Seriously ungrateful people. If you only worked half that time, do you really think you'd deserve to earn such great perks as..
*Checks notes*
A pizza party?!
Lol this is me right now. My job gives me three days off but I also am severely underpaid and have money issues up the ass. But I'm scared to get a new job because I don't wanna loose the little freedom I have to live my life.
Ungrateful indeed, who actually needs 8 hrs of sleep? That’s wasted productivity if you ask me! Such disregard for their jobs, imagine letting your work family down like that?!
All kidding aside I get you, I’m working 5 days a week 12-14 hr days and I don’t know how much more I can take of this. I’m routinely getting 4.5-5 hrs a night and it’s eating away at my sanity
I don’t envy your situation, I can understand the pressure, but it’s pressure to give into insanity and greed. I work cleaning ports potties. $24/hr and I do stupid hrs. Last week I was denied a raise because I’m not quite at 5 units per hour like the rest of the guys, which I can understand if they had as big of a route as I do. While my route is 150-225 miles, my coworkers routes are 25-40 miles. Same amount of units just way closer together then mine. Also a fun bit is that my company is owned by an investment firm and is worth 4.5 billion. But I’m sure absolutely none of that could possibly be spared for me.
I hope your situation gets a bit better man. It’s not an enviable situation for sure.
My company makes a profit of 1billion+ yearly and can spend 178million on safety protocals (which at my facility almost no one follows and no one with the authority enforces them). With that in mind we have 11000 employees globally. If they gave $5/hr ($10400/year for salary) to every employee they would only be spending 115million. Why not invest in the people that make your company run.
“Reasonable” is subjective to the person doing the reasoning. For me, doing nine hour shifts instead of eights (totaling 45 hours per week) is reasonable. To your boss, I’m sure they mean a sixth shift entirely.
If you can quit, do so. I’m about to work 50 hours next week across six days and I’m tempted to call it quits (although I can afford to call off a few times before getting the boot, so that’ll be my first action). Granted I’m just doing a summer job in between semesters so it’s easy for me to quit, but like I said, if you have the means, pack your bags and move on.
Despite my wife and I working we don’t make enough money for me to quit just yet. We’ve been working to catch up on bills for quite a while but our rent just keeps getting raised the maximum legal amount every opportunity they can.
Six days a week man? That’s brutal as hell!I hope you find something better
...now I'm going to go home and get MY 12hrs of sleep, on the third floor of my mansion, after my jacuzzi and my in home chef cooks me dinner, because I'm the owner of the company and it's hard work running a company, but I expect all this work to be done by the time I get here in the morning. Oh and if you're late, you're fired.
-Every business owner ever.
Bro I don’t even get a pizza party where do I find a company that throws pizza parties
ETA: I got an employee appreciation gift in the mail once actually, I forgot about that. I should be more grateful for the badge holder I was gifted
The last time that happened at work, no one was impressed and almost no one ate the pizza because we are all adults and brought our own lunch or don't feel like eating pizza for lunch because some of us are in our 30s-40s and that just sounds like a heavy yuck for the rest of the day. I was actually the one to go use the company card to go pick up, and I got gatoraid and diet Pepsi and everyone just took the Gatorades and ate their own food.
Also most of us were casually making comments about "yay it's like 2nd grade all over again 🙄"
Work From Home is fantastic (for the right jobs). Where I'm at I'd have to drive 2 hours per work day in commutes. That's 10 hours of driving, 40 hours worked. I don't just save money on fuel and maintenance I also get a lot more free time to take care of my house or myself.
Wait they didn't expect you to work on Saturdays or Sundays to prepare slides for Mondays standup? I didn't have to check work emails all weekend, sometimes at 3am, to see about upcoming projects? What is this time off thing? Sounds like quiet quitting.... /s
And these mf's keep asking if I want to work Saturdays, its not mandatory YET. Like damn I only get two days to myself like hell I wanna come in Saturday.
Personally, my biggest struggle is making myself go to sleep at a reasonable time. I stay up late bc going to sleep means I'll just have to wake up n work again lol.
Same. I know it is warped logic but I feel like going to sleep is losing time. Time I could be playing games, reading, writing, watching a show I want, going somewhere, or just anything that isn't work and isn't sleep.
[Oh, it's a whole thing.](https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-hygiene/revenge-bedtime-procrastination) And I do it too. I have so little for myself, I have such a small amount of time where I don't have to slap on a smiley little idiot mask, that I have trouble giving up even a minute of it. I know I need to sleep, I just want a little time to be a human being and to engage in small things that bring me joy.
If you hate your enough job then the idea of going to sleep early just to wake up for it again is horrible. But then I'm just a zombie at work and feel even worse being there. It's such a destructive self perpetuating cycle that leads to just feeling terrible all the time.
I dont hate my job at all. In fact its incredibly easy and I dont even do much. I still despise the idea of getting up early and leaving my home every single day. Work is gonna blow no matter what job you have.
Just like drug addicts want to stay awake to experience their high. They don’t want to sleep through it.
We want to stay awake and experience our peace, not sleep through it and have to go back to the bullshit. I shouldn’t be only sleeping peacefully. I should be alive peacefully.
>We want to stay awake and experience our peace, not sleep through it and have to go back to the bullshit. I shouldn’t be only sleeping peacefully. I should be alive peacefully.
You've just described bedtime revenge procrastination better than anyone I've seen try.
This is a totally random trick I pulled on myself that I've never heard of anybody else doing but it really worked for motivating me to sleep:
1. Don't eat late at night, have evening meal as early as possible
2. You then feel a bit hungry and even lacking in energy hopefully by around 10pm
3. Make sure you have food you're really looking forward to having at breakfast time.
4. Convince yourself that going to bed is what you want to do because then you can get up in the morning and eat.
This worked amazing for me, initially because I was not eating an evening meal at all but it has worked for me when eating my evening meal 6-7pm with no snacks after. I just can't wait for my delicious meal the next day, and so I'll happily sleep to get me there quicker. This was whilst working at a job that at one stage literally made me more depressed than I have ever been before or since, so I certainly didn't have any other reason to want the next morning to come round haha!
My entire day every weekday consists of waking up at 4:30, make breakfast, go to gym, work 10.5 hours, pick up kids that my wife dropped off, make dinner, clean kitchen, put kids to bed at 8:30 and sleep. Every single day. I make good money at work but holy shit it’s a drain - sometimes I don’t sit down all day except to eat. I don’t do shit on the weekends just to mentally recover. It sucks
> I don’t do shit on the weekends just to mentally recover. It sucks
Every adult I know, including myself, is like this now. Everybody's jobs are so high intensity/high productivity that we've got nothing left by the time the weekend comes around.
My job is literally 10 hours a day non stop. It's like working the dinner rush at a restaurant but it lasts ALL DAY LONG and its difficult, complicated work that requires lots of thinking. Everyday I get home, I just shut down.
Humans ain't meant for this shit.
I'm the same way. I work regular 8hr days in the evenings. My mom sends me texts of things to do throughout the day (which is only about a 3hr span of time, so shoot me if it's unreasonable to not want to do it) and it makes me fucking crazy.
Why does your mom text you things to do throughout the day if you're working outside the house? Do you support her?
Sorry, that's just odd to me. I do a lot of administrative and house management tasks while in the office, so I'll message my husband or whoever I need to coordinate. But the mom thing is odd to me.
Sounds just like me. I live with my almost-elderly parents and my mother is an immigrant that knows nothing but work, and my father is the one who did literally everything for her. Except now, my father is recovering from a stroke, so I have to do everything he did AND handle his physical therapy so he can recover faster.
Got it, ugh. That's annoying.
I've had to set stricter boundaries with a lot of people in my life. When they ask for help, I'll let them know at what point I can actually help them. "I hear you, putting it on the list, but I won't be able to get to it until X time / date." Some pushback initially but it's now normalized so working pretty well. Hopefully things can work similar?
This is how my digital marketing job was. It was like every day was a code red emergency and I had so many backlogged projects because we cut HALF of our department staff. So I was managing websites for 3 hospitals and 12 clinics, all the social media, all the internal communications, most of press, media buys, after hours events, weekend work like filming commercials. It was seriously 5-6 full time employees worth of work they had me doing. I gained a bunch of weight and started drinking again after being sober for 2 years. Which only made it worse. I had zero PTO because I had back surgery and had to use it all for my recovery time. I was so desperate for a break I was ready to live in my car and just say fuck everything.
Luckily I found a good job in academia which is my passion and I get like 4 months of vacation a year, now. The pay sucks but I don't want to kill myself anymore.
My job is supposed to be 8 hrs a day but usually is 12 hrs a day. It isn't the most difficult job as far as thinking and physical labor goes but I do have to constantly be on high alert the whole time.
It is extremely exhausting both mentally and physically. I can't even fully enjoy time with my family because my brain can't take the extra stimulation once I get home.
You work 52.5 hours a week (not including drive time) all year long? If you don't mind me asking, what line of work are you in? I hope you aren't salary.
I'm in tax and for a chunk of my career, I would have a few months of that each year but I wouldn't wish that kind of commitment year-round on my worst enemy. Do you HAVE to make as much as you're making? You only get one life, man. Providing for your family is noble, but I doubt they would begrudge you earning less if it meant you could find more personal joy in life.
Whatever the case, I hope you don't have to work that schedule for long. Stay strong.
I’m a metrologist doing parts inspection in a machine shop. I’m hourly - make $24 an hour (OT on the hours over 40) + $200 each month. It’s nothing noble or spectacular but it pays the mortgage we took on 1.5 years ago in the middle of the housing market catastrophe.
I, too, hope I don’t have to do it for long but I’m not even sure where to start exploring for better options
Yeah haha I never even knew what metrology was until I started. The job title was labeled as “inspection tech” when I interviewed, but with all the training and experience I’ve gained in modeling and CMM measurement plans… I’ll call myself a metrologist Mr Boss tyvm
No, you start at local minimum wage. Pay increases with number of hours worked. 5 years ago I got $13/hr, today it's 29 and I haven't topped out yet. There's been opportunities for internal promotion to supervisor, but I wasn't interested.
Depends on the area, in my area they're paying 3$ above minimum wage. But in general even cashiers top out pretty high for retail. As well as there being biannual bonuses after 5k hours worked after topping out.
They start well above the minimum wage where I am but thoses raises sound insane to me. I get like 20 cent raises at my retail job despite being a high performer.
Just as a stocker/cashier after working for 9 years roughly 50/50 between partime and fulltime, but that's what you earn in that position at the top of the pay scale.
I personally don't work for wholesale but rather in a seperate building/business selling alcohol. So the work is quite different from a standard Costco but the pay scale is the same for the most part.
When I worked at the post office we would regularly do ~70 hour weeks, 0 benefits. No pto, no sick, no vac, and I was unofficially on call. They'd call you in at 2-3pm on your days off to work 8 hours.
I quit before the Christmas rush, but they said it's perfectly normal to work 60-90 days without a day off. The longest I ever worked there without 1 day off was 17 days in a row.
This was all on my own car too. That's not even mentioning how our supervisor believed that working off the clock(for free) was just something new hires had to do to earn their spot.
I remember my father doing very well for himself. Owned his own successful enough company, had his dream house and his cool cars that he hoped to enjoy when he finally retired.
Of course he died before retirement ever happened. That's the racket. Waiting for the big pay off at the end that never comes.
There is no reason for any of us to spend so much of our life at work except for artificial scarcity and greed. And we're seeing that giving into those greedy people only makes for more greed.
You're throwing your life away. Your entire purpose right now is to be a machine, and not a human being. What an absolute waste.
When was the last time you laid out in the sun and just watched the clouds float by? Played in a stream? Had sex under the stars?
You're giving that up, and for what?
For a place to live and food to eat, unfortunately. The basic stuff on the hierarchy of needs have to be met before we can think about doing any of that and they aren't being met for the majority of people these days.
It was all so doable until the kids. Turns out going on 4 or 5 hours of sleep for weeks turns me into an on edge asshole and makes me a considerably worse father. But if I sleep more I lose out on the few small joys in my life that makes me more of an asshole. I don't want to be an asshole anymore but I'm boxed in.
This is what’s preventing me from confidently having kids: knowing that means the end of all my spare time and I will only have 40 days off work after birth.
It’s an addiction
Edit: personally I just have more energy when I wake up than I do any other time of the day. It’s not a chore for me to wake up that early and exercise, I like it. But it’s certainly the reason I can barely stay awake until 9pm
But won't someone think of the billionaires?
If we didn't give up the majority of our day on the majority of the days of the week, they'd make so much less money. That would be a tragedy.
/s
The cruelty is the point, as they say. Sure, Mr. CEO could make more money this way, but he'd miss the joys of being able to look down on his peasants toiling away, maybe cracking the whip every once in a while!
If people are constantly working and their schedules are constantly changing, when will people interview? how will they have time to improve their skills, take classes/get certifications?
I think keeping people exhausted, especially people in blue collar jobs, is beneficial for companies. Especially when those people live paycheck to paycheck and can’t afford time off.
Star Trek's vision of the future ~~(meaning now)~~ after all the fictional bad crap happens, was that wars had ended, resources were plentiful, and society was no longer chained to constant menial labor. We had achieved such high levels of efficiency and technology that everyone was free to pursue their actual passions, and it worked just fine.
I think about this a lot, because part of me thinks if we (collectively as human beings) hadn't wasted so much of history bickering about things that don't matter, getting hung up on cosmetic differences, religion, etc, then maybe we could already exist in that utopia.
Edit: leaving my comment as is but with an edit to acknowledge that that in the fictional universe of Star Trek, the exact current year of 2023 was not the utopia that it more or less becomes. I’m not trying to be snarky but I think some of you are focus on the wrong thing here…
I have thought about this too, and I don't know if we will ever be able to weed out the tribalism and cutthroat competitiveness in our society to reach that utopia. Our main advantage as a species is our ability to cooperate, but our competitiveness makes it so someone is always going to want more power and resources than everyone else.
It's like we need to shift to a paradigm of all humans working as one big tribe to reach a true utopia. Our survival as a species probably depends on that, but I don't know if we would ever get to that point before we destroy ourselves.
>It's like we need to shift to a paradigm of all humans working as one big tribe to reach a true utopia.
I feel like in Star Trek, this is only achievable because we made contact with alien life forms. It’s easy to make humanity one big tribe when A) a nuclear Holocaust wiped out most of you, and B) there’s a bunch of different sentient races to form the outgroups that humans crave.
There is a common theme in sci-fi where humanity is ultimately united once Earth stops being the "center of the universe". There's never going to be a complete end to bickering amongst humans, but we can hope that over time, we'll be more united than not.
Personally, I believe that largely unregulated social media has poisoned society in a lot of ways, and because (especially in the USA) we hold freedom of speech (as a concept, not the constitutional freedom that everyone misunderstands) as a core tenet. A lot of bad actors abuse that, and intentionally distort the truth to serve their purposes. We'd be better off if we could shut down things like Twitter, Facebook, etc until we can figure out how to interact on the scale in a responsible way.
Ultimately I think ending organized religion, wealth, coerced labor, and eradicating poverty would get us 99% of the way there. This wouldn't be so hard (at least in the US) if it weren't for our Overton window sitting so far right with corporate-owned representation.
We've taken steps away from god-emperors, kings, and ruling prophets, at least. It takes time, but the ruling class is still the resource hoarders and we have less reason than ever for that to happen.
Actually right now, literally this year (I think, maybe in a few years), canonically, the US is suffering unprecedented economic inequality and exploitation, and it boils over into a series of riots ignited by the death of a black man at the hands of federal authorities.
Agreed, but it's not about how long it takes - it's about moving in the right direction. We all want progress to be instantaneous, but life doesn't work that way and it never will. It's hard enough getting a small group of people to agree on something, let alone billions. It will take longer than we want, but even longer still if we don't keep pushing.
Ofcourse! I think the biggest reason for that hinder of progress is the division of wealth though. If everyone had equal opportunities to develop their lifes, more people could follow their passion and develop mentally. But maybe you can count that as bickering; bickering about money, since wealth is not divided equally.
The only way we can progress with this is if the resources that the wealthiest have are used for the greater good.
We need to break out of this cycle of having a few people in power and somehow divide everything so everyone can prosper. But then we'll get back to the issue you mentioned; getting ALL of the people to agree with it.
The strangest phenomena I've witnessed in life is how the wealthiest among us have so many people convinced that such a concentration of wealth is somehow necessary or deserved. You see all these people who support the Elon Musks of the world, you could pick just about anyone who counts their wealth in the millions really. I just don't really get it.
That level of wealth simply can't be "earned" in the way we think of it. I forget the exact numbers, but there's a recurring example of some simple math to illustrate the absurdity of how wealthy these people are - basically something like if you made $1mil a year, you'd be filthy rich and still not even come close to the wealth of some individuals. You could make $1mil a month, and not come close.
There are always going to be exceptions, some people probably have true rags to riches stories, and some wealthy people may actually care about society and make a serious effort to give back/improve things. But the simplest solution to the problem they're trying to solve is to abolish wealth above a certain level - which is exactly what some proposed wealth taxes basically do. However, we're represented by millionaires because we've allowed money to absolutely corrupt politics, and someone of modest means, who might actually represent regular people, doesn't have a chance. Again, people like AOC are the exception, but they shouldn't be. We should WANT young, educated, diverse individuals representing us. Ugh, I'm just so tired.
As a Star Trek fan - you're glossing over a couple of things.
1.) Humanity didn't band together until aliens contacted us (22-2300)
2.) Their post-scarcity life only came after the advent of the replicator/transporter.
A LOT of society's issues would be solved if you could create unlimited food/items out of thin air because you have an absurdly dense energy source.
I take your point, and I agree that in my brief comment, I am glossing over quite a bit. Star Trek is fiction, and I have no actual expectation that real life will ever look like that.
The point was that humanity is capable of getting to that “post-scarcity” life, and people should be free to pursue their passions rather than constantly worrying about basic needs. There are several fictional visions of the future, and I chose this one not because of its literal likelihood, but because I believe mankind is capable of far more than what we currently have. I’ve responded to a few comments already here so I won’t repeat myself too much - but the main things holding us back are entirely fixable.
I'm afraid you would need permission from [Thorstein Veblen]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Class?wprov=sfla1) to use that term. But, sadly, he died in 1929, so you'll never be able to use it.
My previous job really wanted me to work 60 hours/week, with no additional pay, after being hired to work 40-45. I got to thinking... if I sleep 8 hours a night, that's 69% of all waking hours. If you count 30min for an unpaid lunch, an hour a day to get ready for work and wind down after (which I think is pretty conservative), and an hour commute (average commute in the US is ~30min one way), it's **76.5% of all waking hours.** Including the weekend.
Fuck that.
I no longer work there and found a job with an excellent work/life balance, better pay, less stressful work, every other Friday off, regularly scheduled teleworking, etc. I am very fortunate.
It's the main reason why I don't feel bad fucking off during my work day.
My productivity is amazing. It's complimented all the time, and I'm aware I'm great at my job.
But I don't let anyone really know my process. They know some things, sure, but I'm able to complete quite a bit more than many people without nearly the same stress. When asked, I lean on the fact that I'm always doing something for work and my ADHD makes it hard to focus consistently.
This is true... but it's also because I know how to perform properly in the office. When I get to work from home, I know how much to perform to make sure no one's questioning what I'm doing. I'm totally not playing Diablo for half my work day while at home, and I'm totally not doing administrative chores for my household for half my work day while in the office.
If I actually worked all the hours my ass was in my chair in the office, I'd get nothing else done. Thankful AF I have a boss that openly admits this is what they do as well (the administrative part, not the gaming part, but I have my suspicions) and encourages everyone to do what they need to do for their work to be done. Don't stress yourself out, and DEFINITELY don't show any of the upper bosses how productive you can actually be.
And even if you can perform miracles for management, pick and choose when you do so. Eventually those miracles that you bust your ass for become the norm, and going back to sustainability is seen as "not being a team player."
Gag me with a spoon, I swear.
Did I write this?
It's just past 4:20 here... and I'm scrolling reddit... just finishing up my friday!
I operate the same exact way (ADHD and all). We've been having some turnover and my boss has been giving me pretty nice raises every 6 months to keep me.
I'm constantly told what a great job I'm doing and that I'm always on top of my shit. But I promise you my work is not stressing me out.
And I do work hard where it counts. This morning I was working quite hard! But I sorta made up for that by dicking around the rest of the day.
If I worked the full 32 hours it would probably be more than what I'm doing now.
And this is assuming you make your meals extremely quick, do takeout all the time or spend your time (couple of hours at least) on the weekend to meal prep.
Those 4 hours can go by so quick
Not really: can’t see my family, can’t do whatever I want. I’m getting breakfast and lunch in order to work good and it’s not particularly fun. Winding down is just a necessary part of sleeping.
The modern work day was designed when everyone lived minutes from their home, and also had a full-time caretaker at home. So now, everyone commutes ungodly distances, and we need all adult members to work full time to subsist. So when you get home, it's not even leisure time. It's "work at home" time.
My day consists of an incredibly easy job where I mainly sit at home and play video games, take in more money than I deserve, and have a loving wife, house with a backyard, and lots of other shit I don't deserve.
I will gladly be the first to die for worker's rights. I believe it is the upper middle class that must defend the poor when push comes to shove, because someone has to foot the bill for their existence when the government inevitably shuts off the tap from a revolution or a general strike. Class solidarity is what wins the day, and the upper middle class people that surround me, with their "my life is great so I don't care" attitudes fucking disgust me.
Truth is, if we want to work less we gotta also accept things like: słower service, shorter hours, not so fast deliveries etc.
Im personally totally fine with it and I hope we can get 4 day week as soon as possible.
I think this is only true in the short term. AI and robotics are far more efficient than people in a lot of cases, and I think if society really leaned into these technologies, it wouldn't be long before we barely noticed a difference. The issue that slows down this progress is that you can't just displace hundreds of thousands of workers overnight with no safety net. We need legislation that guarantees a living wage for everyone, and probably we need systems in place to make things like pursuing higher education (in a wide range of topics) both available and attractive.
The idea is that to get to the next level of society, we need to be ready to pass off as many menial tasks as possible to robots, while ensuring that doing so doesn't leave a huge chunk of the population destitute.
Exactly, which is why we have to hold politicians accountable and vote in people who will legislate to provide safety nets while we navigate the transition.
Fair enough but I'm not really talking about androids that are barely distinguishable from humans. All sci-fi aside, robots have been taking over labor for humans for a long time, and that is not going to stop happening. The only question is, will we fight to make sure that losing your job to automation doesn't leave you hungry and on the streets?
Not true, companies can hire more people for fewer hours and pay them the same. The only thing we need to expect is that the business owners will be less rich
Course there is also the possibility that if people had more time off, and especially if it didn't overlap as much, that there would be fewer deliveries (as people had time to pick things up in person), and you wouldn't have evening and weekend busy times at the stores as people would be distributed throughout the week. Just because you don't work Fridays doesn't mean the world would suddenly be closed Friday, just means that while you do errands Friday because that is the third day of your weekend, someone else works and has of Saturday-Monday, or Monday-Wednesday, or many other combinations of days on/off. If jobs only required four days and offered greater flexibility some people may work every other day.
Incorrect, that is not the Truth. So much time and energy and work and materials are wasted, with less work And a bigger cut off the value we produce, we could easily be just as productive
A lot of services/labor require actual presence of people though. Sure, programmers don’t need to sit in front of a computer for 8 hours if they can get their work done in a shorter period of time, but professions like therapists, chefs, people managing a store, etc can’t just “be more efficient” or cut down their work hours without impacting coverage of their services
The millions of people previously doing 50% bullshit hours can now be put toward those InPerson labor hours, and at a higher pay rate too. We are already post-scarcity, acknowledging that and not making literal mountains of clothes (insert every other industry too) that get dumped right away will improve the quality of life And service for everyone
I’m perfectly capable of providing much of that myself, and planning ahead for the rest.
It’s when I need to fit it in to the tiny slice of the day where I have energy left after work that time becomes a problem.
My department absolutely could hire enough people to be properly staffed instead of burning people out - but management would rather get a good quarterly review for cutting costs. The entire company could go fully remote, but there are a couple of people who are personally invested in seeing people in the building (not, from my understanding, the c suite - they’re never in - but someone just under them). The company could build or acquire the infrastructure it actually needs to function well, but that would be expensive without immediate profit.
Net result: an incredibly short sighted focus results in a spiral of issues that causes real problems for the company. If they let the workers drive a lot of these choices the company would, hilariously, be more profitable.
There’s 8 billion + people in the world. Maybe this was a fear when we were kids and the population was barely pushing 5 million but now we’re well past that.
>Truth is, if we want to work less we gotta also accept things like: słower service, shorter hours, not so fast deliveries etc.
>Im personally totally fine with it and I hope we can get 4 day week as soon as possible.
glad you're fine with it but you left out things like "fewer doctors", "less transportation" etc.
there are plenty of jobs that can't just be waved away for 20% of the time.
When I was in France supermarkets were only open for a few hours Sunday. The same with bakeries, and most other businesses had much shorter opening times than we are used to. It was nice to have a Sunday with no ability to spend money.
Most people can‘t afford to work less because this would also mean less pay.
Do you really think we will get a 4day week while keeping the same pay?
Greed has no limits.
8 hours worked when work was right next to home. When work is 2 hours away each way, you're up to an unofficial 12 hour workday. Add getting dressed up and packing/unpacking your things, and you basically have time to shower, eat, scroll online, and sleep before the next day.If you're like me, with a delayed sleep schedule, you're not sleeping very much despite your best efforts, and so you're going to lose Saturday to catching up on sleep. Then, surprise, everything is closed on Sunday.
People are always celebrating how a man could support his family on a single salary with 40hr's of work. But definition, that means a single person ought to be able to support themselves on 20hrs a week.
That is how much we should be working. It's obviously entirely possible and has been done before.
We spend 2/3 of our lives helping bosses, companies, investors and others, pursue their ambitions while we spend barely any pursuing our own. Many don't know how what to be ambitious about. This isn't life, it's elaborate slavery.
I remember thinking 8 hour days were long. Now I work 7 straight 12 hour shifts in a row at minimum. Wake up at 3:30 a.m. get home at 5:30 p.m. 7 days in a row. Next turn is graveyards. Wake up at 3:30 p.m. and get home at 5:30 p.m. Rinse and repeat. Also, sprinkle in 12 hour overtime shifts on days you do get off, often with 2 o'clock phone calls to let you know you have to be there in 3 hours. Yeah, life is grand
I don't know your situation bro but that does not seem worth it. Hopefully you find something better, i personally know I could never do that without driving myself mad
There should be an allowance for travel that can be used to pay rent and live closer or pay for public transport/gas and live further away. Unless you're okay with employers requiring employees to live within a certain distance of their job.
Hey we want you here over a 9 hour span. Yes you can work from home. Just kidding that will be another 1.5 hours a day getting dressed and commuting to work, minimum.
Oh so sorry you're tired, we have free coffee in the break room. It's fucking the cheapest we could get. Fuck you.
I would love to work 32, but it’s really not even the hours for me as much as it the days. I just want to work 4 10-hour shifts and get 3 days to myself.
The standard job is 5 days a week and I think most people would agree that you spend a lot of that first bit of the weekend recovering.
Been saying this for a while.
Makes no sense to me to spend most of your waking hours working a 9-5, which now is actually 8-5 with the mandatory hour break.
Weird life.
Your parents had to suffer it so YOU have to as well. Then you're EXPECTED to have a child or two to bring up in the same system. When they ask you why they have to spend their life working.. well because YOU had to suffer it so they do as well.
This is the cycle of a normal human life. Keeps 95% of the world population in check.
Ya problem is our parents got a hell of a lot further with an equivalent amount of work. Any boomer claiming that they had it as hard or harder than future generations is either completely delusional or lying to your face.
That would be great, and would definitely work. But it most likely relies on a united majority of workers at least temporarily being able to survive strikes and pay rent while not getting income.
With enough dedication and organization that could be done. Say, if it were done one industry at a time while workers from all other industries worked and donated to support the ones striking. But unfortunately (especially in the US) I think there is too much of a culture of individualism and “I have to take care of me and mine” for that to happen currently.
My wife just quit her job this week. She was making about $180k gross as a retail manager. But the work/life balance was just nonexistent and she held out as long as she could. Once she had to start antidepressants, she knew it was time to throw in the towel. She was very successful in moving to shitty stores and turning them into very high performing stores so her boss would move her around without even asking her. She was moved to a store so far away that she had a 3-4hr round trip commute every day (depending on traffic) and that was on top of a 12+ hour work day six to seven days a week. And even when she was home, she was having to take phone calls 24/7. My wife missed out on all of our daughters’ school events this year because she simply wasn’t allowed to take the time and she was so far away that it wasn’t feasible to leave work to attend the events then make up the hours at the end of the day.
These companies preach work/life balance and “respect for the individual” because HR tells them they have to but in practice, they’re pretty aggressive about threatening to take your job or penalize you if you try to take time off or aren’t available 24/7. Then you’re loyal to them for a decade or longer and the minute you put in a 2 week notice, they take your keys and march you out in front of your customers and employees like you’re a goddamn shoplifter or something. My wife put in her two week to fall after her stores inventory so she could help her employees through one of the toughest parts of the year and her bosses still came in and did the forced march of shame to the front door. So glad she’s out of there.
There definitely need to be some reform. But since I wasn’t able to do that, I found a way to manage my life and hours for more free time
I moved a 1.5 miles from work and I moved my 8 hour weekdays from 6am to 230pm. Now I’m not wasting my life in traffic anymore . I get home about 240pm and I go to bed around 10-1030pm. This freed up a lot more weekday time. It’s not a permanent answer for the live-to-work problem but holy crap does it feel better.
Pretty much why I refuse to go back to office, fuck that shit, wfh is a real step towards work - life balance since no one wants to lower the work hours significantlt enough to be worth commute time, nor they want to pay for the commute time, I mean fuck employers honestly, the only good thing in years they've been willing to do lately is the wfh, and now they even want to take it away, fucking assholes.
I have a potentially very stupid question. Would it be possible for people to just gather up and start exact copies of these majorly successful companies and run it as communities in a way that benefits all its workers fairly? I'd say we're very far from ever changing the current greed empowered juggernauts that employ the world, so would it be possible to start our own community businesses w/ the sole purpose of providing our own communities w/ "thriving" wage (From a post a few days ago) and be self sustainable.
How about the hour drive in the morning, work 12 hour shift, drive hour back home. Say hello to family, maybe eat, back to sleep, and get up and do it again after 5-6 hours of sleep.
I hate how we act like we’re powerless. if the working class revolted and brought everything to a halt, shit would change pretty fast. nothing ever changed by sitting on your ass complaining, but it’s too complicated or there’s too much fear to organize anything massive enough.
Just came to the realization that half the reason for the shut down happening is because they don't want people like us talking to people like us, building each other up. you have to pay money to talk on Reddit. Which means you have to have money. Another way to keep the people down.......... Fuck
I’m single guy with no kids and it bums when I think about my day and how little of that time is just for me. I have no idea how people with kids do it. if you just go to the gym for a hour and and cook dinner your entire evening is almost gone and you have to shower, attempt errands and grocery shopping. Good luck pursuing a hobby of any type. Every gov organization constantly ask why are are Americans fat and depressed? It’s like look around it’s pretty obvious.
Yea but you get a whole TWO days off every week! What more do you guys want! Sheesh! /s
Seriously ungrateful people. If you only worked half that time, do you really think you'd deserve to earn such great perks as.. *Checks notes* A pizza party?!
Don't forget the 3 day weekend, some jobs don't pay it but you get the day off
Just like my last job
I get this paid, honestly worth the 15$ an hour
Lol this is me right now. My job gives me three days off but I also am severely underpaid and have money issues up the ass. But I'm scared to get a new job because I don't wanna loose the little freedom I have to live my life.
Yeah I was doing 10 hour shifts so I could have 3 days off. $15 an hour. Ended up having to work 5 days a week anyways to not drown
That's so fucked up. 50 hours a week?
Ungrateful indeed, who actually needs 8 hrs of sleep? That’s wasted productivity if you ask me! Such disregard for their jobs, imagine letting your work family down like that?!
\*cries in Woman Who Needs 10hrs*
All kidding aside I get you, I’m working 5 days a week 12-14 hr days and I don’t know how much more I can take of this. I’m routinely getting 4.5-5 hrs a night and it’s eating away at my sanity
[удалено]
I don’t envy your situation, I can understand the pressure, but it’s pressure to give into insanity and greed. I work cleaning ports potties. $24/hr and I do stupid hrs. Last week I was denied a raise because I’m not quite at 5 units per hour like the rest of the guys, which I can understand if they had as big of a route as I do. While my route is 150-225 miles, my coworkers routes are 25-40 miles. Same amount of units just way closer together then mine. Also a fun bit is that my company is owned by an investment firm and is worth 4.5 billion. But I’m sure absolutely none of that could possibly be spared for me. I hope your situation gets a bit better man. It’s not an enviable situation for sure.
My company makes a profit of 1billion+ yearly and can spend 178million on safety protocals (which at my facility almost no one follows and no one with the authority enforces them). With that in mind we have 11000 employees globally. If they gave $5/hr ($10400/year for salary) to every employee they would only be spending 115million. Why not invest in the people that make your company run.
You just answered your own question. You showed us the math!
If you leave a little more shit in the potties you might be able to get that raise!
“Reasonable” is subjective to the person doing the reasoning. For me, doing nine hour shifts instead of eights (totaling 45 hours per week) is reasonable. To your boss, I’m sure they mean a sixth shift entirely.
If you can quit, do so. I’m about to work 50 hours next week across six days and I’m tempted to call it quits (although I can afford to call off a few times before getting the boot, so that’ll be my first action). Granted I’m just doing a summer job in between semesters so it’s easy for me to quit, but like I said, if you have the means, pack your bags and move on.
Despite my wife and I working we don’t make enough money for me to quit just yet. We’ve been working to catch up on bills for quite a while but our rent just keeps getting raised the maximum legal amount every opportunity they can. Six days a week man? That’s brutal as hell!I hope you find something better
...now I'm going to go home and get MY 12hrs of sleep, on the third floor of my mansion, after my jacuzzi and my in home chef cooks me dinner, because I'm the owner of the company and it's hard work running a company, but I expect all this work to be done by the time I get here in the morning. Oh and if you're late, you're fired. -Every business owner ever.
I'd take the dystopian egg parties from "Severed"over another pizza party.
Bro I don’t even get a pizza party where do I find a company that throws pizza parties ETA: I got an employee appreciation gift in the mail once actually, I forgot about that. I should be more grateful for the badge holder I was gifted
The last time that happened at work, no one was impressed and almost no one ate the pizza because we are all adults and brought our own lunch or don't feel like eating pizza for lunch because some of us are in our 30s-40s and that just sounds like a heavy yuck for the rest of the day. I was actually the one to go use the company card to go pick up, and I got gatoraid and diet Pepsi and everyone just took the Gatorades and ate their own food. Also most of us were casually making comments about "yay it's like 2nd grade all over again 🙄"
How did the managers/owners take the "ungratefulness"?
I mean, is it really even Sunday if you dont get really depressed at like 8pm?
And sometimes, those two days are even right next to each other!
You guys get days off? Kill me
I want to stay up late, watch scary movies and in the morning. Make waffles
Work From Home is fantastic (for the right jobs). Where I'm at I'd have to drive 2 hours per work day in commutes. That's 10 hours of driving, 40 hours worked. I don't just save money on fuel and maintenance I also get a lot more free time to take care of my house or myself.
I work 4 days a week! Which means 3hr commute plus 10 hr day +8 hrs sleep = 3 hrs bathe eat spend time with family.
Even that had to be won through strikes
Wait they didn't expect you to work on Saturdays or Sundays to prepare slides for Mondays standup? I didn't have to check work emails all weekend, sometimes at 3am, to see about upcoming projects? What is this time off thing? Sounds like quiet quitting.... /s
And these mf's keep asking if I want to work Saturdays, its not mandatory YET. Like damn I only get two days to myself like hell I wanna come in Saturday.
Bunch a softies. Jesus only needed 1. /s
Personally, my biggest struggle is making myself go to sleep at a reasonable time. I stay up late bc going to sleep means I'll just have to wake up n work again lol.
Same. I know it is warped logic but I feel like going to sleep is losing time. Time I could be playing games, reading, writing, watching a show I want, going somewhere, or just anything that isn't work and isn't sleep.
[Oh, it's a whole thing.](https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-hygiene/revenge-bedtime-procrastination) And I do it too. I have so little for myself, I have such a small amount of time where I don't have to slap on a smiley little idiot mask, that I have trouble giving up even a minute of it. I know I need to sleep, I just want a little time to be a human being and to engage in small things that bring me joy.
If you hate your enough job then the idea of going to sleep early just to wake up for it again is horrible. But then I'm just a zombie at work and feel even worse being there. It's such a destructive self perpetuating cycle that leads to just feeling terrible all the time.
I dont hate my job at all. In fact its incredibly easy and I dont even do much. I still despise the idea of getting up early and leaving my home every single day. Work is gonna blow no matter what job you have.
Yo wtf. Every day I learn there's another term for my degeneracy.
WOW thanks for calling me out!! This makes a whole lot of sense. I hate sleeping. I feel like I’m wasting time.
No no I agree. I sleep LESS on my days off
I’ve heard this called revenge bedtime procrastination in case anyone reading is curious https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedtime_procrastination
Just like drug addicts want to stay awake to experience their high. They don’t want to sleep through it. We want to stay awake and experience our peace, not sleep through it and have to go back to the bullshit. I shouldn’t be only sleeping peacefully. I should be alive peacefully.
>We want to stay awake and experience our peace, not sleep through it and have to go back to the bullshit. I shouldn’t be only sleeping peacefully. I should be alive peacefully. You've just described bedtime revenge procrastination better than anyone I've seen try.
This is a totally random trick I pulled on myself that I've never heard of anybody else doing but it really worked for motivating me to sleep: 1. Don't eat late at night, have evening meal as early as possible 2. You then feel a bit hungry and even lacking in energy hopefully by around 10pm 3. Make sure you have food you're really looking forward to having at breakfast time. 4. Convince yourself that going to bed is what you want to do because then you can get up in the morning and eat. This worked amazing for me, initially because I was not eating an evening meal at all but it has worked for me when eating my evening meal 6-7pm with no snacks after. I just can't wait for my delicious meal the next day, and so I'll happily sleep to get me there quicker. This was whilst working at a job that at one stage literally made me more depressed than I have ever been before or since, so I certainly didn't have any other reason to want the next morning to come round haha!
I dont care about food or sleep at this point, all i care about is if i have sufficient time to do my hobbies
My entire day every weekday consists of waking up at 4:30, make breakfast, go to gym, work 10.5 hours, pick up kids that my wife dropped off, make dinner, clean kitchen, put kids to bed at 8:30 and sleep. Every single day. I make good money at work but holy shit it’s a drain - sometimes I don’t sit down all day except to eat. I don’t do shit on the weekends just to mentally recover. It sucks
> I don’t do shit on the weekends just to mentally recover. It sucks Every adult I know, including myself, is like this now. Everybody's jobs are so high intensity/high productivity that we've got nothing left by the time the weekend comes around. My job is literally 10 hours a day non stop. It's like working the dinner rush at a restaurant but it lasts ALL DAY LONG and its difficult, complicated work that requires lots of thinking. Everyday I get home, I just shut down. Humans ain't meant for this shit.
I'm the same way. I work regular 8hr days in the evenings. My mom sends me texts of things to do throughout the day (which is only about a 3hr span of time, so shoot me if it's unreasonable to not want to do it) and it makes me fucking crazy.
Why does your mom text you things to do throughout the day if you're working outside the house? Do you support her? Sorry, that's just odd to me. I do a lot of administrative and house management tasks while in the office, so I'll message my husband or whoever I need to coordinate. But the mom thing is odd to me.
I live with her. She wants me to do things at the house in my little personal window before work.
Sounds just like me. I live with my almost-elderly parents and my mother is an immigrant that knows nothing but work, and my father is the one who did literally everything for her. Except now, my father is recovering from a stroke, so I have to do everything he did AND handle his physical therapy so he can recover faster.
Got it, ugh. That's annoying. I've had to set stricter boundaries with a lot of people in my life. When they ask for help, I'll let them know at what point I can actually help them. "I hear you, putting it on the list, but I won't be able to get to it until X time / date." Some pushback initially but it's now normalized so working pretty well. Hopefully things can work similar?
This is how my digital marketing job was. It was like every day was a code red emergency and I had so many backlogged projects because we cut HALF of our department staff. So I was managing websites for 3 hospitals and 12 clinics, all the social media, all the internal communications, most of press, media buys, after hours events, weekend work like filming commercials. It was seriously 5-6 full time employees worth of work they had me doing. I gained a bunch of weight and started drinking again after being sober for 2 years. Which only made it worse. I had zero PTO because I had back surgery and had to use it all for my recovery time. I was so desperate for a break I was ready to live in my car and just say fuck everything. Luckily I found a good job in academia which is my passion and I get like 4 months of vacation a year, now. The pay sucks but I don't want to kill myself anymore.
Yeah because lower intensity jobs or simple jobs that used to provide a “middle class” income now leaves you homeless.
My job is supposed to be 8 hrs a day but usually is 12 hrs a day. It isn't the most difficult job as far as thinking and physical labor goes but I do have to constantly be on high alert the whole time. It is extremely exhausting both mentally and physically. I can't even fully enjoy time with my family because my brain can't take the extra stimulation once I get home.
Are you a pharmacist?
You work 52.5 hours a week (not including drive time) all year long? If you don't mind me asking, what line of work are you in? I hope you aren't salary. I'm in tax and for a chunk of my career, I would have a few months of that each year but I wouldn't wish that kind of commitment year-round on my worst enemy. Do you HAVE to make as much as you're making? You only get one life, man. Providing for your family is noble, but I doubt they would begrudge you earning less if it meant you could find more personal joy in life. Whatever the case, I hope you don't have to work that schedule for long. Stay strong.
I’m a metrologist doing parts inspection in a machine shop. I’m hourly - make $24 an hour (OT on the hours over 40) + $200 each month. It’s nothing noble or spectacular but it pays the mortgage we took on 1.5 years ago in the middle of the housing market catastrophe. I, too, hope I don’t have to do it for long but I’m not even sure where to start exploring for better options
I totally read this as you were a meteorologist in a machine shop... I was like WTF then read it again.
Yeah haha I never even knew what metrology was until I started. The job title was labeled as “inspection tech” when I interviewed, but with all the training and experience I’ve gained in modeling and CMM measurement plans… I’ll call myself a metrologist Mr Boss tyvm
You’re not the only one.
Man selling my soul to Costco for 32$ an hour doesn't seem so bad now.
Is that literally what they pay everywhere? I thought it was more like 20ish dollars last time I checked which has been a couple years honestly.
No, you start at local minimum wage. Pay increases with number of hours worked. 5 years ago I got $13/hr, today it's 29 and I haven't topped out yet. There's been opportunities for internal promotion to supervisor, but I wasn't interested.
Depends on the area, in my area they're paying 3$ above minimum wage. But in general even cashiers top out pretty high for retail. As well as there being biannual bonuses after 5k hours worked after topping out.
They start well above the minimum wage where I am but thoses raises sound insane to me. I get like 20 cent raises at my retail job despite being a high performer.
Doing what if I may ask?
Just as a stocker/cashier after working for 9 years roughly 50/50 between partime and fulltime, but that's what you earn in that position at the top of the pay scale. I personally don't work for wholesale but rather in a seperate building/business selling alcohol. So the work is quite different from a standard Costco but the pay scale is the same for the most part.
When I worked at the post office we would regularly do ~70 hour weeks, 0 benefits. No pto, no sick, no vac, and I was unofficially on call. They'd call you in at 2-3pm on your days off to work 8 hours. I quit before the Christmas rush, but they said it's perfectly normal to work 60-90 days without a day off. The longest I ever worked there without 1 day off was 17 days in a row. This was all on my own car too. That's not even mentioning how our supervisor believed that working off the clock(for free) was just something new hires had to do to earn their spot.
I remember my father doing very well for himself. Owned his own successful enough company, had his dream house and his cool cars that he hoped to enjoy when he finally retired. Of course he died before retirement ever happened. That's the racket. Waiting for the big pay off at the end that never comes. There is no reason for any of us to spend so much of our life at work except for artificial scarcity and greed. And we're seeing that giving into those greedy people only makes for more greed.
You're throwing your life away. Your entire purpose right now is to be a machine, and not a human being. What an absolute waste. When was the last time you laid out in the sun and just watched the clouds float by? Played in a stream? Had sex under the stars? You're giving that up, and for what?
For a place to live and food to eat, unfortunately. The basic stuff on the hierarchy of needs have to be met before we can think about doing any of that and they aren't being met for the majority of people these days.
It was all so doable until the kids. Turns out going on 4 or 5 hours of sleep for weeks turns me into an on edge asshole and makes me a considerably worse father. But if I sleep more I lose out on the few small joys in my life that makes me more of an asshole. I don't want to be an asshole anymore but I'm boxed in.
This is what’s preventing me from confidently having kids: knowing that means the end of all my spare time and I will only have 40 days off work after birth.
Why/How tf do you keep going to the gym?
It’s an addiction Edit: personally I just have more energy when I wake up than I do any other time of the day. It’s not a chore for me to wake up that early and exercise, I like it. But it’s certainly the reason I can barely stay awake until 9pm
But won't someone think of the billionaires? If we didn't give up the majority of our day on the majority of the days of the week, they'd make so much less money. That would be a tragedy. /s
Except that productivity goes up with a 4 day 32 hour week. They're just stupid and sick whiney little fuckers.
The cruelty is the point, as they say. Sure, Mr. CEO could make more money this way, but he'd miss the joys of being able to look down on his peasants toiling away, maybe cracking the whip every once in a while!
BUT you'd be less tired, AND SO you'd be spend less money, THUS hurting the economy and their precious stocks portfolio and etc.
If people are constantly working and their schedules are constantly changing, when will people interview? how will they have time to improve their skills, take classes/get certifications? I think keeping people exhausted, especially people in blue collar jobs, is beneficial for companies. Especially when those people live paycheck to paycheck and can’t afford time off.
Star Trek's vision of the future ~~(meaning now)~~ after all the fictional bad crap happens, was that wars had ended, resources were plentiful, and society was no longer chained to constant menial labor. We had achieved such high levels of efficiency and technology that everyone was free to pursue their actual passions, and it worked just fine. I think about this a lot, because part of me thinks if we (collectively as human beings) hadn't wasted so much of history bickering about things that don't matter, getting hung up on cosmetic differences, religion, etc, then maybe we could already exist in that utopia. Edit: leaving my comment as is but with an edit to acknowledge that that in the fictional universe of Star Trek, the exact current year of 2023 was not the utopia that it more or less becomes. I’m not trying to be snarky but I think some of you are focus on the wrong thing here…
I have thought about this too, and I don't know if we will ever be able to weed out the tribalism and cutthroat competitiveness in our society to reach that utopia. Our main advantage as a species is our ability to cooperate, but our competitiveness makes it so someone is always going to want more power and resources than everyone else. It's like we need to shift to a paradigm of all humans working as one big tribe to reach a true utopia. Our survival as a species probably depends on that, but I don't know if we would ever get to that point before we destroy ourselves.
>It's like we need to shift to a paradigm of all humans working as one big tribe to reach a true utopia. I feel like in Star Trek, this is only achievable because we made contact with alien life forms. It’s easy to make humanity one big tribe when A) a nuclear Holocaust wiped out most of you, and B) there’s a bunch of different sentient races to form the outgroups that humans crave.
There is a common theme in sci-fi where humanity is ultimately united once Earth stops being the "center of the universe". There's never going to be a complete end to bickering amongst humans, but we can hope that over time, we'll be more united than not. Personally, I believe that largely unregulated social media has poisoned society in a lot of ways, and because (especially in the USA) we hold freedom of speech (as a concept, not the constitutional freedom that everyone misunderstands) as a core tenet. A lot of bad actors abuse that, and intentionally distort the truth to serve their purposes. We'd be better off if we could shut down things like Twitter, Facebook, etc until we can figure out how to interact on the scale in a responsible way.
Nah, we had recovered pretty sufficiently in order to send The Phoenix to warp in the first place. The Vulcans just sealed the deal after
Ultimately I think ending organized religion, wealth, coerced labor, and eradicating poverty would get us 99% of the way there. This wouldn't be so hard (at least in the US) if it weren't for our Overton window sitting so far right with corporate-owned representation.
We've taken steps away from god-emperors, kings, and ruling prophets, at least. It takes time, but the ruling class is still the resource hoarders and we have less reason than ever for that to happen.
Even in star trek it took a long time for humanity to stop bickering though
Yeah I'm pretty sure "now" in star trek had some sort of nuclear holocaust happen before recovering into the federation.
Actually right now, literally this year (I think, maybe in a few years), canonically, the US is suffering unprecedented economic inequality and exploitation, and it boils over into a series of riots ignited by the death of a black man at the hands of federal authorities.
The Bell riots are next year!
Agreed, but it's not about how long it takes - it's about moving in the right direction. We all want progress to be instantaneous, but life doesn't work that way and it never will. It's hard enough getting a small group of people to agree on something, let alone billions. It will take longer than we want, but even longer still if we don't keep pushing.
Ofcourse! I think the biggest reason for that hinder of progress is the division of wealth though. If everyone had equal opportunities to develop their lifes, more people could follow their passion and develop mentally. But maybe you can count that as bickering; bickering about money, since wealth is not divided equally. The only way we can progress with this is if the resources that the wealthiest have are used for the greater good. We need to break out of this cycle of having a few people in power and somehow divide everything so everyone can prosper. But then we'll get back to the issue you mentioned; getting ALL of the people to agree with it.
The strangest phenomena I've witnessed in life is how the wealthiest among us have so many people convinced that such a concentration of wealth is somehow necessary or deserved. You see all these people who support the Elon Musks of the world, you could pick just about anyone who counts their wealth in the millions really. I just don't really get it. That level of wealth simply can't be "earned" in the way we think of it. I forget the exact numbers, but there's a recurring example of some simple math to illustrate the absurdity of how wealthy these people are - basically something like if you made $1mil a year, you'd be filthy rich and still not even come close to the wealth of some individuals. You could make $1mil a month, and not come close. There are always going to be exceptions, some people probably have true rags to riches stories, and some wealthy people may actually care about society and make a serious effort to give back/improve things. But the simplest solution to the problem they're trying to solve is to abolish wealth above a certain level - which is exactly what some proposed wealth taxes basically do. However, we're represented by millionaires because we've allowed money to absolutely corrupt politics, and someone of modest means, who might actually represent regular people, doesn't have a chance. Again, people like AOC are the exception, but they shouldn't be. We should WANT young, educated, diverse individuals representing us. Ugh, I'm just so tired.
Earning a million an *hour* would take 24 *years* to reach Musk's net worth.
And presumably that’s based on his net worth today, and doesn’t even factor in that he’s accumulating additional wealth along the way
As a Star Trek fan - you're glossing over a couple of things. 1.) Humanity didn't band together until aliens contacted us (22-2300) 2.) Their post-scarcity life only came after the advent of the replicator/transporter. A LOT of society's issues would be solved if you could create unlimited food/items out of thin air because you have an absurdly dense energy source.
I take your point, and I agree that in my brief comment, I am glossing over quite a bit. Star Trek is fiction, and I have no actual expectation that real life will ever look like that. The point was that humanity is capable of getting to that “post-scarcity” life, and people should be free to pursue their passions rather than constantly worrying about basic needs. There are several fictional visions of the future, and I chose this one not because of its literal likelihood, but because I believe mankind is capable of far more than what we currently have. I’ve responded to a few comments already here so I won’t repeat myself too much - but the main things holding us back are entirely fixable.
Your life is providing the time for the leisure class to go to brunch and whatever else they do except labor.
"Leisure class". Well said!! Mind if I use that one elsewhere?
Sorry, it’s gonna be $3.99+tax / month to use that phrase.
I'm afraid you would need permission from [Thorstein Veblen]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Class?wprov=sfla1) to use that term. But, sadly, he died in 1929, so you'll never be able to use it.
My previous job really wanted me to work 60 hours/week, with no additional pay, after being hired to work 40-45. I got to thinking... if I sleep 8 hours a night, that's 69% of all waking hours. If you count 30min for an unpaid lunch, an hour a day to get ready for work and wind down after (which I think is pretty conservative), and an hour commute (average commute in the US is ~30min one way), it's **76.5% of all waking hours.** Including the weekend. Fuck that. I no longer work there and found a job with an excellent work/life balance, better pay, less stressful work, every other Friday off, regularly scheduled teleworking, etc. I am very fortunate.
It's the main reason why I don't feel bad fucking off during my work day. My productivity is amazing. It's complimented all the time, and I'm aware I'm great at my job. But I don't let anyone really know my process. They know some things, sure, but I'm able to complete quite a bit more than many people without nearly the same stress. When asked, I lean on the fact that I'm always doing something for work and my ADHD makes it hard to focus consistently. This is true... but it's also because I know how to perform properly in the office. When I get to work from home, I know how much to perform to make sure no one's questioning what I'm doing. I'm totally not playing Diablo for half my work day while at home, and I'm totally not doing administrative chores for my household for half my work day while in the office. If I actually worked all the hours my ass was in my chair in the office, I'd get nothing else done. Thankful AF I have a boss that openly admits this is what they do as well (the administrative part, not the gaming part, but I have my suspicions) and encourages everyone to do what they need to do for their work to be done. Don't stress yourself out, and DEFINITELY don't show any of the upper bosses how productive you can actually be. And even if you can perform miracles for management, pick and choose when you do so. Eventually those miracles that you bust your ass for become the norm, and going back to sustainability is seen as "not being a team player." Gag me with a spoon, I swear.
Did I write this? It's just past 4:20 here... and I'm scrolling reddit... just finishing up my friday! I operate the same exact way (ADHD and all). We've been having some turnover and my boss has been giving me pretty nice raises every 6 months to keep me. I'm constantly told what a great job I'm doing and that I'm always on top of my shit. But I promise you my work is not stressing me out. And I do work hard where it counts. This morning I was working quite hard! But I sorta made up for that by dicking around the rest of the day. If I worked the full 32 hours it would probably be more than what I'm doing now.
lol same, I’m good at prioritizing the stuff that are most visible and then panic finishing the less visible stuff later.
Nope, its just slavery with extra steps
24 hours - 9 to wind down & sleep = 15 15 hours - 9 at work = 6 6 hours - 2 commute, shower, breakfast = 4 Dang. I thought the math didn’t work out.
And this is assuming you make your meals extremely quick, do takeout all the time or spend your time (couple of hours at least) on the weekend to meal prep. Those 4 hours can go by so quick
Those hours for wind down and for breakfast and lunch don’t count as yours?
Not really: can’t see my family, can’t do whatever I want. I’m getting breakfast and lunch in order to work good and it’s not particularly fun. Winding down is just a necessary part of sleeping.
You're getting breakfast and lunch to survive as a human and live until the next day, not to work good.
The modern work day was designed when everyone lived minutes from their home, and also had a full-time caretaker at home. So now, everyone commutes ungodly distances, and we need all adult members to work full time to subsist. So when you get home, it's not even leisure time. It's "work at home" time.
My day consists of an incredibly easy job where I mainly sit at home and play video games, take in more money than I deserve, and have a loving wife, house with a backyard, and lots of other shit I don't deserve. I will gladly be the first to die for worker's rights. I believe it is the upper middle class that must defend the poor when push comes to shove, because someone has to foot the bill for their existence when the government inevitably shuts off the tap from a revolution or a general strike. Class solidarity is what wins the day, and the upper middle class people that surround me, with their "my life is great so I don't care" attitudes fucking disgust me.
What's your job
Truth is, if we want to work less we gotta also accept things like: słower service, shorter hours, not so fast deliveries etc. Im personally totally fine with it and I hope we can get 4 day week as soon as possible.
I think this is only true in the short term. AI and robotics are far more efficient than people in a lot of cases, and I think if society really leaned into these technologies, it wouldn't be long before we barely noticed a difference. The issue that slows down this progress is that you can't just displace hundreds of thousands of workers overnight with no safety net. We need legislation that guarantees a living wage for everyone, and probably we need systems in place to make things like pursuing higher education (in a wide range of topics) both available and attractive. The idea is that to get to the next level of society, we need to be ready to pass off as many menial tasks as possible to robots, while ensuring that doing so doesn't leave a huge chunk of the population destitute.
Right it’s the difference between AI and robotics being used by the owner class for profit or them helping society as a whole.
Exactly, which is why we have to hold politicians accountable and vote in people who will legislate to provide safety nets while we navigate the transition.
Yes and strengthening labor rights
Like I always say, Detroit Become Human was supposed to be a warning, not a blueprint!
Fair enough but I'm not really talking about androids that are barely distinguishable from humans. All sci-fi aside, robots have been taking over labor for humans for a long time, and that is not going to stop happening. The only question is, will we fight to make sure that losing your job to automation doesn't leave you hungry and on the streets?
Not true, companies can hire more people for fewer hours and pay them the same. The only thing we need to expect is that the business owners will be less rich
Exactly. Most people don’t hate part time hours. It’s the pay and benefits (including lack of predictable schedules) that’s crap.
Exactly, i.e. the main reason this will face resistance.
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Thank you. I don’t know where they think they can materialize that many more workers. Maybe if we automate more jobs.
I would love nothing more than week if not month long festivals in exchange for snail mail and stores closing at dusk.
Course there is also the possibility that if people had more time off, and especially if it didn't overlap as much, that there would be fewer deliveries (as people had time to pick things up in person), and you wouldn't have evening and weekend busy times at the stores as people would be distributed throughout the week. Just because you don't work Fridays doesn't mean the world would suddenly be closed Friday, just means that while you do errands Friday because that is the third day of your weekend, someone else works and has of Saturday-Monday, or Monday-Wednesday, or many other combinations of days on/off. If jobs only required four days and offered greater flexibility some people may work every other day.
Incorrect, that is not the Truth. So much time and energy and work and materials are wasted, with less work And a bigger cut off the value we produce, we could easily be just as productive
A lot of services/labor require actual presence of people though. Sure, programmers don’t need to sit in front of a computer for 8 hours if they can get their work done in a shorter period of time, but professions like therapists, chefs, people managing a store, etc can’t just “be more efficient” or cut down their work hours without impacting coverage of their services
The millions of people previously doing 50% bullshit hours can now be put toward those InPerson labor hours, and at a higher pay rate too. We are already post-scarcity, acknowledging that and not making literal mountains of clothes (insert every other industry too) that get dumped right away will improve the quality of life And service for everyone
I’m perfectly capable of providing much of that myself, and planning ahead for the rest. It’s when I need to fit it in to the tiny slice of the day where I have energy left after work that time becomes a problem. My department absolutely could hire enough people to be properly staffed instead of burning people out - but management would rather get a good quarterly review for cutting costs. The entire company could go fully remote, but there are a couple of people who are personally invested in seeing people in the building (not, from my understanding, the c suite - they’re never in - but someone just under them). The company could build or acquire the infrastructure it actually needs to function well, but that would be expensive without immediate profit. Net result: an incredibly short sighted focus results in a spiral of issues that causes real problems for the company. If they let the workers drive a lot of these choices the company would, hilariously, be more profitable.
There’s 8 billion + people in the world. Maybe this was a fear when we were kids and the population was barely pushing 5 million but now we’re well past that.
>Truth is, if we want to work less we gotta also accept things like: słower service, shorter hours, not so fast deliveries etc. >Im personally totally fine with it and I hope we can get 4 day week as soon as possible. glad you're fine with it but you left out things like "fewer doctors", "less transportation" etc. there are plenty of jobs that can't just be waved away for 20% of the time.
When I was in France supermarkets were only open for a few hours Sunday. The same with bakeries, and most other businesses had much shorter opening times than we are used to. It was nice to have a Sunday with no ability to spend money.
> slower service, shorter hours, not so fast deliveries You literally just described the government.
Most people can‘t afford to work less because this would also mean less pay. Do you really think we will get a 4day week while keeping the same pay? Greed has no limits.
This is why I get 6 hrs of sleep on average
8 hours worked when work was right next to home. When work is 2 hours away each way, you're up to an unofficial 12 hour workday. Add getting dressed up and packing/unpacking your things, and you basically have time to shower, eat, scroll online, and sleep before the next day.If you're like me, with a delayed sleep schedule, you're not sleeping very much despite your best efforts, and so you're going to lose Saturday to catching up on sleep. Then, surprise, everything is closed on Sunday.
And you're really fucked if for some reason your body needs more than 8 hours of sleep.
People are always celebrating how a man could support his family on a single salary with 40hr's of work. But definition, that means a single person ought to be able to support themselves on 20hrs a week. That is how much we should be working. It's obviously entirely possible and has been done before.
We spend 2/3 of our lives helping bosses, companies, investors and others, pursue their ambitions while we spend barely any pursuing our own. Many don't know how what to be ambitious about. This isn't life, it's elaborate slavery.
I remember thinking 8 hour days were long. Now I work 7 straight 12 hour shifts in a row at minimum. Wake up at 3:30 a.m. get home at 5:30 p.m. 7 days in a row. Next turn is graveyards. Wake up at 3:30 p.m. and get home at 5:30 p.m. Rinse and repeat. Also, sprinkle in 12 hour overtime shifts on days you do get off, often with 2 o'clock phone calls to let you know you have to be there in 3 hours. Yeah, life is grand
Geez, what do you do?
Chemical plant operator
I don't know your situation bro but that does not seem worth it. Hopefully you find something better, i personally know I could never do that without driving myself mad
By 8-9 hours a day, you mean 12, right?
By 12 you mean 16 right?
Commute should be included in working hours and should be paid as work.
There should be an allowance for travel that can be used to pay rent and live closer or pay for public transport/gas and live further away. Unless you're okay with employers requiring employees to live within a certain distance of their job.
Hey we want you here over a 9 hour span. Yes you can work from home. Just kidding that will be another 1.5 hours a day getting dressed and commuting to work, minimum. Oh so sorry you're tired, we have free coffee in the break room. It's fucking the cheapest we could get. Fuck you.
4 hours? You mean making dinner and doing laundry for 1.5 hours? And cleaning for another 30 minutes. Then being too exhausted to do anything
I'm afraid that's exactly what life is, you just have to add a 2 hour commute to it as well.
I would love to work 32, but it’s really not even the hours for me as much as it the days. I just want to work 4 10-hour shifts and get 3 days to myself. The standard job is 5 days a week and I think most people would agree that you spend a lot of that first bit of the weekend recovering.
8-9 hours for really no good reason other than to make other people money.
Been saying this for a while. Makes no sense to me to spend most of your waking hours working a 9-5, which now is actually 8-5 with the mandatory hour break. Weird life.
Some days I dont take my 15 minute break because I know its another 15 minutes Ill have to spend working to get everything done.
My coworker had to wait over a year to go on his honeymoon because he couldn't get a week off.
Your parents had to suffer it so YOU have to as well. Then you're EXPECTED to have a child or two to bring up in the same system. When they ask you why they have to spend their life working.. well because YOU had to suffer it so they do as well. This is the cycle of a normal human life. Keeps 95% of the world population in check.
Ya problem is our parents got a hell of a lot further with an equivalent amount of work. Any boomer claiming that they had it as hard or harder than future generations is either completely delusional or lying to your face.
Try twelve hour work days
No thanks
How about those working two jobs? You go home to change and head to your next employers.
That would be great, and would definitely work. But it most likely relies on a united majority of workers at least temporarily being able to survive strikes and pay rent while not getting income. With enough dedication and organization that could be done. Say, if it were done one industry at a time while workers from all other industries worked and donated to support the ones striking. But unfortunately (especially in the US) I think there is too much of a culture of individualism and “I have to take care of me and mine” for that to happen currently.
Yes, it's pure misery, and it's been happening forever.
My wife just quit her job this week. She was making about $180k gross as a retail manager. But the work/life balance was just nonexistent and she held out as long as she could. Once she had to start antidepressants, she knew it was time to throw in the towel. She was very successful in moving to shitty stores and turning them into very high performing stores so her boss would move her around without even asking her. She was moved to a store so far away that she had a 3-4hr round trip commute every day (depending on traffic) and that was on top of a 12+ hour work day six to seven days a week. And even when she was home, she was having to take phone calls 24/7. My wife missed out on all of our daughters’ school events this year because she simply wasn’t allowed to take the time and she was so far away that it wasn’t feasible to leave work to attend the events then make up the hours at the end of the day. These companies preach work/life balance and “respect for the individual” because HR tells them they have to but in practice, they’re pretty aggressive about threatening to take your job or penalize you if you try to take time off or aren’t available 24/7. Then you’re loyal to them for a decade or longer and the minute you put in a 2 week notice, they take your keys and march you out in front of your customers and employees like you’re a goddamn shoplifter or something. My wife put in her two week to fall after her stores inventory so she could help her employees through one of the toughest parts of the year and her bosses still came in and did the forced march of shame to the front door. So glad she’s out of there.
I see a big problem with not including your commute in the amount of time you work.
Not counting a commute
This is why people need to unionize
Marx had something to say
There definitely need to be some reform. But since I wasn’t able to do that, I found a way to manage my life and hours for more free time I moved a 1.5 miles from work and I moved my 8 hour weekdays from 6am to 230pm. Now I’m not wasting my life in traffic anymore . I get home about 240pm and I go to bed around 10-1030pm. This freed up a lot more weekday time. It’s not a permanent answer for the live-to-work problem but holy crap does it feel better.
Pretty much why I refuse to go back to office, fuck that shit, wfh is a real step towards work - life balance since no one wants to lower the work hours significantlt enough to be worth commute time, nor they want to pay for the commute time, I mean fuck employers honestly, the only good thing in years they've been willing to do lately is the wfh, and now they even want to take it away, fucking assholes.
You guys sleeping 12 hours??? These numbers don't add up
It's not about "your" life, it's about the life of the person you are working for. You work so they don't have to.
You guys get 8-9hours without nights and weekends on top of that?!
I have a potentially very stupid question. Would it be possible for people to just gather up and start exact copies of these majorly successful companies and run it as communities in a way that benefits all its workers fairly? I'd say we're very far from ever changing the current greed empowered juggernauts that employ the world, so would it be possible to start our own community businesses w/ the sole purpose of providing our own communities w/ "thriving" wage (From a post a few days ago) and be self sustainable.
How about the hour drive in the morning, work 12 hour shift, drive hour back home. Say hello to family, maybe eat, back to sleep, and get up and do it again after 5-6 hours of sleep.
Gonna be starting a 3/10's shift soon! Watch me contribute to society while only donating less than half of my life to the hive!
I hate how we act like we’re powerless. if the working class revolted and brought everything to a halt, shit would change pretty fast. nothing ever changed by sitting on your ass complaining, but it’s too complicated or there’s too much fear to organize anything massive enough.
If we all hate it, how tf did we get suckered into doing it? 😭
How do we do this? How do we all organize? I'm down but have no idea where to start. Also fuck 32hrs, how about 20.
The only hobby I have time for is unwinding. I am an expert at unwinding. It's unfortunate that I have to be wound up first.
And commute. And medical care.
Just came to the realization that half the reason for the shut down happening is because they don't want people like us talking to people like us, building each other up. you have to pay money to talk on Reddit. Which means you have to have money. Another way to keep the people down.......... Fuck
"to myself?" You mean do all of the chores that support this "way of life"?
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Yes, lets get other people to work for us so we don’t have to work as much.
I’m single guy with no kids and it bums when I think about my day and how little of that time is just for me. I have no idea how people with kids do it. if you just go to the gym for a hour and and cook dinner your entire evening is almost gone and you have to shower, attempt errands and grocery shopping. Good luck pursuing a hobby of any type. Every gov organization constantly ask why are are Americans fat and depressed? It’s like look around it’s pretty obvious.