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?
Having worked in a couple of European countries, I thought 7.5 hours of work plus a half an hour lunch break is the norm everywhere in the western world. So the 9 to 5 did totally make sense to me. I was honestly surprised reading all these comments.
Nevermind the world. Even here in Europe in Switzerland the standard is somehow 42 hours a week.
Here in America I work 7.5 with two 15 minute paid breaks and a half hour unpaid lunch. So it’s really more like 8:30-5
if someone tried to dictate the amount of work hours that I put in during the day I would just start puking and shitting
I’m pretty sure it’s in your contract of employment
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.
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.
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
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.
Traditionally, a 9-5 included an hour long lunch break and as many coffee/smoke breaks as you wanted.
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.
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!
Im fortunate. Work 08:30 - 17:00 with an hour break which I take at 14:00 and we can take mini breaks whenever we want to really. I work from home 3 days and often don’t take the hour and finish at 16:00.
I think it differs a bit from province to province in Canada, but where I’m at, you can either work 8.5 hours with a half hour lunch, or 9 hours with a 1 hour lunch. It’s up to the employer. 15 minute breaks are paid, but not guaranteed (if it’s busy). Lunch breaks are unpaid and mandatory.
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)
You’re thinking small-time, like an hourly worker. Good office jobs are generally salaried positions and the idea of clocking in and out is… not a thing. Some days you work more, some less, whatever needs to be done. The idea of 9-5 is just a general time frame. And no one gives a shit when you lunch or break. In a real profession the yardstick is, are you getting it done or not?
I’ll catch grief for saying that, so I’ll preempt by saying, if your job isn’t like that, you likely have a shit job.
Lolol what kind of fantasy world do you live in? Salaried worker here and although my job isn’t 9-5 strictly if I don’t work at least 40 hours a week my pay will be docked. So I get to choose between 8-5 or 9-6 or I can work while I eat and get that cushy 9-5 life. Or if I miss work I can make up those hours by working at night. It’s a real luxury to be able to do that compared to shift work, but the hours are still being counted.
Also stop being so entitled. Most of your life necessities come from industries (groceries, power plants, gas stations, hospitals, etc) where people work on a timecard/shift basis so don’t you come out here and pretend timecard or shift work isn’t a “real” profession.
the hours are still being counted
Refer to my last sentence. And you will note that I didn’t denigrate anyone’s work, only that if they’re on the clock, the job probably sucks.
Tell me more about this “some days you work less” concept. It’s completely foreign to me
Those would be Fridays at my last job. Swear to god no one did anything unless absolutely necessary and most were gone by mid-afternoon. LOL, which sucked because that’s when I was often jamming along and no one was around to help, question, etc.
If your job has you grinding non-stop, that’s no way to live and a good employer recognizes that.
Tell me.more about this “good employer” concept. That’s completely foreign to me
Gentle reminder that without “small time”, hourly workers doing real labor your easy, sweatless, office job would disappear overnight. Perhaps some gratitude? Maybe even some solidarity?
As a former IT professional turned baker, I dislike the condescending attitude too many white collar workers have toward the actual wheel turners of the world.
I’ve done it all, from shoveling asphalt to dishpits to customer service, all that and a dozen more. Guess what? Those were shit jobs. Doesn’t make the person doing those jobs shit.
Some of y’all are so eager to be offended it’s ridiculous.
“doing real labor” “easy, sweatless, office job” “the actual wheel turners”
“I dislike the condescending attitude”
It never ceases to amaze me how often people see and hate shit in other people that they epitomize themselves.
And honestly, my experience has been the opposite and I see the condescending attitude, at least more openly, coming from blue collar workers more often.
I was waiting for the /s the whole time, that comment read like a joke but I think it was actually sincere…
At the end, we just all want to get paid. And UBI doesn’t exist yet.
I’m a capitalist and this thread is giving me a hard-on
If you want solidarity you need to stop shitting on office workers first. You’re lambasting your own behaviour with this comment. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black…
Me laughing in salaried 9-5 with clock in and clock out. Pay deduction if i forget to do clock in or out even if everyone know i work that day. Got paid 50% less than people who did the same job same position who didn’t need to clock in/out.
I have a shit job and the only thing that keep me going is the job close to where i and my family live so i can check on my sister (found out that she do self harm once and I’m scared to go faraway from her ever since).
Desperate people make a good cheap employee.
I’m desperate ATM. Looking at a crappy onsite tech support role, no benefits, just to get by while I keep looking.
I’m “salaried,” and union, but they 100% track our hours and if you use up your benefit time and take additional time off, you will not get paid.
So I’m not even completely sure how they can even call it salary. Like… Maybe I’ve misunderstood the meaning of that word my entire life?
I have a salaried position. I don’t clock in. But it’s typically only used to deny us overtime pay. If I work 35 hours a week, I’m paid 12.5% less than my colleagues who do 40. And if my lunch break is too long, I’m expected to stay late sometime within the month to compensate.
And while I do have a shit job (save me) I’ve never seen someone whose employer didn’t mind their hours as long as they got shit done.
You cannot be salaried and deducted hours you don’t work.
Either you are hourly, and paid for the hours you actually work, or you’re salaried, and paid regardless of how many hours you work.
What your employer is doing is illegal, and wage theft.
You cannot be salaried and deducted hours you don’t work.
You would think that. And yet, the US… Finds a way. I’d rather not doxx myself by getting into it further, but it’s definitely not illegal where I am.
This is so common in Quebec that I have trouble believing it’s illegal. I think it might be a loophole.
How do they know when you’re not working your full 40 if you aren’t clocking in or out? I’m not familiar with Canadian labor law so you may very well be right, but it is kind of hard to imagine a legal pay structure where they can dock you for working fewer hours but don’t compensate you for working more.
Friendly reminder that wage theft is very common and just because lots of people are breaking the law doesn’t mean it’s actually legal. For example in the States, there is a fairly narrow definition of which jobs qualify as overtime exempt but go to a jobs board and you’ll find pretty much anything under the sun. Many employees are incorrectly classified as exempt and are completely unaware they are even entitled to overtime pay.
Well they don’t know know, but there are signs. For one, we fill in timesheets, and lying on them is a no-no. I could probably get away with stretching the truth a little, but if they notice I only commit between X and Y time, or that I’m seldom available for developer questions at a particular time, they might get suspicious and investigate my hours.
As for overtime… Well I think how companies handle it is they don’t actually ask us to stay late; they just give us unrealistic targets that kinda require overtime unless you’re a god if we ever complained they’d say they never asked for us to stay late.
We used to be able to accumulate time indefinitely and take time off according to the bank of extra time we’d worked, but once, someone accumulated hundreds of hours and just left on an unplanned vacation for nearly a full month and they really didn’t like that. So now, you need to work your quota (which you can have them adjust to your capabilities; 30, 35, 40…) on average every month. So, sure, I can work only 20 hours one week, but that’s 15 hours of extra time I need to do within that month.
And if you have extra at the end of the month, well, that’s lost.
Which sucks, because I used to use those as sick days over the legally required two paid ones we get per year; my health isn’t exactly resplendent.
You’re not an exempt (salaried) employee if they deduct your pay for working less in a given week. I’ve never had an employer who cared about hours as long as work got done.
Mine doesn’t give a fuck how long we work.
As others have said, I’m in the “put time in, get shit done” camp.
Provided I deliver a job well done, my bosses don’t give a fuck what or how many hours I clock per week.
I used to work at an engineering firm and one day I saw one of the engineers leave at like 2pm on a Wednesday and he was like, “Bye, see you next week!” He had been busting his ass to finish a project and already hit his 40hrs for the week.
I was a temp at the time but needless to say, I jumped at the chance when they offered me a real job.
Everything changed. You’re not crazy. If you watch movies made before the 2000s about office culture, including the movie 9 to 5, you can see that the hours included a lunch break. Which was paid.
Yes, those of the older generation had it easier in every way.
Is this a US thing? Do you not get paid for your lunch hour? That’s wild.
You get paid for lunch? Where is that? We don’t either in Switzerland
Same in Germany, I think this common in many countries, no?
Where do you get paid for your lunch hour? I’m in Germany and while work life balance is certainly a thing here, more so than in the US, a paid lunch break is something I have never heard about.
Most people don’t. So, for an average employee, it would be 9-530 to account for their unpaid 30m lunch required by law.
I believe many places lunch is not required, and neither is any limit on number of hours per day required.
In the US, you’re lucky if you get paid for the hours you work. And many don’t get all of their hours paid.
In the US, it’s Salary, not Hourly. It’s not “getting paid for the time”, you get paid for doing the job you agreed to do.
That’s just salaried folks though. The vast majority of american workers are hourly or contractors. Per the Dept of Labor’s own site:
The Wage and Hour Division is dedicated to protecting and enhancing the welfare of the nation’s workforce with a focus on low-wage, underserved workers. In fiscal year 2023, we successfully recovered over $274 million in back wages and damages for more than 163,000 workers nationwide.
Wage theft is when employers don’t properly pay their employees and is a HUGE problem because it isn’t always out of malevolence, it can be as simple as the time clock not properly computing overtime, etc.
If you don’t think that $274 million is large amount, think about how the vast majority of these things never get reported to the authorities; that number should be higher.
Source for quote: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/data
Most salaried workers are written up if they fail to work 8+ hours. Salaried is now just a method to deny people overtime - fancied salaried workers may still operate in the intended way but even most developers I know have to obey some sort of time tracking method.
No. Some jobs are hourly and some are salary.
I live in Canada. We get a half-hour lunch that isn’t paid in my province.
Also, if you take more than 3 sick days a year, your boss can fire you. And the 3 sick days are unpaid. The government lowered the number from 10 to 3 shortly before the pandemic, and didn’t raise it again! Oh, and to count, your boss can demand a doctor’s note. Which cost money to the patient.
That’s so toxic! I get an hour long paid lunch break, and a bunch of paid sick days. Your work’s policies are shit, I’m so sorry!
It’s not my work’s policies. I get better than that. It’s what my province legally mandates that’s the problem.
Oh shit, sorry! I’m so happy you get better than that. Those are garbage mandates that predatory businesses for sure take advantage of. I hope your stuff is as good (ideally better) than mine.
It doesn’t affect me but my work also rolled out months of paternity leave which is BAAAAASED
Thank you.
I definitely agree with businesses doing right by their employees. I just wish the governments would be doing more to protect ALL employees. I vote based on which parties are looking out for everyone, not based on whatever works best for me because I’ve got better than the legal minimum.
Damn, Canada is becoming less and less a viable escape plan from American fascism…
There might still be some decent provinces.
But yeah, I blame brain drain, cuts to the education system, and the influence of American culture! Haha
Where do you live, Alberta? Or one of the maritimes??
It’s Ontario! aka. Open for (Big) Business. No longer “Yours to Discover” because it’s all been sold off.
Sounds like Ontario 🙃
That really sounds like one of the flat-lander regions.
I get 21 holidays a year, not counting every second friday off because of my 9x9 compressed-time agreement. If I plan it right, and hit the stats with the comp days, that’s 7 weeks off a year. Why, that’s almost european. I’ve just finished my first year at this shop.
Is that by law, or what your employer offers? Because I’m talking about what the law requires.
Ha! Hour. You’re funny. Federal law only gives half an hour.
Ha! Nah, Federal law doesn’t require a lunch period, or breaks, at all. It’s all state side.
Only thing is that if an employer gives a short break, like 5-20 mins, it must be paid and included in overtime.
Depends on the state, in my state you legally have to get paid for 30 minute lunches but not hour long lunches. No idea why but because of this most office jobs will give you an hour lunch in addition to your mandated 2, 10 minute breaks.
Honestly I would love to just take a 30 minute break and get out earlier. It’s not even about the money.
Spaniard here. Not only does my company not pay me for lunch time. It also demands it to be at least 30 minutes long. How is it even legal to force my unpaid time to be a minimum amount?
It’s probably a law. Mandatory minimum breaks make perfect sense for factory workers.
They should be paid though
For the record, lunch time is not considered paid time in Sweden either.
Typically no but my current employer pays us for 1/2 of our 1 hour lunch.
I work 10’s and we get 2 paid 20 minute breaks that are actually usually 25-30 depending on how caught up we all are individually since they let you walk away early if you’re caught up and how long after you get up, go to the bathroom, get some coffee , put your stuff up.
They’re actually pretty chill as long as you stay caught up
Those old tv shows where they casually eat breakfast before work make more sense. They weren’t up at 6, rushing to get to work by 8. They had a whole hour more.
They also had someone to make it for them. One income was enough for the household.
Is the part about being able to socialize also a mythic fantasy? Where ever do people work that they find the time to have conversations?
I am 51. When I started working my job was 9-5 with a one hour lunch an unofficial 30 minute coffee break and about four unofficial ten minute smoke breaks.
What’s it like for you now?
My company went full time “work from home” in 2012 and we are specialists that are only brought in when everyone else has fucked up. So basically, I am on call 24/7/365.
This actually doesn’t sound like a bad thing.
I didn’t think it was. For IT, it was a dead end job, so I couldn’t stay.
Retired in a 3-bedroom home paid off that was purchased for $57,000.
/kidding
You’re thinking boomer so you are off by ~20 years.
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.
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?
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.
As a guy with an actual office job. It’s usually 8-5 or 9-6 with an hour lunch, plus whatever time you spend on coffee or whatever.
It’s pretty standard, and it’s been that way for a couple decades at least.
And that lunch hour is unpaid.
I guess it depends on the company. Mine clearly expects us to work on 37.5 hours per week whether you work non stop from 9 to 4.30 or from 7 to 7 with many long breaks. And any overtime I do during the week makes my day at work on Friday that much shorter.
Different jobs are different
Sorry for rambling
