You always hear the phase “9 to 5” and also the song with the same name. Assuming you include 1 hour worth of breaks (30 minute lunch and two 15 minute breaks), you’re only working for 7 hours a day which comes up to 35 hours a week.
Now it feels like you have to work 8 hours a day (for a total of 40 hours of actual work), plus your other time off meaning you’re really there for 9 hours each day (for a total of 45 hours). Am i looking at that wrong, or did expected times change, and if so, when?
Different jobs are different
Sorry for rambling
Shit, 45 hours a week would be amazing, my now former employer wanted me working 5 12hour shifts and pay me so little I needed a weekend job on top of that.
What the fuck job did you do
Professional blood donor
It has definitely changed, I don’t know when, but it’s been like this for at least the last decade.
Though, in my experience (NB: I’m a software engineer, which is a notoriously lax field.) only what the piece of paper says has changed. Hell, most of my employee handbooks have claimed that “full time” is 50 hours a week. They get away with it because I’m classified as a “computer employee” (lol) and make more than $35k/year (super lol) which means my employment is exempted from minimum wage and overtime pay laws.
Nobody that I know actually works that consistently. Most people I know don’t even do 40. I do 9-5 (or 8:30-4:30 usually), I take breaks when I need them and nobody has ever complained to me about the amount I’m working.
My only guess for why it’s this way is that having that be the official working time means it’s easier to fire anyone for no reason because they’re not working their “contractually obligated” amount of time.
I actually had an argument with a former employer quite a few years ago about that ‘computer operator’ / ~36k limit thing.
My scummy boss at that time was telling me that because of those stipulations I wasn’t eligible for any overtime and they could demand I work as many hours as they want - even though I was hourly. When I said that didn’t sound right he dared me to look up our state’s employment laws.
So I did (side note: I’m in one of the most employee-friendly states), and it very clearly said that my boss was profoundly wrong. So I sent him the URL to that page. And he and the piece of shit HR person shut right up about it. Me and all of my colleague never heard that ridiculous argument again.
My last couple of jobs, including my current one, have been much more reasonable and accommodating. Even though I’m now salary, they aren’t exploitative of me or my colleagues.
So my advice to other IT folk is: take the time to check up on your state’s employment laws. If you are being exploited by your employer they may be totally in the wrong.
So my advice to other IT folk is: take the time to check up on your state’s employment laws. If you are being exploited by your employer they may be totally in the wrong.
100%
I’m unfortunately in a state with even more vague and useless definition of who gets to be exempt than the federal definition.
Hour long mandatory lunch, no pay. Switzerland.
Switzerland is more like 8-11 12-18. Atleast for me. So more 8-6 than 9-5.
Half an hour mandatory lunch, paid. Austria.
(pretty much depends on your job a bit, just wanted to continue with the same comment style)
Oh shit I need to go pester my family to let me be a citizen (or recheck and go talk to an EU focused immigration lawyer to discuss where exactly in Europe my family was when to see if I qualify)
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I get as many coffee breaks in the office as I want but it’s not like I get up, grab a cup and then play on my phone while I drink my coffee for 15 minutes. I get up, grab a cup, maybe say hi to someone as it brews an instant cup, then go back to my desk and drink while I am working. But no one is shadowing down my neck saying I can’t leave my desk until 10:15 and I need to be back by 10:30 or my pay is docked. Freedom and responsibility rather than strict time management and punishment.
We need to strike for slow coffee machines. These instant pots are a tool of oppression!
You’re making coffee in an instant pot? Tell me more!
Yeah, I think the 9-5 mentality comes from a time when men would spend most of the day socializing, drinking, and sexually harassing the secretary. Back then the boys would go to lunch whenever and leave the work to the nerds and the women.
My job is 9 to 5 including one hour lunch time when I started, it at least that’s what the HR person and my boss told me when I started. Early this year I saw my position “obligations” or whatever is called and it says that I work 9 to 6 so 🤷 I hope they never enforce it
All my jobs have either been 9-5 or 9:30-5:30 with an hour lunch included. TBH I’ve never tracked my pay by the hour, just the day.
In Canada, the regulations have been 8 hour workday with two paid 15 minute breaks in that period and an unpaid 30 minute break for salaried workers, unless otherwise agreed by contract, since I started working in the early 90s.
This means a lot of people work 9-5:30 or 8:30-5. Union jobs generally have a 8 hour day in total with a 1 hour lunch break, and other professions have other arrangements.
For a number of years, I took my “lunch break” at 5 and just worked a straight 8 hour day with two 15 minute breaks.
did […] included
Nope. It’s ‘did include’ .
Dutch law describes a mandatory break of 30 minutes (or 2 15 minute breakes) if a working day is longer that 5.5 hours. Break is not work, thus not payed.
This neglects that the breaks are not free time spent as desired and is entirely constrained to the circumstances of employment. You would not eat or do the same tasks in the timespan. Therefore it is not your time and should be compensated for. Like owning a vehicle, you still own it even when you are not driving it or it is broken down. Pretending ownership is only limited to the time the vehicle is in gear and moving is delusional logic for any such pro slavery State. Employment must include far more ethical responsibly than this.
Using that logic this includes commuting, as that is also not free time spent as desired.
Not to mention commute time, time spent getting ready for work/bed, and time spent sleeping. I don’t consider any of that to be free time.
I work 10 hour shifts, so once you factor in all that stuff, I get about two full hours for myself each day to do whatever I want, before I have to start the process all over again for tomorrow.
It depends on where you are and whether you join a union or not. Labor laws vary by state and by country. Paid lunches and breaks may or may not be part of your employment contract.
Yes. And if you interview for an 8 to 5 job, you tell them that it sounds like a crock of shit and you don’t want the job.
So sick of that shit. Fuck any employer who pulls this shit.
I think i would just not apply if i felt like you do
Employers don’t usually broadly advertise their anti-perks. This is the kind of thing you usually discover with a question during an interview or when you’re handed your employment contract.
Crock of shit or no, a man’s gotta eat. That’s kind of how we got into this problem in the first place. They have a captive audience.
I don’t WANT your crock of shit job! I’ll go live on the streets!!! I’ll give blowjobs for $20! And hey…you want a blowjob? Got $20?
USA. Been working 20 years. Every job has been 8 to 5, unpaid 1h lunch, 2x15min paid breaks. :(
The last time I worked hourly was the late 90s. We got a paid 15 break per 4 hours worked. If we worked more than 6 hours, we also got an unpaid 30 minute lunch. I got no benefits because I was part-time at 37.5 hours per week.
Imagine being that guy scheduling people for 39.9 hours thinking you’re a goddamn genius.
The “genius” was the IN state Congress that made it law that 37.5 and under must be considered part time, even for minors. I was working exactly that every week while also going to high school when I was 16.
37.5 hours
part-time
crazy, in my world that’s pretty much full time
I believe it is where I am too, 36+ is full-time for benefits requirements. Apparently the insurance company asked my employer to please make sure I was working at least 36hrs a week, because for a month or so I was only getting to 32.
That’s wild that it wasn’t full time. IRS now defines 30 as full-time thankfully
It’s one of those ambiguous things that employers seem to be leveraging to their advantage. Where I work, plenty of people do 8-5. Those of us who have been around longer and don’t give as much of a shit will count lunch as part of our day.
