I’ve told this story before, but about a decade ago I had banked enough PTO days that I was able to take off every Wednesday in the summer (with my boss’s permission, natch). So I effectively worked no more than two days in a row for four straight months. Off weekends, work monday/tuesday, off Wednesday, then back to work Thursday/Friday.
The first month went about as expected - “yay! Wednesday off!!”. But I wasn’t expecting to experience what I did by the second month of my experiment: my mental health and attitude towards work had changed. That “Monday blues” you get was gone. Every work day felt like a “Thursday” or a “Friday” to me - because the “weekend” was no more than a day away. The dread of Sunday evenings knowing work was starting the following day disappeared.
By halfway through my experiment, I was happy to go to work because there was stuff I wanted to accomplish and thus was more efficient at my job. Nobody ever complained that I was gone every Wednesday for four months, my work always got finished on time (or ahead of schedule).
But I really was shocked at how my mental health improved by NOT working five days in a row.
I fully support a four day work week and wish everyone has the opportunity to experience what I did.
Just started a new gig and trying to save up PTO for travel, but damn this is a tempting set up. Last gig working (4) 10-hour days with perpetual Fridays off already felt pretty damn good. Same amount of time physically in the office, but that extra free day felt so much more liberating. Really gives you time to run errands, get into shenanigans, and actually decompress before Monday kicks off.
Yup! That was another thing - since I had Wednesdays off, I scheduled my appointments and errands for that day so I didn’t have to run out of the office to get stuff done during the week. It really did make me a more efficient employee.
Alas, that’s too progressive for boomers to even think about. They’d rather us work 7 days a week without any breaks!
I’ve been doing this every year now for the past few years, it’s so freaking nice. I hoard my vacation days til about August-ish, then just take every Wednesday off for the rest of the year, with no particular plans, I just like having a “mid-week weekend”. Sure enough, every week, something usually comes up to fill the time, but instead of having to cram it in over the weekend or try to fit it into the middle of my workday, I can just handle it on my mid-week weekend… and everything is still open. It feels like I’ve added an extra day to the week for just me (pretty much what it is).
I don’t really like taking long week/2week vacations, because it’s that much more depressing coming back into the office after having had a “taste of freedom” for that long. It makes me resentful and it’s hard to get back into the routine.
I had a 4 day-10hr shift working in insurance when I was younger and having sat / sun / wed off was amazing. It’s been like 15 yrs since I had that schedule and I miss it. A lot of what you wrote is how I felt.
They moved me off that shift and I quit a few months later. Would love to go back to that schedule. Another good part was being able to do stuff during the week instead of trying to cram appointments in during the weekend or after work.
I am lucky to work in a country with paid parental leave (and unpaid leave after the first year they can’t refuse). I have been working 4 days a week for almost 2 years now and I’m not planning on stopping that soon.
Just wish they would pay me for the 5 days a week efficiency that I am achieving…
Jokes on my employer, I have been effectively working less than 3 days a week in active hours actually doing something productive beyond meetings and forced chit chat for years.
Most employers in my experience care far more about the appearance of working than they do actually working. Once you realize this it is amazing how little actual work you need to do to make them happy.
Almost as if upper management and middle management aren’t actually good leaders. Almost as if everything they do is not only complete bullshit but also actively harms the company by causing inefficiencies directly.
I’m a workforce planning BP and it’s hard to implement obvious improvements to the workforce, even with solid data backing you. There is often one or two aithorative figures that are too scared to “gamble” on trialing something as, despite the data, it doesn’t sit right with them.
So the turnover rates, costs, and absenteeism stay higher while employee satisfaction, efficient capacity, and revenue stay lower.
Those are rookie numbers. Gotta get on Peter Gibbons’ level of doing fifteen minutes of real, actual work every week
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Yeah, the blue collar workers who have to pick up your slack are very well aware of your useless position. Bragging about it like this is frankly disgusting.
hahaha, what blue collar workers do you imagine are picking up the slack from my sysadmin position of managing servers? Trying to white night for a third party like this is frankly pathetic. I’m sure they appreciate your service oh Nobel savior of their pride.
The fact you can’t even imagine how a server could host something like a warehouse management system says a lot.
“but if my workers aren’t miserable, exhausted and in constant pain, I can’t call myself a good capitalist! they must be broken!”
– the American business owner
Makes us more docile doesn’t it?
That’s why It won’t happen and any attempt will be propagandized away (The lazy liberal woke work week).
It amazes me that “made more money” doesn’t immediately sell this to every company across the world. But no, making people work longer hours to feel like the company is more productive is more important than making money and actually being more productive.
The idea of meritocracy is being exposed as the complete bullshit that it is. For the most part, the folks at the top of the company were born there. And the folks at the bottom of the ladder were also born there.
The owner class is not some group of genius businessmen. It’s just that if you have a lot of money, you can make a lot more money with it even if you are really stupid.
Imagine you own a couch you can sit on for forty hours a week, and it’s decoratively on display in your living room, but generally completely unused.
You’re not going to want to pay the same amount to be able to sit on it less, even if you never do.
The analogy here is that management basically sees you as furniture they literally own. They don’t want to give up ownership of that time for any reason.
This would be amazing, which is why it’ll never happen in the US.
I run a company in the U.S. I have about 50 employees, and I’m going to do it for our team. I believe it’s going to give us a competitive advantage, and by demonstrating that my hope is that more organizations will follow suit. I don’t expect it to become law, but I’m not giving in to despair either. If you want change, make change unavoidable.
Not legally maybe, but its absolutely the kind of thing tech companies will notice and start to take advantage of. They can hire more staff if needed, no big deal.
They will start offering 4 day work weeks and reduce salaries accordingly.
