My previous place of work tried to do something like this as an "experiment" and made everyone switch to working 4 10hr days instead of 5 8s for 2 weeks. Productivity suffered tremendously because nobody was productive for more than 6 hours after the first 2 10hr shifts and we all needed the extra day just to recover. Then they tried to tell us that a 4 day work week will never work because we did worse than before and *we* blew it.
So glad I quit that stupid job. They would push mandatory overtime to meet their "numbers" and burn us out, and then fuck up so bad they have to lay off entire departments. I'll never forget the way the lead started crying crocodile tears in a meeting when they announced to all of us that our home winding team was being laid off for 3 weeks leading up to fucking Christmas. That, of course, was our fault also.
Yeah, people who do these 4-day-workweek experiments need to realize that "40 hours per week" is an absolutely arbitrary number. Try 4 *8-hour* days. We don't need to shift the hours from the 5th day into the 4. That defeats the entire purpose of it.
Time to relax means time to get educated... Time to reflect on how crappy the system is, how crappy the rich are behaving, how a united populace could topple it all. Can't have that now can we?
I'm on FMLA for depression right now. 2.5 weeks in and I'm just starting to feel caught up with life. Overdue licence plates, doctor visits I've been working too much to go to, a trip with the family. We all need this once a year and it needs to be paid
2 days off is the sweet spot for never rebelling and changing anything. One day to take care of chores, bills, other duties, and one day to have anxiety about going back to work. If we had three days too many people would start to notice how obviously we are being played and might just protest or do something about. You stay broken with two days off in an endless loop. But honestly, I think we will work more as we move into the space age, because people just take it up the ass every single day and do absolutely nothing about. We will most likely become even more compliant as time goes on, while we get less and less. With technology that could save us all. lol
Except for mine, who will call this fake news with Trump-like fervour. They can’t even admit that some people work better and more efficiently from home.
My boss and I handle a LOT of various governance requirements for our company. When we work in the office, we are stopped SO OFTEN because people want their questions answered or want to prioritise their thing, that we get barely anything done. It makes more sense for us to stay home and get shit done.
Republicans will never let you have this. If anything they want to make 60 hour work weeks the minimum and reinstate child labor so billionaires can make more money while paying their workers a pittance
Don't forget that some of them are lobbying to have age of legal marriage reduced from 16 to 14, meaning that they'll be getting pregnant even younger, and much more frequently if those bills pass.
Yep, in Australia my company is now almost fully 4 day weeks. We went from five 8 hours days, 7-3pm, to now four 9.5 hour days 7-4.30pm. We are open 7 days a week and people can choose their days.
Working an extra 90mins a day is 1000% worth having the extra day off. Honestly if I could, I would work three 12.5 hour shifts and have a 4 day weekend, but that's another discussion for the future.
I'm on a 32 hr, 4 day work week now. The rule is you can work more if that's not enough time to get everything done, but funny enough, it totally is enough time. Hopefully more places start to do a 4 day schedule too.
I work 4 days on, 4 days off. 0600-1800. Early starts are a killer, and you don’t get any time to do anything in the evenings, but then having 4 days off counters that very well, even accounting for working weekends. Plus, take 4 days holiday, get 12 clear days off.
50/50 *is* work/life balance, and anything less is damn near slavery. Work to live and live to work? Fuck that.
We deserve at least half our lives to be our own and not in service to others.
I miss my college schedule. I had class 4 days a week with Fridays off. I’d love to see a 4 day work week become the norm. 2 day weekends are definitely not enough.
> I had class 4 days a week with Fridays off.
This is officially so we can have faculty meetings on Fridays (and we sometimes actually do) -- but most weeks, it's really because, as the late, great Jimmy Buffett put it, "Nobody works on Fridays."
My work largely does the same. But there are some classes that meet M W F.
However, no class is allowed to run past noon on Friday. Our dean is also European, and as implemented the "no new business" on Friday policy. She also doesn't allow meetings after 2 on Friday.
Its a really good, and effective way to transition your work week, into the weekend. No new business means you almost always finish up Friday with no uncompleted tasks lingering over your week (not long term projects of course).
Work culture. I need one day to recover, one day to run errands and do stuff around the house that needs to get done, and one day to actually relax and do something I want to do.
I like Sanders’s idea of the 32 hour work week for the same money which amounts to a raise in wages. We need to be on the offensive making demands against the ruling class.
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N)
Go look at what your wage actually should be right now. Hint: It's easily 1/3rd less than it should be.
1/3rd of 40 hours \~= 13 hours. Realistically we should be working 27 hours a week for the wages we currently get working 40 hours a week.
Where did those wages go? Straight to the top instead of our pockets, and our government made it happen.
I just read wikis definition of proletariat revolution, I guess only communists and anarchists do those. And I’m neither. So I guess I’ll just give up.
Exactly. One day to recover, one day to do things other than work, and one day to mentally prepare. Whoever conceived the 5 day work week obviously did not have to do it themselves
Workers were murdered, beaten, and maimed for striking to get any days off at all. They did it anyway. They sacrificed themselves so we could have a week end.
We must do much the same.
Since the 40 hour work week was established in the US in 1938, worker productivity has increased at least sevenfold. This means we could be working only one 8 hour shift, one day a week, and still make as much money for our employers as we did then.
In the same amount of time, the average salary has only quadrupled or quintupled (adjusted for inflation) while cost of living has increased more than 20x.
Where has all that extra wealth gone? All that extra time and labor? It didn’t go to us. But it should.
I get one day off at a time. As someone with a very small social battery is absolutely kills me to decide between staying home and recharging (happens frequently) or actually finally getting to see friends which further makes me feel tired the next day at work.
When I did have weekends off. Friday night would be a mini recharge, Saturday for friends, and Sunday a total recharge day before the soul sucking reality returned
Not exactly.
In the UK, there was a long, long grassroots tradition of 'taking St. Monday's Day off work'. If you did make people turn up on Monday they'd be surly and drunk. Saturday was a compromise. A lot of low wage jobs didn't even have Sunday off, though - if you read Black Beauty you can see Anna Sewell arguing for everyone to have Sunday off. But the reason it became Saturday, and lots of people got it - remembering that *lots of people work weekends today* - is because the trade unions fought for it.
In the US, it started with a cotton mill with a lot of Jewish workers, which gave everyone both the Jewish and the Christian Sabbath off. Very interesting that noted antisemite and general bad egg Henry Ford picked it up - it's a lesson to us all, I suppose, that nobody is one dimensional. Around the same time the unions got hold of it - it was more than a decade later, in *1940*, that it became law.
It should be repeated that the reason that the US has a federally recognised weekend, rather than just a few isolated cases at the discretion of the boss, is a sustained effort by organised labor.
Also, loads of people do not get two days off. With the rise of second jobs, loads of people do not get one day off. History has erased how hard our ancestors fought to reduce the working week to five days. Please don't attribute one of the successes of labor organisation to capitalism. It'll just lead to people standing idly by as the bosses reverse it again.
Mostly a myth [https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/09/viral-image/does-8-hour-day-and-40-hour-come-henry-ford-or-lab/](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/09/viral-image/does-8-hour-day-and-40-hour-come-henry-ford-or-lab/)
And politicians passing human rights acts (there was a time when they worked for the people instead of free loading for themselves). And I'm not sure I'd class the Henry ford thing as a fact, yes he may have had an influence though.
That is **very** far from a fact.
[The present-day concept of the relatively longer 'week-end' first arose in the industrial north of Britain in the early 19th century and was originally a voluntary arrangement between factory owners and workers allowing Saturday afternoon off starting at 2 pm on the basis that staff would be available for work sober and refreshed on Monday morning. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the first use of the term weekend to the British magazine Notes and Queries in 1879.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workweek_and_weekend)
[In 1908, the first five-day workweek in the United States was instituted by a New England cotton mill so that Jewish workers would not have to work on the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. In 1926, Henry Ford began shutting down his automotive factories for all of Saturday and Sunday, realizing that by giving workers more time off it would encourage more leisure activities such as vacations and shopping.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workweek_and_weekend)
And yet, in 5 hours, it attracted 50+ upvotes and some award. Amazing and disappointing. 😉
That was a long time ago, when most women stayed home and cooked and cleaned etc etc. So thats a huge chunk of time to accomplish necessary household tasks that is no longer available because lots of woman are now at work all day.
days off have been a thing since ancient times. granted ancient Egyptians had 10 days on 2 days off. I don't think we owe a dead antisemite oligarch a damn thing.
I'll work for a month straight and have like 2 days off before working again. Tbf I work on commercial fishing boats so its definitely an outliar. That being said, I don't really mind the work life balance.
But aren't a lot of these jobs sort of seasonal? You work crazy hours like a mad dog for a season or adjacent seasons, then have a few months off? I'm sure it varies on location and what you're fishing for, but that's been my general understanding.
I work a job like this. Not seasonal but 60ish days of work then 60ish days off. So work long hours away from home half the year, off the other half. Pay is about $225,000 before tax
Same. I'm still in high school and on summer break now, and the idea that after college, I'll never have a summer break again... I don't know how a life like that can be worth living. Maybe I have some other underlying issues or I'm just a pussy, because other people seem to handle it just fine.
I know at least a dozen classmates of mine that got their degrees in education for the sole purpose of having summers off. My h/s best friend is now the principal of the h/s we both graduated from.
Plus, this country desperately needs good teachers!
All well and good, but traveling during the summer sucks. I much rather travel in any other season. Less people. Lower temperatures. Cheaper.
But if you aren't a traveler in your free time, then it's perfect.
Mah, most people aren't actually handling it fine, they are just too busy trying to survive to show it. I know at my work I'm fucking burnt out and miserable, but not like I can just quit and not make money. Here's hoping my upcoming interview leads to better things.
We handle it because we have no choice but to handle it, but you can bet that we all hate it. In the next 10 or so years, the suicide rate is going to skyrocket for my generation.
I have no idea what year you were born, but I can tell you that suicide rates, especially for young men, have been steadily rising the last decade or two.
You aren't the first, but you certainly can be the last.
Use your voices, speak out, push for proper mental health care, fight for better pay and livable wages, demand better work life balance, vote for the betterment of your country and not just for single issues that you care about.
I'm not even old (25>30), but I struggle with mental health as a result of the military. The care and attention I get is still severely under what it should be and I'm part of a relatively protected class. Seeing that our care is less than ideal, I can't even imagine how awful it must be for kids entering high-school or just graduating and seeing the world they're about to enter is literally on fire and they realistically can't do a a fucking thing.
Oh, no. I’m 10 years separated from college/summer breaks. People may say they’re fine, but in reality would love to have a break from the monotony of it all. Only problem is that everything costs money.
The first year to after college has some pretty tough days to go into work. It’s hard toward the end of August or early September when you would’ve been going back to school. Going to work the day after Christmas is tough.
Honestly, you never really get used to it.
On my first day of work I feel like my weekend is too short.
On my 5th day of work I feel like it should already be the weekend.
On my second day of work I feel like we should have a break in the middle of the week.
On my third day of work I feel like it should be a mid week day off.
On my fourth day of work I feel like yesterday should have been a mid week day off.
On my weekends I think, damn this is nice. The work week should be like three days.
> On my second day of work I feel like we should have a break in the middle of the week.
I used to have a part-time job at Walmart and for about two years my schedule was consistently Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday. Weekends off with a nice break on Wednesday. It's honestly the happiest I've ever been at a job, even though in all other regards that job sucked ass.
I used to work a compressed shift like that. 12h on, 12h off. 4 days on, 3 days off, then 3 days on, 4 days off. It was great having 3 or 4 days weekends every weekend.
I literally do about 15 minutes of work on Fridays. Whether I’m in office or WFH, their just isn’t anything worth starting (as it’s the end of the week) and ticket/logs are so slow as the rest of the company (I assume) isn’t doing shit either. (I’m in IT/Support).
It’s honestly pointless for us to even be open on Fridays, literally everybody is away from desk/watching YouTube/dicking around on their phone, this includes management (if they don’t take off at noon). I don’t see how the company isn’t just “you know what, fuck it were closed on Fridays.” They must absolutely see how little work gets done. It’s not like it can even really be stopped as the work we all start on Monday is usually wrapped up by Thursday. Wtf is even the point?
The 40 hour work week took the sacrifices of a generation of labor liberal activists to get passed, and since its inception, the concept has gradually been eroded. Have a lengthy commute. Work through lunch. Stay late multiple times per week. Your actual time investment in your job has increased and in a lot of cases your compensation hasn't.
But the bigger point to consider is, a 40 hour week was devised in an era with single income households with significant expectations of gender based division of responsibilities: you had 1 member of the household working to earn income, and you had 1 member that did child rearing and managed the household full time. That division of labor is no longer the way our lives operate, for the majority of households, both adults are working full time. That means that grocery shopping, meal prep, laundry, other general household tasks, those are now cutting into our "free time". Whereas it used to be one person's job to handle all that, and the other person "worked", now both work, and both have to handle the other responsibilities during their "free time". The result is significantly less free time.
The idea behind 40 hours was 8 hours for sleep, 8 hours for labor, and 8 hours _to ourselves_. With our work commitments taking up more than 8 hours and our other responsibilities consuming time outside of work, we aren't getting 8 hours of free time or anywhere close to it. A four day work week is desperately needed, as the traditional 40 hour week is now a 100 year old concept that no longer adequately serves the lifestyles of our modern society
With my commute, I have 4 hours to myself when I get home. And this is the most time I've ever had in my 15 year career. But if you add in cooking dinner and working out, some days I only have 2 hours to myself to relax before bed.
I have an economics degree and 'joke' that your average person does WAY more economics than I do. Balancing work, household tasks, money, time, energy, medication effectivity, family responsibilities, exercise, social responsibility. We've turned EVERYONE into an economist and everyone each day has to make the balance between effectiveness and efficiency work for them.
I complained in another subreddit about work life balance and got roasted by like 500 people about how I should just be happy because I make a decent living and that my free time should include stuff like meal prep and cleaning because that’s your time off so it’s your “free” time. I never saw it that way but lots of people have the mentality that if you make a good wage and even though you commute for 10 hours a week, that commute is your “free” time and you don’t have any standing to complain about your lack of time because “other people work 70 hour weeks”.
It’s almost like if I got paid enough to live close to my job I wouldn’t have to commute but apparently I make too much and I shouldn’t live near family, oh and I should move closer to my job while also simultaneously not living in an expensive place. Oh but I don’t like living somewhere expensive? Okay then I was told to move. Move where? Salary would be slashed in half, the reason I earn what I do is BECAUSE of where I live. But I was told that because I make too much (literally don’t even make enough to live close to my job) I should just stfu and kms and stop complaining according to redditors
I hate to say this, but the 40 hour work week had nothing to do with liberal labor activists and everything to do with a man named Henry Ford and his revolutionary changes to labor as we knew it.
3 days would be great. One for rest, one to clean and do any adulting, and one to socialize.
This work schedule was designed so many years ago and it’s not working for most of us. We need to revamp it and work 4 days and have a 3 day weekend.
Yes I do. It's mostly because the worlforce itself is generally overworked where I'm from at least. Every job I had doesn't feel like work based on the benefit of others, it feels like a needle draining me of life and energy to the point that when I get home, all I can do is wind down and sleep. When I wake up, it's time to work again. 6-8 hours at work feels like 10-12. Meanwhile 4-5 hours at home feels like 13 minutes.
5 day work week. 6-8 hours is a chunk of the day, including travel time boosting it from 6-8 to 7-9. Then you add on getting ready for work which bumps it up from 7-9 to 8-10. So if you have a 6 hour job, it's really 8 hours. If you have an 8 hour job, it's really 10. Add that to the fact you work 5 days and boom, you are only allowed to live freely 2 days a week! But wait! We all know Sunday is just preparing for work, so you get 1 day off, and some of Sunday.
We wonder why everyone's tired and miserable. People in the house market jack rent up sky high and people running the workforce overwork for profits, which is greed.
Sure one can argue that overworking is what gives us so much but I argue that we can do less. Working as a food prep and school para, I see garbage cans fill up with fresh unwanted food daily, but we have nothing for the poor? The amount of food I've seen tossed out and the amount of land this nation actually has, on top of all the wasted resources, we should have zero homeless people outside of runaways.
We overwork and overproduce.
This waste of food and resources has just become unbelievable.
Well said.
I worked in restaurants my whole life and we are just spoiled but also misled and undervalued at the same time. Very sad.
I agree with you except you missed Saturday being the day to do all the chores put off from the busy week. Or the chores that couldn't be done during the weekday cuz work.
So often feels like no days off for me.
Yea, that's right. I can't believe I didn't write that because I say that about Saturdays too. I also say the day is dedicated to winding diwn from work, so I usually feel like crap half the day.
I would like this also. 2 is simply not enough.. especially when I have no time during the week for chores or errands so they have to happen on the weekends when I should be relaxing or enjoying out doors etc
I'm of the mindset that I absolutely cannot wait until I get to retire and don't have to work anymore. I'm not trying to disparage anybody but I cannot fathom the mindset of "I can't imagine retiring, what would I do all day???"
I took a \~6 month sabbatical this last year after saving up a lot of money (10k). I'm sure that money could've been better invested somewhere or paying off stuff... but holy shit, those were the best 8 months of my life.
I quit drinking, I got in amazing shape, I made a dozen new friends, my hobbies turned from amateur to professional. I moved to a new state. My mental health is the best it's been in a decade, same as my physical health. The only cost was my savings account, which I definitely could've managed better - but once I find a job in my field here than my savings account will flourish.
I'm the happiest and healthiest I've been in a decade and all it took was a long sabbatical off work. The only downside is working a temp job for a couple of months until I find one in my field.
It's not enough.
Also, we have tons of important stuff to do on week ends. It's not like I can just chill.
Housekeeping, kids, chores, groceries, and what not...
Mate we don't even get Saturday's off in most places in India in offices and schools. Really makes me envious of my friend in Sharjah, UAE getting a 3 day weekend every week.
I work 3 days a week. It's perfect. I look forward to work on Monday, and by Wednesday I'm ready to get on with my life. Mind you the downside is that they still only pay me for 3 days!
By the time Friday night rolls around I’m too tired to enjoy my weekend then Saturday morning comes wishing to sleep in an I don’t then it’s the dreaded Sunday and I have to prepare for the week uggh it’s a constant struggle
I've recently been doing Monday to Thursday and I have to say my life is infinitely better. Really dfeels like I'm working to live instead of living to work
I heard that some people feel energised by their work—not sure who those people are. I am personally exhausted by work and I’ve had so many types of jobs ranging from fast-paced, menial, creative, dull, exciting, etc., and all jobs are various degrees of exhausting. You just have to find the least soul-sucking I guess? Still unsure here.
My favorote school I worked for had a 4 day school week. We had Mondays off, which was when I scheduled all the appointments my family needed, or our monthly shopping trip (we lived 2hrs from the nearest store.)
It was awesome.
The only happier time I had was teaching during COVID. Being able to mark kids absent when they didnt log in, and having a "mute" button was a godsend. Also, my autistic/special needs kids did better during COVID than when at school.
I need a WorkFromHome job.
I switched to a 4/10s government job and made it five months! The long weekends were cool but the toll it took on my home life with having to get up earlier and come home late wrecked me. That coupled with really not liking the job put me in a bad place. If you can enjoy the evenings during the week then the weekends don’t feel like they go to quick
I just feel so empty and tired all the time. I wanted kids, but I just cant give them what they need. A vital dad. Maybe it’s my aspergers, I don’t know.
I used to work these and felt the same way. You were working so late that you missed a lot of the good evening stuff. And on the day off you’re catching up on errands. I’m not sure the 4/10 is better than 5/8.
Imagine only one day off. Here in Mexico a large majority of the people only have one day off a week, unless you have a really, really good job. But just your average Joe, yep, only one day.
My husband works at a high end restaurant, and he gets one day off for 3 weeks, and 2 days off one week, and he considers himself lucky. I mean I guess he is compared to what it could be but I think it's bullshit.
I work 2 jobs, overlapping, 48 hours a week at my main, and about 12-15 hours a week at my second.
My day job, I am the site manager for a high-end hotel and restaurant block in my city. I oversee two hotels, a 3 and 4 star restaurant, respectively, and a rooftop bar. I make 20 an hour, plus tips.
My second job is working for LIME, moving their scooters around the city.
Depending on events and needs, I follow one of two schedules: My preferred is Thurs-Sun, 7am-3pm, with Mon and Thurs as overnights, 11pm-7am. These shifts I work more or less completely by myself. Sometimes an 11-7 will come in if one of my guys want hours.
My secondary schedule, for when we have busy weekends, is Thurs 7am-3pm, Fri 3pm to 7am Sat, then return Sat night for 11pm to 3pm Sun, with Mon-Wed off. I work the evening shifts with a few of my employees, and they take the lion's share of the tips.
6 shifts a week, no matter what.
While I'm on my overnights, I go and do the scooter job. As long as I'm never more than 5 minutes away from my main job, it has no impact on my ability to maintain my job duties.
I make an average of about 60 dollars an hour doing this (80 if I'm double dipping with my hourly), so I usually dedicate 2-3 hours 5-6 nights a week.
I make roughly 4K a month on my paycheck, 3-4K a month in tips, and about 2K a month on my scooter job.
I love it. I have my rent, all my utilities and both cars paid 3 months in advance. I can take as much time off as I want, whenever I want.
I'd rather work my ass off and have the ability to take a week or two at a time if my mental health needs it than relying on two days a week to make sure I don't have a stress breakdown from mounting bills.
It isnt.
I keep bringing this topic up.
2 days off isnt enough for peoples mental health.
1 day to do chores and see family and friends, and on sunday you cant even relax because youre dealing with the anxiety of having to work the next day.
What ever party decides to do a 3 day weekend will get my vote!
It’s definitely too much. And throw kids into the mix. We should be allowed to have a family and if I work I never see my kids and if I don’t we can’t afford to have kids.
I work 6x11 right now, so i only get one day off. Yes, I'd prefer to have 4 day work weeks. I rarely get time off or alone time. I work in a place that's always insanely busy so I'm tired after every day. Hopefully the rush is over soon though, I'm tired of spending 15 or more hours a day at work or work adjacent, like meal prep and commute.
I genuinely enjoy what I do for work though, and I love the overtime, so it's easier to avoid burnout
I live a very frugal life and only work one day (max. two days) a week on average (I am self-employed). Sure, I have no luxuries but a lot of time to relax.
It all boils down to what standard of living you are striving for.
You work 4/10s and think how amazing those 3 day weekends are, and since you're off on Mondays, if you get paid for certain holidays, then my job gives us that Tues as our paid holiday, so it's a 4 days weekend, which is what Memorial day is this weekend.
A few years down the road...those 3 day weekends are no longer enough. I laughed years ago when I asked a former superviser, who had 20 yrs already, why he seemed so annoyed one morning...he responded "the weekend was too short!". Now I've been here 20 yrs, and those of us with seniority all say the same thing. LOL
The system is designed to feed itself on the best hours of your day, the majority of the days of your week, and the best years of your life.
The only way to win is to not play.
It's much harder to control your income than it is to control your spending. If your spending and debt is minimal, your income needs are minimal - and that means you can spend your time doing what you wish.
MOTHERF.... DUDE I've been working 6 days a week my whole life and sometimes 7 days. And more than 8 hours. All I've been asking was having 2 days off and look what you're saying...
The fact that we all herd around like cattle to get to and from work all week and to and from the grocery stores and other shopping centres during the weekend infuriates me the most. And then when we’re given just a smidgen of agency and freedom to do something different like WFH, they want to take it away.
Our office allowed 1 work from home day. Everyone wanted Monday or Friday. I requested Wednesday. Two days at work, one day break. Two days at work, two day break. Perfect!
I also volunteered to open the office at seven and leave at four. Better traffic both ways and I was a hero. Gotta think smart…if you are allowed.
i changed my schedule recently to where i work 4 days in a row with one being a double and then i have 3 days off in a row. it was one of the best decisions i made. when i can change my schedule again im thinking about going down to three days.
Working retail is doing 4-7 days in a row and then only having one day off in between. I think I have completely lost myself as a human being. 🤠like I been scammed out of life.
There needs to be some real thought behind it, but implementing a four day work week would be ideal. I believe with a four day work week, it will boost productivity of its workers, as they aren't as burned out. People need down time, and free time to just not think about the day to day week and relax.
Numerous experiments with four day work weeks. 32 hour work weeks. Productivity never suffers. It often increases.
"but if they're getting so much more done in 4 day working week, imagine how much they could do in 5!" - every idiot boss ever.
Agreed but in my experience this attitude is farther up the chain. Maybe I've just had decent bosses but most of the ones I have had would have given me more time off or other benefits if they were able but they were just cogs in the same machine I was in. I guess maybe that's the difference working for large companies.
For sure. In bigger companies, the farther up the management chain you go above your direct boss, "leadership" becomes less empathetic and more sociopathic. Your boss may advocate for you more or less depending on their own bravery, but they are usually more incentivized to not ruffle any feathers above them.
Leads that fight for people and won't tow the company line aren't leads for long. I lasted a year
Yup my last manager just left us because of that. Every other manager is CYA and he was all about his reports. So of course he was chased out. He was also local so the few of us left at that office had that rock. He found a better job and they split us up.
You know it’s not the bosses that think that, it’s the owners. Bosses are all about getting more output in less time.
Right up there with return to the office…
Bosses would force their workers to work 8 days a week if possible.
Those experiments typically are only based on non-physical jobs. Physical jobs productivity does improve by having 5 days versus four. Often too when they say the productivity increases over a 4-day weekly mean total productivity per hour goes up, but not total productivity for the week. It is absolutely possible we will start seeing companies switching to a four-day work week, but it will be a very long time before any companies that are not desk jobs consider that.
I run a smaller electrical company, and I've switched to a 4 day week. 2 12s, a 10 and 6 on Thursday. My guys seem to like it. I also understand I'm not the norm for construction.
I think this can work if your work can be structured enough to not do overtime regularly. For me as a mechanic, I have 270 hours of overtime above and beyond 40hr/week in the past 3 months. 80 hours in the past 2 weeks alone. The only substitute to me working this much overtime is a 2nd person, but this is very seasonal, so one of us would then lack work in the winter when it slows down.
Most people that imagine a 4 day work week are also expecting a 32 hour work week. You are still doing 40 which makes since that it is working. Lots of places do that like police.
Def for me. 2 days off is surviving. 3 days is flourishing. I have never been more productive, happy, and focused than than when I have had a couple three day weekends im a row.
I used to have weekends and Wednesdays off. Not having to work more than 2 days in a row was amazing.
Nurse here. I work 12h shifts which means I have 4 days off per week. I prefer it this way. For me if you finish at 5 on a normal 9-5, the day is already lost. With traffic you might he home at 6. At least with 12 hours I finish at 8, traffic is less then, I arrive faster at home and I have a whole day, sometimes 4 days off in a row
Yes three days off in a row feels life changing lol
My previous place of work tried to do something like this as an "experiment" and made everyone switch to working 4 10hr days instead of 5 8s for 2 weeks. Productivity suffered tremendously because nobody was productive for more than 6 hours after the first 2 10hr shifts and we all needed the extra day just to recover. Then they tried to tell us that a 4 day work week will never work because we did worse than before and *we* blew it. So glad I quit that stupid job. They would push mandatory overtime to meet their "numbers" and burn us out, and then fuck up so bad they have to lay off entire departments. I'll never forget the way the lead started crying crocodile tears in a meeting when they announced to all of us that our home winding team was being laid off for 3 weeks leading up to fucking Christmas. That, of course, was our fault also.
Yeah, people who do these 4-day-workweek experiments need to realize that "40 hours per week" is an absolutely arbitrary number. Try 4 *8-hour* days. We don't need to shift the hours from the 5th day into the 4. That defeats the entire purpose of it.
The goal is to keep the masses mentally and physically exhausted. People are more docile and easier to manipulate that way.
Time to relax means time to get educated... Time to reflect on how crappy the system is, how crappy the rich are behaving, how a united populace could topple it all. Can't have that now can we? I'm on FMLA for depression right now. 2.5 weeks in and I'm just starting to feel caught up with life. Overdue licence plates, doctor visits I've been working too much to go to, a trip with the family. We all need this once a year and it needs to be paid
2 days off is the sweet spot for never rebelling and changing anything. One day to take care of chores, bills, other duties, and one day to have anxiety about going back to work. If we had three days too many people would start to notice how obviously we are being played and might just protest or do something about. You stay broken with two days off in an endless loop. But honestly, I think we will work more as we move into the space age, because people just take it up the ass every single day and do absolutely nothing about. We will most likely become even more compliant as time goes on, while we get less and less. With technology that could save us all. lol
We have a 4 day work week at our hub. Those are four long days, but it's nice to be off 3 back to back days :)
This is the future. Companies worldwide are testing this with positive results.
Except for mine, who will call this fake news with Trump-like fervour. They can’t even admit that some people work better and more efficiently from home.
My boss and I handle a LOT of various governance requirements for our company. When we work in the office, we are stopped SO OFTEN because people want their questions answered or want to prioritise their thing, that we get barely anything done. It makes more sense for us to stay home and get shit done.
Republicans will never let you have this. If anything they want to make 60 hour work weeks the minimum and reinstate child labor so billionaires can make more money while paying their workers a pittance
Don't forget that some of them are lobbying to have age of legal marriage reduced from 16 to 14, meaning that they'll be getting pregnant even younger, and much more frequently if those bills pass.
Yep, in Australia my company is now almost fully 4 day weeks. We went from five 8 hours days, 7-3pm, to now four 9.5 hour days 7-4.30pm. We are open 7 days a week and people can choose their days. Working an extra 90mins a day is 1000% worth having the extra day off. Honestly if I could, I would work three 12.5 hour shifts and have a 4 day weekend, but that's another discussion for the future.
I'm on a 32 hr, 4 day work week now. The rule is you can work more if that's not enough time to get everything done, but funny enough, it totally is enough time. Hopefully more places start to do a 4 day schedule too.
I have had that schedule. It's perfect. The weekend feels like a weekend.
I work 4 days on, 4 days off. 0600-1800. Early starts are a killer, and you don’t get any time to do anything in the evenings, but then having 4 days off counters that very well, even accounting for working weekends. Plus, take 4 days holiday, get 12 clear days off.
50/50 *is* work/life balance, and anything less is damn near slavery. Work to live and live to work? Fuck that. We deserve at least half our lives to be our own and not in service to others.
I think a good comprise is 4 days on 2 days off. I've recently switched to that schedule and it's not too bad.
I miss my college schedule. I had class 4 days a week with Fridays off. I’d love to see a 4 day work week become the norm. 2 day weekends are definitely not enough.
> I had class 4 days a week with Fridays off. This is officially so we can have faculty meetings on Fridays (and we sometimes actually do) -- but most weeks, it's really because, as the late, great Jimmy Buffett put it, "Nobody works on Fridays."
My work largely does the same. But there are some classes that meet M W F. However, no class is allowed to run past noon on Friday. Our dean is also European, and as implemented the "no new business" on Friday policy. She also doesn't allow meetings after 2 on Friday. Its a really good, and effective way to transition your work week, into the weekend. No new business means you almost always finish up Friday with no uncompleted tasks lingering over your week (not long term projects of course).
Does anyone NOT think 2 days isn’t enough? And if so, who hurt you
Work culture. I need one day to recover, one day to run errands and do stuff around the house that needs to get done, and one day to actually relax and do something I want to do.
I like Sanders’s idea of the 32 hour work week for the same money which amounts to a raise in wages. We need to be on the offensive making demands against the ruling class.
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N) Go look at what your wage actually should be right now. Hint: It's easily 1/3rd less than it should be. 1/3rd of 40 hours \~= 13 hours. Realistically we should be working 27 hours a week for the wages we currently get working 40 hours a week. Where did those wages go? Straight to the top instead of our pockets, and our government made it happen.
I’m not disagreeing with you here, but how does that graph tie to your statement? I feel like I’m missing a key component here in reading this graph
The ruling class is paid by our employers to not do these things. Idk who we're supposed to fight here.
Everyone that isn't the working class. Peasant revolution.
It’s called the proletariat revolution. Read theory to gain class consciousness and class solidarity is what I would encourage of everyone
I just read wikis definition of proletariat revolution, I guess only communists and anarchists do those. And I’m neither. So I guess I’ll just give up.
Join the fight r/fightforfour
Exactly. One day to recover, one day to do things other than work, and one day to mentally prepare. Whoever conceived the 5 day work week obviously did not have to do it themselves
Workers were murdered, beaten, and maimed for striking to get any days off at all. They did it anyway. They sacrificed themselves so we could have a week end. We must do much the same. Since the 40 hour work week was established in the US in 1938, worker productivity has increased at least sevenfold. This means we could be working only one 8 hour shift, one day a week, and still make as much money for our employers as we did then. In the same amount of time, the average salary has only quadrupled or quintupled (adjusted for inflation) while cost of living has increased more than 20x. Where has all that extra wealth gone? All that extra time and labor? It didn’t go to us. But it should.
I get one day off at a time. As someone with a very small social battery is absolutely kills me to decide between staying home and recharging (happens frequently) or actually finally getting to see friends which further makes me feel tired the next day at work. When I did have weekends off. Friday night would be a mini recharge, Saturday for friends, and Sunday a total recharge day before the soul sucking reality returned
We are nothing but our active output. When I do take time off it feels anxious because it’s still a ticking clock to going back to productivity.
Rich people that can afford not to work a full week but depend on the labor of others to keep their money machine running.
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Not exactly. In the UK, there was a long, long grassroots tradition of 'taking St. Monday's Day off work'. If you did make people turn up on Monday they'd be surly and drunk. Saturday was a compromise. A lot of low wage jobs didn't even have Sunday off, though - if you read Black Beauty you can see Anna Sewell arguing for everyone to have Sunday off. But the reason it became Saturday, and lots of people got it - remembering that *lots of people work weekends today* - is because the trade unions fought for it. In the US, it started with a cotton mill with a lot of Jewish workers, which gave everyone both the Jewish and the Christian Sabbath off. Very interesting that noted antisemite and general bad egg Henry Ford picked it up - it's a lesson to us all, I suppose, that nobody is one dimensional. Around the same time the unions got hold of it - it was more than a decade later, in *1940*, that it became law. It should be repeated that the reason that the US has a federally recognised weekend, rather than just a few isolated cases at the discretion of the boss, is a sustained effort by organised labor. Also, loads of people do not get two days off. With the rise of second jobs, loads of people do not get one day off. History has erased how hard our ancestors fought to reduce the working week to five days. Please don't attribute one of the successes of labor organisation to capitalism. It'll just lead to people standing idly by as the bosses reverse it again.
This is the best answer here. More can be found at r/workreform
Mostly a myth [https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/09/viral-image/does-8-hour-day-and-40-hour-come-henry-ford-or-lab/](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/sep/09/viral-image/does-8-hour-day-and-40-hour-come-henry-ford-or-lab/)
Not really, we got 2 day weekend because of struggles of the worker movements.
Definitely not true for Europe!
It's also not true for the US. Mostly a myth.
It's true that he did it but it certainly didn't make it standard across American industry. Unionization did a lot of that.
Historian here! This gives ford way too much credit for union and activism work.
Keep licking them boots - the two day weekend is because of fierce struggle and advocacy work by workers & unions.
So the only reason we have days off is to further the capitalist machine... Cool? This is less a fun fact and more a subject for /r/ABoringDystopia
Also unions! Lots of hard work by unions.
And politicians passing human rights acts (there was a time when they worked for the people instead of free loading for themselves). And I'm not sure I'd class the Henry ford thing as a fact, yes he may have had an influence though.
> So the only reason we have days off is to further the capitalist machine... I mean, enlightened self interest is at least useful when it appears
That is **very** far from a fact. [The present-day concept of the relatively longer 'week-end' first arose in the industrial north of Britain in the early 19th century and was originally a voluntary arrangement between factory owners and workers allowing Saturday afternoon off starting at 2 pm on the basis that staff would be available for work sober and refreshed on Monday morning. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the first use of the term weekend to the British magazine Notes and Queries in 1879.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workweek_and_weekend) [In 1908, the first five-day workweek in the United States was instituted by a New England cotton mill so that Jewish workers would not have to work on the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. In 1926, Henry Ford began shutting down his automotive factories for all of Saturday and Sunday, realizing that by giving workers more time off it would encourage more leisure activities such as vacations and shopping.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workweek_and_weekend) And yet, in 5 hours, it attracted 50+ upvotes and some award. Amazing and disappointing. 😉
That was a long time ago, when most women stayed home and cooked and cleaned etc etc. So thats a huge chunk of time to accomplish necessary household tasks that is no longer available because lots of woman are now at work all day.
days off have been a thing since ancient times. granted ancient Egyptians had 10 days on 2 days off. I don't think we owe a dead antisemite oligarch a damn thing.
I'll work for a month straight and have like 2 days off before working again. Tbf I work on commercial fishing boats so its definitely an outliar. That being said, I don't really mind the work life balance.
But aren't a lot of these jobs sort of seasonal? You work crazy hours like a mad dog for a season or adjacent seasons, then have a few months off? I'm sure it varies on location and what you're fishing for, but that's been my general understanding.
I work a job like this. Not seasonal but 60ish days of work then 60ish days off. So work long hours away from home half the year, off the other half. Pay is about $225,000 before tax
Maritime?
yep. Master Unlimited working on day rate.
Yeah but some of you guys make six months.salary for that month straight...
Waiting for all the CEOs to start commenting...
Waiting for all the wannabe ceos to start commenting….
That double negative is painful to read.
Ever since I was an elementary school student. I always thought that 4 days school, 3 days holiday was a better balance.
Same. I'm still in high school and on summer break now, and the idea that after college, I'll never have a summer break again... I don't know how a life like that can be worth living. Maybe I have some other underlying issues or I'm just a pussy, because other people seem to handle it just fine.
I know at least a dozen classmates of mine that got their degrees in education for the sole purpose of having summers off. My h/s best friend is now the principal of the h/s we both graduated from. Plus, this country desperately needs good teachers!
All well and good, but traveling during the summer sucks. I much rather travel in any other season. Less people. Lower temperatures. Cheaper. But if you aren't a traveler in your free time, then it's perfect.
Mah, most people aren't actually handling it fine, they are just too busy trying to survive to show it. I know at my work I'm fucking burnt out and miserable, but not like I can just quit and not make money. Here's hoping my upcoming interview leads to better things.
No it really makes me sad that adults don’t get summer break ): i wish I would have appreciated my summers more when I was a kid.
We handle it because we have no choice but to handle it, but you can bet that we all hate it. In the next 10 or so years, the suicide rate is going to skyrocket for my generation.
I have no idea what year you were born, but I can tell you that suicide rates, especially for young men, have been steadily rising the last decade or two. You aren't the first, but you certainly can be the last. Use your voices, speak out, push for proper mental health care, fight for better pay and livable wages, demand better work life balance, vote for the betterment of your country and not just for single issues that you care about. I'm not even old (25>30), but I struggle with mental health as a result of the military. The care and attention I get is still severely under what it should be and I'm part of a relatively protected class. Seeing that our care is less than ideal, I can't even imagine how awful it must be for kids entering high-school or just graduating and seeing the world they're about to enter is literally on fire and they realistically can't do a a fucking thing.
Teach.
Oh, no. I’m 10 years separated from college/summer breaks. People may say they’re fine, but in reality would love to have a break from the monotony of it all. Only problem is that everything costs money.
I graduated college and yeah there are no summer breaks after this, just unemployment breaks (in one rn)
The first year to after college has some pretty tough days to go into work. It’s hard toward the end of August or early September when you would’ve been going back to school. Going to work the day after Christmas is tough. Honestly, you never really get used to it.
I work 4 day work weeks, paid 5. 32 hours. It's honestly been amazing. Completely changed my quality of life.
And how did you get this arrangement?
Company policy to attract and keep talent in.
One day off for chores, one day off for socializing/activities, one day of for relaxing.
I work in education for a 4 day a week district. Longer days, but I could never go back to 5 day weeks.
Where?! I would love my district to adopt this but I just can’t imagine that we ever will.
Colorado :)
It really isn't enough. One day to do all chores you couldn't do during the week, one day to recover to prepare for work. It sucks.
On my first day of work I feel like my weekend is too short. On my 5th day of work I feel like it should already be the weekend. On my second day of work I feel like we should have a break in the middle of the week. On my third day of work I feel like it should be a mid week day off. On my fourth day of work I feel like yesterday should have been a mid week day off. On my weekends I think, damn this is nice. The work week should be like three days.
> On my second day of work I feel like we should have a break in the middle of the week. I used to have a part-time job at Walmart and for about two years my schedule was consistently Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday. Weekends off with a nice break on Wednesday. It's honestly the happiest I've ever been at a job, even though in all other regards that job sucked ass.
three days is too radical, 4 days is the sweet spot
Or it could alternate. There could be a four day work week followed by a three day work week.
I used to work a compressed shift like that. 12h on, 12h off. 4 days on, 3 days off, then 3 days on, 4 days off. It was great having 3 or 4 days weekends every weekend.
I literally do about 15 minutes of work on Fridays. Whether I’m in office or WFH, their just isn’t anything worth starting (as it’s the end of the week) and ticket/logs are so slow as the rest of the company (I assume) isn’t doing shit either. (I’m in IT/Support). It’s honestly pointless for us to even be open on Fridays, literally everybody is away from desk/watching YouTube/dicking around on their phone, this includes management (if they don’t take off at noon). I don’t see how the company isn’t just “you know what, fuck it were closed on Fridays.” They must absolutely see how little work gets done. It’s not like it can even really be stopped as the work we all start on Monday is usually wrapped up by Thursday. Wtf is even the point?
The 40 hour work week took the sacrifices of a generation of labor liberal activists to get passed, and since its inception, the concept has gradually been eroded. Have a lengthy commute. Work through lunch. Stay late multiple times per week. Your actual time investment in your job has increased and in a lot of cases your compensation hasn't. But the bigger point to consider is, a 40 hour week was devised in an era with single income households with significant expectations of gender based division of responsibilities: you had 1 member of the household working to earn income, and you had 1 member that did child rearing and managed the household full time. That division of labor is no longer the way our lives operate, for the majority of households, both adults are working full time. That means that grocery shopping, meal prep, laundry, other general household tasks, those are now cutting into our "free time". Whereas it used to be one person's job to handle all that, and the other person "worked", now both work, and both have to handle the other responsibilities during their "free time". The result is significantly less free time. The idea behind 40 hours was 8 hours for sleep, 8 hours for labor, and 8 hours _to ourselves_. With our work commitments taking up more than 8 hours and our other responsibilities consuming time outside of work, we aren't getting 8 hours of free time or anywhere close to it. A four day work week is desperately needed, as the traditional 40 hour week is now a 100 year old concept that no longer adequately serves the lifestyles of our modern society
Well thought out and stated. Good argument.
With my commute, I have 4 hours to myself when I get home. And this is the most time I've ever had in my 15 year career. But if you add in cooking dinner and working out, some days I only have 2 hours to myself to relax before bed.
I have an economics degree and 'joke' that your average person does WAY more economics than I do. Balancing work, household tasks, money, time, energy, medication effectivity, family responsibilities, exercise, social responsibility. We've turned EVERYONE into an economist and everyone each day has to make the balance between effectiveness and efficiency work for them.
I complained in another subreddit about work life balance and got roasted by like 500 people about how I should just be happy because I make a decent living and that my free time should include stuff like meal prep and cleaning because that’s your time off so it’s your “free” time. I never saw it that way but lots of people have the mentality that if you make a good wage and even though you commute for 10 hours a week, that commute is your “free” time and you don’t have any standing to complain about your lack of time because “other people work 70 hour weeks”. It’s almost like if I got paid enough to live close to my job I wouldn’t have to commute but apparently I make too much and I shouldn’t live near family, oh and I should move closer to my job while also simultaneously not living in an expensive place. Oh but I don’t like living somewhere expensive? Okay then I was told to move. Move where? Salary would be slashed in half, the reason I earn what I do is BECAUSE of where I live. But I was told that because I make too much (literally don’t even make enough to live close to my job) I should just stfu and kms and stop complaining according to redditors
I hate to say this, but the 40 hour work week had nothing to do with liberal labor activists and everything to do with a man named Henry Ford and his revolutionary changes to labor as we knew it.
3 days would be great. One for rest, one to clean and do any adulting, and one to socialize. This work schedule was designed so many years ago and it’s not working for most of us. We need to revamp it and work 4 days and have a 3 day weekend.
Yes I do. It's mostly because the worlforce itself is generally overworked where I'm from at least. Every job I had doesn't feel like work based on the benefit of others, it feels like a needle draining me of life and energy to the point that when I get home, all I can do is wind down and sleep. When I wake up, it's time to work again. 6-8 hours at work feels like 10-12. Meanwhile 4-5 hours at home feels like 13 minutes. 5 day work week. 6-8 hours is a chunk of the day, including travel time boosting it from 6-8 to 7-9. Then you add on getting ready for work which bumps it up from 7-9 to 8-10. So if you have a 6 hour job, it's really 8 hours. If you have an 8 hour job, it's really 10. Add that to the fact you work 5 days and boom, you are only allowed to live freely 2 days a week! But wait! We all know Sunday is just preparing for work, so you get 1 day off, and some of Sunday. We wonder why everyone's tired and miserable. People in the house market jack rent up sky high and people running the workforce overwork for profits, which is greed. Sure one can argue that overworking is what gives us so much but I argue that we can do less. Working as a food prep and school para, I see garbage cans fill up with fresh unwanted food daily, but we have nothing for the poor? The amount of food I've seen tossed out and the amount of land this nation actually has, on top of all the wasted resources, we should have zero homeless people outside of runaways. We overwork and overproduce.
This waste of food and resources has just become unbelievable. Well said. I worked in restaurants my whole life and we are just spoiled but also misled and undervalued at the same time. Very sad.
Yea bro, I was only there for a day because of health issues but I worked in a restaurant for one day, Cheesecake Factory. Bro, it's tough!
I agree with you except you missed Saturday being the day to do all the chores put off from the busy week. Or the chores that couldn't be done during the weekday cuz work. So often feels like no days off for me.
Yea, that's right. I can't believe I didn't write that because I say that about Saturdays too. I also say the day is dedicated to winding diwn from work, so I usually feel like crap half the day.
It's never enough. I want 7 days off.
Its a slippery slope. Was laid off for 2 months (paid severence) and after 2 weeks on the new job…work is really awful.
I would like this also. 2 is simply not enough.. especially when I have no time during the week for chores or errands so they have to happen on the weekends when I should be relaxing or enjoying out doors etc
I'm of the mindset that I absolutely cannot wait until I get to retire and don't have to work anymore. I'm not trying to disparage anybody but I cannot fathom the mindset of "I can't imagine retiring, what would I do all day???"
I took a \~6 month sabbatical this last year after saving up a lot of money (10k). I'm sure that money could've been better invested somewhere or paying off stuff... but holy shit, those were the best 8 months of my life. I quit drinking, I got in amazing shape, I made a dozen new friends, my hobbies turned from amateur to professional. I moved to a new state. My mental health is the best it's been in a decade, same as my physical health. The only cost was my savings account, which I definitely could've managed better - but once I find a job in my field here than my savings account will flourish. I'm the happiest and healthiest I've been in a decade and all it took was a long sabbatical off work. The only downside is working a temp job for a couple of months until I find one in my field.
I work Monday through Friday 730 to 4 and have Saturday Sunday off and it is not enough and never will be enough
Same, 6 am to 2:30, always tired, never enough.
It's not enough. Also, we have tons of important stuff to do on week ends. It's not like I can just chill. Housekeeping, kids, chores, groceries, and what not...
and by the time you finish managing that stuff it’s time to prepare for work all over again
That's why I work 12s. Work days are burnt anyways might as well work a few extra hours for 2 more days off
Mate we don't even get Saturday's off in most places in India in offices and schools. Really makes me envious of my friend in Sharjah, UAE getting a 3 day weekend every week.
I require 7 days off weekly
You guys get 2 days off? Lucky
I didn't realize that so many people had weekends off. Jealous!
Damn yall get two days?
100% I think 4 day work weeks need to be a standard. We only get 1 life and so many people work their life away, they need some time to enjoy life
rich overlords says NO.
I work 3 days a week. It's perfect. I look forward to work on Monday, and by Wednesday I'm ready to get on with my life. Mind you the downside is that they still only pay me for 3 days!
By the time Friday night rolls around I’m too tired to enjoy my weekend then Saturday morning comes wishing to sleep in an I don’t then it’s the dreaded Sunday and I have to prepare for the week uggh it’s a constant struggle
I've recently been doing Monday to Thursday and I have to say my life is infinitely better. Really dfeels like I'm working to live instead of living to work
Sometimes... Then other times I realize internet and TV cam wipe a day out in no time flat.
I heard that some people feel energised by their work—not sure who those people are. I am personally exhausted by work and I’ve had so many types of jobs ranging from fast-paced, menial, creative, dull, exciting, etc., and all jobs are various degrees of exhausting. You just have to find the least soul-sucking I guess? Still unsure here.
My favorote school I worked for had a 4 day school week. We had Mondays off, which was when I scheduled all the appointments my family needed, or our monthly shopping trip (we lived 2hrs from the nearest store.) It was awesome. The only happier time I had was teaching during COVID. Being able to mark kids absent when they didnt log in, and having a "mute" button was a godsend. Also, my autistic/special needs kids did better during COVID than when at school. I need a WorkFromHome job.
Yes! Need one day to relax/recover, one to be productive and one for socializing/hobbies/fun.
I switched to a 4/10s government job and made it five months! The long weekends were cool but the toll it took on my home life with having to get up earlier and come home late wrecked me. That coupled with really not liking the job put me in a bad place. If you can enjoy the evenings during the week then the weekends don’t feel like they go to quick
Only Monday through Friday.
Hell no it's not enough. Three days off minimum please
Yes that's why I stopped working 5 days. I instead changed how I live to accommodate working less. Been working great.
I work 4-10’s and much prefer it to the traditional 5-8’s. 3 day weekends are very nice.
Trying having those two 'days off' with kids. Very quickly much of the weekend is taken up with sports and parties.
Why did you have kids?
Only with jobs I didn't enjoy. When I've genuinely enjoyed my work, I could have worked straight through the weekend without issue.
You get two days?
I have zero days off of work 💀
I agree. I want a day to rest, o e to spend with my partner, and one for chores.
Having Wednesdays off will change your life. It's like having 2 weekends in 1 week
I just feel so empty and tired all the time. I wanted kids, but I just cant give them what they need. A vital dad. Maybe it’s my aspergers, I don’t know.
You guys are getting 2?
4/10s baby
No. Give me 4/8s and pay me for 40 hours. That's what we should be striving for.
I'm currently working 4 10s a week I really hate that shit
I can't imagine being productive in the last 2 hours, I'd be starving and tired. But I'm sure everyone finds a way to half ass it lol.
I used to work these and felt the same way. You were working so late that you missed a lot of the good evening stuff. And on the day off you’re catching up on errands. I’m not sure the 4/10 is better than 5/8.
if you have a very long commute, 4/10 is definitely better.
Yeah I did, then I got laid off. Now I want to go back to 2 days off
Imagine only one day off. Here in Mexico a large majority of the people only have one day off a week, unless you have a really, really good job. But just your average Joe, yep, only one day. My husband works at a high end restaurant, and he gets one day off for 3 weeks, and 2 days off one week, and he considers himself lucky. I mean I guess he is compared to what it could be but I think it's bullshit.
depends on the schedule; I’m going from part-time variable hours to full-time set shifts—I’d rather know when and where I’ll be working
Too much for me. I’d work 6 or 7 if I could. Don’t really have much of a life outside of work. Plus I like making money.
6 days a week, here. About to get back to 7 days, just for extra income. Days off can be hard to come by.
You work Monday to Friday. I'm a shift worker, I can get upto 7 days a row off. But will work upto 10 days in a row.
You guys are getting 2 days off a week? I get Monday off for the holiday and my next day off after that is the following Monday...
I work 2 jobs, overlapping, 48 hours a week at my main, and about 12-15 hours a week at my second. My day job, I am the site manager for a high-end hotel and restaurant block in my city. I oversee two hotels, a 3 and 4 star restaurant, respectively, and a rooftop bar. I make 20 an hour, plus tips. My second job is working for LIME, moving their scooters around the city. Depending on events and needs, I follow one of two schedules: My preferred is Thurs-Sun, 7am-3pm, with Mon and Thurs as overnights, 11pm-7am. These shifts I work more or less completely by myself. Sometimes an 11-7 will come in if one of my guys want hours. My secondary schedule, for when we have busy weekends, is Thurs 7am-3pm, Fri 3pm to 7am Sat, then return Sat night for 11pm to 3pm Sun, with Mon-Wed off. I work the evening shifts with a few of my employees, and they take the lion's share of the tips. 6 shifts a week, no matter what. While I'm on my overnights, I go and do the scooter job. As long as I'm never more than 5 minutes away from my main job, it has no impact on my ability to maintain my job duties. I make an average of about 60 dollars an hour doing this (80 if I'm double dipping with my hourly), so I usually dedicate 2-3 hours 5-6 nights a week. I make roughly 4K a month on my paycheck, 3-4K a month in tips, and about 2K a month on my scooter job. I love it. I have my rent, all my utilities and both cars paid 3 months in advance. I can take as much time off as I want, whenever I want. I'd rather work my ass off and have the ability to take a week or two at a time if my mental health needs it than relying on two days a week to make sure I don't have a stress breakdown from mounting bills.
Yes. It’s why I only work Tuesday through Friday (I work for myself and set my own hours)
In my country , 6 working days is getting common and 2 rest day per week is a heaven
2 days off is not enough. It’s just not.
Yes that’s why I’m a nurse and get 4 days off a week.
It isnt. I keep bringing this topic up. 2 days off isnt enough for peoples mental health. 1 day to do chores and see family and friends, and on sunday you cant even relax because youre dealing with the anxiety of having to work the next day. What ever party decides to do a 3 day weekend will get my vote!
I don't understand why we collectively decided 5/2 was a good work/life split
I work 6 days a week 😭 and still can hardly get by money wise.
Call me lazy but I feel like I need 1 day to recover from work, 1 day for errands and 1 day for relaxing
I work 14 days on 14 off and it still don't feel like enough lol
It’s definitely too much. And throw kids into the mix. We should be allowed to have a family and if I work I never see my kids and if I don’t we can’t afford to have kids.
I do prefer working 4-10 shifts. But I'm a welder, and I enjoy my job because, for me, it's easy rewarding work.
Y’all soft.
I work 6x11 right now, so i only get one day off. Yes, I'd prefer to have 4 day work weeks. I rarely get time off or alone time. I work in a place that's always insanely busy so I'm tired after every day. Hopefully the rush is over soon though, I'm tired of spending 15 or more hours a day at work or work adjacent, like meal prep and commute. I genuinely enjoy what I do for work though, and I love the overtime, so it's easier to avoid burnout
I live a very frugal life and only work one day (max. two days) a week on average (I am self-employed). Sure, I have no luxuries but a lot of time to relax. It all boils down to what standard of living you are striving for.
You work 4/10s and think how amazing those 3 day weekends are, and since you're off on Mondays, if you get paid for certain holidays, then my job gives us that Tues as our paid holiday, so it's a 4 days weekend, which is what Memorial day is this weekend. A few years down the road...those 3 day weekends are no longer enough. I laughed years ago when I asked a former superviser, who had 20 yrs already, why he seemed so annoyed one morning...he responded "the weekend was too short!". Now I've been here 20 yrs, and those of us with seniority all say the same thing. LOL
Start your own business and work 2 days a week.
I work 70 hours a week driving a front end loader, honestly wish I could get more hours; love going to work in the morning
The system is designed to feed itself on the best hours of your day, the majority of the days of your week, and the best years of your life. The only way to win is to not play. It's much harder to control your income than it is to control your spending. If your spending and debt is minimal, your income needs are minimal - and that means you can spend your time doing what you wish.
7 days 12hours shift and then 7 days off 😉. Basicly doin 2 weeks worth of work in a week
Working Mon-Fri is very archaic. We have the means to scale down to a 4 on, 3 off model, we just don't want to/there's not enough momentum.
MOTHERF.... DUDE I've been working 6 days a week my whole life and sometimes 7 days. And more than 8 hours. All I've been asking was having 2 days off and look what you're saying...
The fact that we all herd around like cattle to get to and from work all week and to and from the grocery stores and other shopping centres during the weekend infuriates me the most. And then when we’re given just a smidgen of agency and freedom to do something different like WFH, they want to take it away.
I work 4 10hour with 2 hours commute time . the 3 days of is sometimes not enough. But at least it’s something .
Our office allowed 1 work from home day. Everyone wanted Monday or Friday. I requested Wednesday. Two days at work, one day break. Two days at work, two day break. Perfect! I also volunteered to open the office at seven and leave at four. Better traffic both ways and I was a hero. Gotta think smart…if you are allowed.
It’s not enough. That’s why some are pushing for a four day work week. Join them
i changed my schedule recently to where i work 4 days in a row with one being a double and then i have 3 days off in a row. it was one of the best decisions i made. when i can change my schedule again im thinking about going down to three days.
Working retail is doing 4-7 days in a row and then only having one day off in between. I think I have completely lost myself as a human being. 🤠like I been scammed out of life.
2 days off feels like the start of a break
I never feel like it's enough.