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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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.
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.
Very true. A majority of days I create work for myself so I’m not caught idle by the time lunch comes around.
Amen!
Amen!
I can’t stand working til 5. After work I still need to go to the gym, cook dinner, eat, clean the kitchen, walk the dog, spend time with my family, and relax. How is that possible?
I got a job that allows me to set my own hours and work 6:30-2:30 and it has been a godsend. Feels like I have a life again.
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.
Given productivity gains relative to a century ago, we should only need to work one day a week.
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.
This is why unions exist. Unions put power back into the workers hands.
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.
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
No. You were not following my logic at all.
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.
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.
I consider second shift to be worse - I worked 3-11 for awhile and its just depressing. You wake up and can do things, but you’re just waiting to go to work. When you get out, it’s pretty late and most people are going to bed.
9-5 allows me to have my relaxation time at the end of the day, along with everyone else. Any other shift feels lonely, and like you’re off-sync from the rest of society.
Worked a 2-10pm shift and actually loved it. Its definitely lifestyle-dependent but it suited people who were younger and single. A group of us would go out to bars/clubs right after work and the be able to sleep in. The best part of this middle shift is that its not hard on your circadian rhythm AND you get to avoid most management presence for your shift.
Ooh I didn’t think about it like that - but then again I was a bit of a homebody even in my 20’s lol
Definitely depends on your social circle then: my group of friends were mostly 9-5 and did stuff together in the evening, so it felt like I was always missing out.
I have gone to bars in my scrubs before working evening shift at a hospital. Evening shift is absolutely great when you are in your 20’s.
When I worked retail I liked 3am to 12pm-1ish depending on the day. While it had me going to bed earlier than most people, it did allow me to feel like I still had some day left to get other things done.
Now I work for myself and while I do have to be willing to work when/where the work is, I have a lot more freedom and am working towards getting that same schedule back if I can.
I liked nights as well! I used to work 11-7 for some shifts, and while it was still a little lonely to go to work while people were heading to bed, I still had the whole day to do things if needed. It got me into the bad habit of just staying up for 24 hours if I wanted to do things in the evening though
I didn’t like night’s as much. Probably because the way my townhouse was facing my room was lit up by the setting sun reflecting off the building across the street. Even with black out curtains. Plus with that shift, even if you want to go do something with others on the same schedule, nothing is open besides waffle house and a couple of other restaurants.
2am-11am (idk what shift that is) is even worse. I drove to work without a seat belt hoping a drunk driver would hit me.
Graveyard shift
Oh, duh. My brain was stuck on 1st, 2nd, etc.
I feel you. I actually liked nights, but the burnout is real. I’d have trouble sleeping during the day, and had a horrible sleep schedule trying to keep up my personal life and still work nights
Give me the 4 day work week damn it
Ok but you get to work 10 hour days. Enjoy! /s
4 10’s is still way better than 5 8’s
I find it somewhat better but 10 hour days is rough. I liked 9 80s a lot better
You enjoy, I’ll pass.
How are you not dead by hour 9?
It takes some time to adjust but the long weekend is worth it. I got a new job last year and am working 12s now. That adjustment is harder because there’s barely enough time to feed myself and get enough sleep before I have to go to work again.
Damn monkey’s paw
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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
It sounds like you could be mouth breathing at night as well. Sleeping on your side helps with that.
Or getting a sleep study done.
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I work in a tech-field and for most jobs I’ve been on there’s been core business hours that you’re expected to be in your office which gives all the workers a little bit of flexibility. Core business hours are usually around 10am to 1pm. How it works is you do your 8 hours however you want, so long as the building is open, and you are in the office during core hours. We have a good-sized early morning group, also a smaller group (usually younger) that comes in later in the morning and hang out til 6 and then go out for drinks afterwards. Most of the jobs also allow people to flex their hours within reason. So you can work a 8+ hour day to work a shorter day later.
This little bit of flexibility is so great - allows parents more time with their kids, going to appointments, avoiding traffic, etc. Literally saves you so much in PTO and $$, as well as other residual benefits to your health and wellbeing.
EDIT - For clarity, they usually don’t show semi-flexible/flexible work schedules in job postings, but definitely ask during interviews. Let’s be real, a 4-day, 8-hour/day schedule won’t manifest in this lifetime, so this and WFH are the next best things.
That’s how my job is. No one cares what hours I work as long as I show up to meetings and answer outage phone calls.
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
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…
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.
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.
Try 9-6, and I have mandatory meetings Tues/Thurs at 7:30 am. Every week.
This is why I work nights. For the reason that I want my days available for anything.
8-6 isn’t too bad.
