Ever since I graduated, everywhere I’ve worked has been 8-5. My current company is going to soon start expecting us to be in 7-5.
How many of you here work a 9-5 with a paid lunch?
Productivity keeps going up but so do working hours.
Officially I work 8 hours of my choice between 7am and 7pm with 30 minutes lunch.
In practice I work at least 8 hours (most often about 8.5), usually get a lunch, have to be at my desk at 8:30 for standup, and am always on call to some degree. If any of our infrastructure isn’t working then I am, but after hours stuff isn’t all that common.
Many research jobs are like that
Seattle electrician here. My schedule is 6-230 with a 30 minute unpaid lunch.
Do you mean you’re available on-call from 6:00 to 2:30? 20 hrs a day is too much even for third-world country standards
2:30 pm or 14:30, that’s just an 8 hr day plus lunch.
Most of my jobs have been 9-5. I work as an ecologist. I’ve also always been hourly, so that’s why my hours are not so broad.
I work 8-4 with a paid lunch and I’m hourly. Don’t think it was like this at previous jobs though
Yes, they still exist. I am both salaried and clock my hours. I have to clock 80/2 weeks and I need approval to clock more than that. If I do, I get comp time or overtime if pre-approved. Including for traveling for work. I don’t clock my actual times, just hours worked per day. So no annoying 15min accountability that I’ve heard of from other companies. I think I technically have to take a 30min lunch but I haven’t heard noises about that for like, a decade. We’ve got hours we need to be available technically as well (9-3). I’m also 80% telework and I despise that 1 day a week I sit on the same Teams calls in the office.
Salaried employment exists, and there are more jobs out there than they want you to think. The employer-employee relationship is a constant negotiation, and you’re always free to walk away.
We don’t know how much time we have on earth, and you’re selling some of it in exchange for money.
They are going to keep pushing to get more of your life from you, and you need to push back to keep as much as possible.
you’re always free to walk away.
Yeah, and die of starvation or exposure, which ever comes first…
Maybe take a look around at the reality most people face before giving such out of touch advice…If your choices are between working one specific job or starving then you owe it to yourself and your family to improve your marketable skills or value
Right, that’s the violence inherent in the system. I wasn’t giving advice, I’m saying that’s the only leverage you have. You’re selling the minutes and hours of your life, little chunks of being alive, and you’re selling it for less than it’s worth. You have to, because nobody would buy it if they weren’t profiting from you. It’s good for them if you believe you have no choice, especially when you do.
My advice is always be applying for jobs. Or go into business for yourself, if you can manage it.
If you’re really only able to work for one particular, shitty company. You might want to invest in yourself. Learn a trade or read a self help book.
Don’t think that exists anymore.
Mine is 9-4 some days. I do automated QA for an enterprise application. Management budgets 2 hours a day for lunch and overhead (meetings, emails, chatting, etc.) for each employee. If I don’t hit that then I can get off early.
I saw a law office once in the early 2000s that was 9-5. And the entire office shut down for an hour, while they all had lunch together in the conference room. The phones all went to voicemail and everything. I was working on replacing a few of their computers that day. They made me stop and join them. Seemed like a great place to work.
That’s what happens when the business is structured as a worker cooperative (as law firm partnerships basically are).
That’s not uncommon for doctors offices and such
I worked at one company that was 7am-5pm for corporate office work. The company grew from a small retail parts company decades ago, but never changed the mindset. So even the office work was treated like shift work. Office workers wouldn’t even check email before 7am. Many times just hanging out in the cafeteria until 7 on the dot when they had to be at their desks. Further as soon as 5pm hit exactly, all the office workers would drop what they were doing and walk out to the parking lot with all of the other blue collar shift workers.
This resulted in things like Purchase Orders getting delayed by a day because it arrived at the approver at 5:01pm and the approver was gone. There was nearly no weekend office work, which caused its own problems.
It was such a strange place to work.
Strange that people only worked during the hours they’re paid to work?
Salary workers aren’t generally paid for hours, but instead for the job.
So you’re saying they should have worked less?
It wasn’t a statement about more or less, but more flexible. The PO that came in at 5:01pm should have been approved, and the management shouldn’t have been so hardassed about being seated at your desk at exactly 7am.
I mean… the PO shouldn’t have come in at 5:01 if they wanted it approved that day. That’s just rude.
I work in document control, so I’m sending documents between companies regularly. Often, at the end of the week someone will dump a 100+ document transmittal on us half an hour before the end of the day. And then they go home.
You bet your ass that shit is waiting til Monday.
Oh certainly! I’m not suggesting that its reasonable for someone to drop hours of work on your desk at the end of the day and expecting you to stay late to finish it.
This was more of a 2 minute task, and not even on a Friday. Office workers worked only the 7am-5pm, but hourly non-office workers had 3 shifts. So it wasn’t uncommon that large tasks for the non-officeworkers which might be done overnight went undone because the office worker didn’t do a 2 minute tasks. This had downstream impacts to deliveries and client reception.
In any other org I’ve worked in, the office worker would maybe stay until 5:09pm to kick the task forward for overnight completion and perhaps come in 10 minutes later the next day. In this org if the office worker came in 10 minutes later (even if they worked 10 minutes later) the office worker would be written up!
So… they knew the value of their own time and didn’t overwork when they didn’t have to?
Most office workers could probably learn from that mindset.
They were still having 2 hours/day stolen from them, though.
So… they knew the value of their own time and didn’t overwork when they didn’t have to?
This worked the other way NOT in favor of the workers. Sat down at your desk at 7:03am even though you’re not customer facing at all? Expect to be called into a conference room with your boss and your bosses boss about your attendance.
Do you work in IT and need to work off-hours to perform work requiring downtime until 2am? You better be at your desk at 7am on the dot or you’re going to get written up.
Have a doctors appointment at 3pm for an hour? You have to take vacation time for that.
There was this really odd notion that if you weren’t sitting in your chair typing, you weren’t working and would get questioned by bosses.
Most office workers could probably learn from that mindset.
Office workers would learn (or be reminded) about how hellish it was to work a minimum wage job with zero flexibility.
Do you work in IT and need to work off-hours to perform work requiring downtime until 2am?
Then you’re a chump for not doing it during business hours instead, rest of the company be damned.
Which is largely what happened, and it was very disruptive to the company, but again, their rules, their consequences.
That is 100% not how you framed your initial comment. It was very much focused on how the workers weren’t going above and beyond to work when they didn’t have to.
Sounds to me like they were reacting to a shit situation in the most appropriate way they could.
That is 100% not how you framed your initial comment. It was very much focused on how the workers weren’t going above and beyond to work when they didn’t have to.
That wasn’t my intent to communicate that, but on a re-read, I can see how you came away with that.
Sounds to me like they were reacting to a shit situation in the most appropriate way they could.
That was it exactly.
I mean… you didn’t say anything else, how else could you have meant it? You even complained that them leaving on time was inconvenient when someone else dumped something in their desk after working hours.
I mean… you didn’t say anything else, how else could you have meant it?
I was pointing out one part of the oddness of an office organization that chose to operate strictly from 7am-5pm. If you’re asking why I didn’t explain every aspect of every perspective, I’ll say it was a 30 second post on the internet, not a comprehensive peer reviewed study of workplace behavior.
I admitted my initial explanation had ambiguity that could lead the audience to arrive at an unintended conclusion. I’m not sure what more you want from me over that mea cupla. There’s no deeper motive on my part to mislead besides my admitted initial carelessness.
You even complained that them leaving on time was inconvenient when someone else dumped something in their desk after working hours.
Inconvenient to the organization, not to the worker. I was pointing out that the organization had created the situation working hours (strict 7am-5pm), yet was suffering because of how rigidly it enforced the rule. The org was shooting itself in the foot.
I had a bosses’ bosses’ boss tell me (via my boss) that I had to work 8-5 and take an hour lunch. Told my boss at that time that I would no longer be available for lunch to do anything work related. Told him I worked over lunch to get into things quickly the first few months but I’ll play the game. Started using the on site gym to the fullest.
My job is basically 9-5 (salaried), but no paid lunch. If I want to take lunch, it doesn’t count towards the hours I work during the day.
I didn’t even know paid lunch breaks were/are even a thing. Most jobs I’ve been in had 30 min unpaid lunch.
I work 9 to 6 with 1 hour unpaid lunch at my current job. I don’t really do anything during my lunch besides sit in the office wasting time for an hour. Home is 30 min drive away, so I can’t go home. No parks nearby to walk around. Makes it feel like I am working a 9 hour shift getting paid 8 since I am sitting in the office for 9 hours…
Back when i worked an office job this is why lots of people would just go sit in thier car during thier break.
I started doing it to take a undisturbed nap. Also so people stop bothering me while I’m on break.
My mouth is full of food and I’m chewing in the break room. Why the fuck are you here to talk to me about work…
9 to 5 is just a phrase referencing a standard full time day shift job not about the specific start/stop times
I work 8:00 to 4:30 with a half-hour lunch break. Frequently I’ll put in a few extra hours in a week for some overtime ‘cause the job isn’t hard at all.
