I have worked a 4-day, 10-hour weekly shift for years now and it ain’t all that good.
First, there is no extra time with the family. The four days worked contain only enough time to eat, sleep, clean-up, and do essential chores. Doctor appointments and such have to be made on the day off.
One day less travel is a plus for those who live a fair distance for work. But when a day is missed, 10 hours of production are gone instead of 8. Employees do tire at the end of the shift and production lags. Employers take advantage of the off day and require more overtime rather than hiring new employees.
If I had my choice I would go back to 8 hour days in a minute.
If employers want more production they take advantage of you, no it ain’t all that good, for one who knows.
Some people, including myself, don’t like having their children in daycare/babysitter for 8 hours straight, let alone 10 hours. And what do you do with the kids in HS or JH? Make the school day longer? Or let them be at home alone longer? I like to wind down with my kids at night. I don’t want to come home and stick them straight in bed and have them see daddy only on the weekends.
Why would it be any different than an 8 hour day or a 12 hours day? I don’t understand this one at all
I don’t see this happening. You already feel crappy starting your 8 hour work day on Monday how would you feel knowing you had 10 hours ahead of you that day and for the next 4 days straight?
Can you expand on this? I don’t get what you are saying. People would still have the same amount of vacation time availible since they are working the same number of hours. This just means that they will have MORE days away from work as a whole because now they don’t need to burn up vacation for small trips. They can stick the company with a couple large vacations a year instead of one like alot of people take.
I would throw out a big “hell no” to this idea. There is nothing I hated more than not having a set schedule. I don’t care as much about what days off I get, as long as it isn’t changing on a regular basis. Some people like to take classes, join a bowling league or whatever and having your day off change on a regular basis makes it almost impossible to sign up for recurring activities like these.
I work 4-10s, and have since March, and rather like it; the only downside is a peculiarity to my particular workplace: my “Monday” is actually on Sunday, and have Thu/Fri/Sat off. We also have a 3-day shift, working 3-12s, with a pay differential so that they are gettting paid the same (overall) as the 40-hour workweek people. The weekend split is so that both shifts can have at least one day of the weekend off.
I work at an Oprical Laboratory, in the Maintenance Dept. (chasing down stray electrons and wrangling them back into their proper course, whaking pumps and pipes to get them unclogged, stuff like that), and they are almost a 24/7/365 facility. I agree that I get more done on a daily basis on a ten-hour workday, and greatly enjoy the extra time off.
And as has been noted above, the people usually against it are the parents (esp. single parents) with day-care issues; they are either dropping off their children fairly early, or picking them up fairly late (mgt. is still trying to find the optimal start/finish time for the greatest number of people).
I’m working an unusual shift. When not in school (and hence work part-time) I go to work at 7:00 am and leave at 3:00 pm, taking no lunch. Its wonderful. I can take a nap if I choose, play games, and generally feel like I have time to do things.
In Estonia and, I think, other countries of the FSU, working 3 x 12 is not uncommon. At first I thought it crue and barbaric, now I see it differently.
Workers concentrate for 12 hours on work, go home and go to sleep. Four days a week are with family and friends. Child care is not a real problem as it tends to be shared amoung family and friends. For the working days, work is the sole focus but for four days leisure and family take precedence.
It does not work for all jobs, but in retail, many service and manufacturing industries it works just fine.
Workers, particularly women like it for the free time it gives them. Obviously difficulties in scheduling occur, but in jobs where ths is a requirement or issue, more nrmal coverage is provided.
I have to say that I could quite enjoy the lifestyle this pattern makes possible. It often seems that my Estonian friends are never working!
The getting started and picking up issue was refering to the fact that there would be one less day of the week (4 verses 5 days) of this wasted time.
Here I was refering to the ability to shift your start days to allow for every other weekend to be a four day weekend.
The first week you could start on Monday and work till Thursday.
The second week you could start on Tuesday and work till Friday.
The off days being Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday the first week.
The second week you would have off just Saturday, and Sunday.
I tried the 4x10 plan at an old job that I had. For a few of reasons, I found it to be a losing proposition. First off, I found that crowding errands, grocery shopping, and personal/household maintenance tasks into the “extra day off” pretty much used up all that day, just because I had less time after work, during the week. Also, in our case, we were expected to schedule doctor visits, and the like, on the off-day, while, with a traditional schedule, this sort of thing is traditionally allowed to salaried staff during the workweek, by use of PTO or whatever. The 7am to 6PM grind was just too long, especially if I was at that difficult “getting over the first hump” part of a project.