this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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Work Reform

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for me at least, 8 hours any other time of the day is less bad than the constant awful grind of 9-5

you're always commuting right when everyone else is commuting, you have to be up early every morning (and it always FEELS early -- if you're naturally waking up at noon but have work at 1 that doesn't feel as much like a boot stamping on your face forever), many things are only open during those hours so there's always a time crunch if you have errands

and it just feels worse. you feel like a depressed office worker in a movie. by 5pm the day's already over, the sun is setting in winter. and the most insufferable of all, imo: once it's evening, you start feeling dread for tomorrow. so it's like you're never truly off work because you know you have to go to bed early to be up early to go right back.

somehow these standard hours are the most offensive possible to personal autonomy and mood.

i'm extremely lucky to have a WFH at the moment where i can make my own hours; when i work approx 9-5 like that, i just feel so trapped. i don't want to go to the store before work because i just woke up and can't be bothered, i can't go after because traffic is a nightmare and i'm exhausted by then. it just sucks. there's no mystery or magic to it. working food service until 2am felt cool, it felt cool getting paid to stay up late and make pizza and have a 'good reason' to have a weird sleep schedule and be out super late. 9-5 makes me feel like jim from the office except less charismatic

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Spoken like someone that's never had to work night shifts in a production environment.

Smell the roses.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago (2 children)

After working in factories for most of my life on this miserable planet, being in an office is a great thing. I think people forget or don’t know how bad it is when you’re working in a non climate controlled building basically being told to work harder and harder, breaking your body AND your spirit. Not feeling well that day? Too bad, the production line won’t slow down for you, so you eventually get taken into the office and chewed out, possibly getting a write up. You would’ve stayed home that day, but your factory only gives you 4 points, and two weeks vacation that you HAVE to put in months ahead for it to be even considered.

Needless to say, I’d much rather 9-5 office and commute than to ever go back to breaking my body and soul at a factory or food establishment.

Stay humble.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I think people forget or don’t know how bad it is when you’re working in a non climate controlled building basically being told to work harder and harder.

By your logic we could go on and on comparing worse working condition.

I think this type of thinking is detrimental for our own condition. If we are glad that we are not in a worse condition, why would a CEO (or the state or anyone) give us better condition in general?

I think that complaining is a good thing, because it creates the opportunity for growth

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

No. You were not following my logic at all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I'm curious about your logic then.
It reads like factory work sucks, so be humble about your office job.
This could be spun to slave labour sucks, so be humble about your factory job.

Two things can be less than great.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This is why unions exist. Unions put power back into the workers hands.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

I’m all for unions. I’m also all for people not having to work back breaking jobs such as I have. No one should be put through anything like that in this day and age.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I like 6am to 2 if I get to work 8 hours. But I work construction so it’s never just 6-2. I’m lucky if it’s not 6-6.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Same. I work from 06.30-14.30 when I work from home

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

This is why I work nights. For the reason that I want my days available for anything.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago

9-5 going into the office is horrendous. That's peak traffic both ways so the commute is longer than almost any other time.

9-5 working from home is okay.

I have to go in 3 days this week for a special meeting /event. I spent an hour and 15 minutes in my car this morning and 50 min on the way home. That's 2 hours and 5 minutes I didn't get to spend with my baby or walking the dog, working out, cleaning the house, etc.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The 9-5 became mainstream about a century ago and, somehow after the vast technological progress we've made, we're still stuck with so many hours of work. Hell, it's actually more like 8-5 if you have a solid lunch hour (unpaid, of course, even though you have to be at or near work to get back to it on time). Given how much productivity has increased, we're owed 3-day work weeks. 3-day work weeks also make it easier to raise children if you can align it so that the parents' workdays don't overlap.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Given productivity gains relative to a century ago, we should only need to work one day a week.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

I work 10 to 6 but I've been lucky enough to continue working from home (for now at least).

Regardless of the time of day, what kills me more than anything is total hours worked. Like others have said, it's not a fully productive 8 hours.

Anything past 6 hours and my brain mentally starts shutting down. During high stress or high productivity days that can be shortened to 4 or 5 hours of actual productivity and then I slow down

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

My job is 9-5 but I work from 8:30 to 4:30, and I work from home most days but visit the office every month or two. I do miss my previous job that was 7:30 to 3:30 though...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I've worked 3pm-11pm that's nice because you can get up at about 6 and do tonnes in the morning before work. I've also worked 4am-12 that's nice because you've got him midday to going to bed at about 10 to do shit you want.

9-5 or thereabouts sucks because you don't really have much time in the morning or the evening.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I also worked 3-11, I was living in Barcelona and working EST 9-5. It was fucking idyllic to actually be able to enjoy the day.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 9 months ago (4 children)

We should be working less, like maybe a few hours a day. Most of an 8 hour workday is unproductive time anyway. We've got decades of automation improvements, they should be serving to free us from constant labor instead of lining the pockets of the rich. But alas.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

I work from home an average of 4ish hours per day, with plenty of breaks whenever I feel like it, and I'm one of the most productive people at my company of 50 employees - many of whom go into the office regularly.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Very true. A majority of days I create work for myself so I'm not caught idle by the time lunch comes around.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago
[–] [email protected] -3 points 9 months ago

8-6 isn't too bad.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Logically speaking regardless what hours are picked as the "popular" hours, they will feel like shit due to association.

Because almost everything operates on a 9-5 schedule, it makes a 9-5 schedule feel gross because you associate it with working hours.

It's a feedback loop.

The main things I've found that make it 2ay worse though:

  1. Caffeine. By a huge margin, becoming dependant on caffeine fucks up your schedule and makes you feel like you are perpetually in a funk. In the morning you are exhausted, during the day all you want us a nap, and at night it is hard to sleep. Repeat.

  2. Not having a proper breakfast. It's a meme but it's fucking true. It's easy to skip or half ass breakfast, but it leaves you feeling like shit all day long.

  3. Phones in bed. It's incredibly hard to resist. If I leave my phone on my office desk and go to bed unplugged, I sleep so much more. It's just way too tempting to sit up and plug into those endless dopamine hits and not fall asleep til 1 in the morning.

  4. Hydrating before bed. Waking up feeling like my mouth is full of sand and my body dried our isn't Nirmal or healthy. When I started bringing a water bottle to bed to sip on, my sleep improved a tonne.

  5. Early morning pass break. It's super tempting to ignore your bladder abd stay in the warm cozy confines of your bed, I get it. But I found if I listened to my body and forced myself out of bed to go take that super early morning / late night piss, wgen I crawled back into bed I would sleep way harder and wake up feeling much less achey.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Breakfast is overrated I haven’t eaten breakfast for years and I never felt like shit because I skipped breakfast. Just eat healthy and get enough calories, doesn’t matter when you do it. It’s not like you have burned all your dinner calories when you wake up.

Breakfast is only necessary if you are young and growing or do heavy manual labor. But even for labor you can carb load during dinner the day before.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

I think all about what one is used to. I used to eat large breafast and would feel horrible by lunch if I skipped it. But after skipping the breakfast most days for a couple months I'm barely hungry before lunch and haven't noticed any difference in energy levels.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Most jobs don't need these strict schedules, though. I get it in hospitals, factories, etc., but everyone else could easily switch to looser time slots.

For example, I'm technically on what's called Gleitzeit (sliding time?), that means, there's a core 6h window from 9 to 3, where I'm supposed to work, but where I put the other 2h is up to me. In terms of commuting, that model would help smoothing the traffic curve.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It sounds like you could be mouth breathing at night as well. Sleeping on your side helps with that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Or getting a sleep study done.

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