How common is a 9-5 workday? Every job I’ve ever had a standard 8-5 workday, 8 hours of work, plus an hour lunch. I can’t think of any of my friends who work 9-5 either. Are there large segents of the job world that use a 9-5 or used to use one, or is it just an wrong phrase that got popularized to refer to the standard workday?
I think it was alive for a while till the end of the 80s. Every job I worked in the 80s I got paid for 1/2 hour lunch. That was in hotels.
In the 90s every job BUT one I had to take a 1/2 hour lunch and NOT get paid.
But then again in the 80s all my insurance was paid. I got a LOT more benefits.
BTW the one job I had in the 90s that paid for my lunch also paid for my medical insurance fully as well.
Then when you become salary it becomes a moot point as you don’t work 40 hours anyway. Usually you work more. In the 80s the managers in the hotels I worked in left after 8 hours, now they are there more like 10 hours a day.
I’ve never had a job where I was paid for my lunch break, but I have only been working since the early '90s.
It really depends on how good of a contract your union has negotiated for you. Here in California, even us municipal employees don’t work 9-5. I usually work 8:30-5:30. If I am scheduled to work 8 hours (and they won’t let me work more than eight unless there is an emergency and OT is approved), I get either a 30 or 60-minute unpaid lunch break. It has to be at least 30.
Technically, you’re not allowed to skip it and go home an hour earlier.
Or take it at the end of the day.
My wife used to work for an insurance firm in Manhattan NY, back when she was my fiance (1989,1990). Her hours were 9 to 5, and that included an hour lunch. Man, was I jealous!
I work roughly 9-5, unless I’m an idiot like I was this morning and come in for a meeting at 8:30 - a meeting that’s not until tomorrow. So today and tomorrow I’ll work from 8:30 to 4:30 or thereabouts.
I’m a salaried employee for a large pharmaceutical firm - basically we work 7.5 hours (does not include lunch) a day and during daylight savings time we work a 35 hour week and leave early on Fridays. No overtime pay, though. The other large pharmaceutical I worked for was fairly similar except for the leaving early on Friday thing. My life as a contractor was different. I had to work more hours, but got overtime and took more (unpaid) vacations.
My old old job’s salary (at a cancer research hospital) was based on a 7.5 hour day as well. This was at a non-unionized hospital in a moderately unionized industry in a heavily unionized city, so they had to keep us happy.
9-5 with an hour for lunch is very common in my city. That doesn’t mean that you actually work only 9-5; you might have mandatory OT or there may be an unspoken rule that everyone works longer, but the official workday is 9-5. That does not include the lunch, so your work-week is 35 hours instead of 40. This is very useful to employers because they can have non-exempt employees work beyond their normal workday without having to pay OT until they get to 40 hours. (Assuming no union regs or other agreements.)
I was under the impression that the 9-5 workday went extinct. Every place I’ve worked at full-time had 8-5 hours, with an unpaid hour for lunch. I currently have a job that’s split between two locations. I’m at the second location once a week: it’s “open” from 9-5, but I’m supposed to be there by 8 even though nothing will happen for an hour. I usually use that hour for the SDMB, and nobody really notices a difference.
Sometimes, though, I see people set their own hours to some degree. My current boss absolutely loses her mind if I’m ten minutes late or leave ten minutes early (and I never leave early unless I’m done with patients and paperwork), but most mornings she is 20-30 minutes late for work every morning. :rolleyes:
My last job had flex time, so I created my own work scedule (as long as I worked 40 hours). I usually went for the 9-5 slot. My boss worked from 6:30am - 3:30pm for some reason. As I realized I hated my job and planned to leave in a few months, my schedule shifted to more of a stroll in around 9:30am, leave 4:00pm (or about 15 minutes after my bosses car left the lot).
It sure beat my hours at a dot-com consulting firm - theoretically 9-5 but you come in at 8:30 and leave anywhere from 6pm to midnight.
::raises hand::
9-5 here (or 10-6, when I had a class that ended at 9:30), an hour off the clock for lunch. Small import chain (5 locations, IIRC) store, opens at 9:00. Hey, I don’t have to get up really early in the morning, it’s good :).
9-5? I wish. I normally work 2:30PM - 10:30PM, no lunch breaks. I say normally because my hours change without much of a reason and usually without much notice. I had all of a day to try to prepare for my current shift(10:30PM - 6:30AM). I’ve also switched between day shift(6:30AM - 2:30PM)and my normal shift six times in the last three months. I guess its part of the package of working for the USAF, but one that my recruiter conviently failed to mention. Sorry if this is sounding like a rant, but I’m not much of a fan of drinking coffee at three in the morning.
I just started a job with unbelievable working hours. First day, I showed up at 9am and nobody was there yet. People start showing up around 10am. Lunch is when you want it and for how long you want it. People leave around 6pm, give or take an hour. Add the 28 paid vacation days and a better-than-decent salary, and I am very very happy to be working in this software company!