Advice on working "four-tens"

In My Humble Opinion
1

Or 10 hours, four times a week.

My state government is contemplating making many agencies switch over to this schedule, to save on the cost of utilities. Mine will probably be one of them. The savings, I predict, will not be huge, but apparently the big-wigs disagree. I’m more concerned about morale–particularly my own. I know only one person who works four-tens and while she seems to says it’s no biggie in one breath, in another she’ll talk about how she never has any time. And she has the lowest workplace morale than anyone else I know.

“Not enough time” is less of a concern for me. I generally have enough time to do everything I want to do now, and I don’t see that changing with a new work schedule. My problem is how to survive a 10-hour workday. Just making it through an 8.5 hours + 45 minutes of unpaid lunch (I work an additional 30 minutes four days a week for reasons I’m about to give) can be a struggle. It takes every grain of my being sometimes not to search the web, visit the StraightDope, or just go outside and play. I predict that restlessness will worsen with a longer workday.

I always leave early on Mondays because I have a standing appointment with a therapist on that day. To make up the lost two hours, I work an extra 30 minutes throughout the rest of the week. It’s hard when it’s sunny outside and I’m just plain tired of looking at the computer screen, but I’ve been able to adjust. But if we switch to four-tens, then suddenly I’m going to have to disperse those 2 hours over three days, rather than four. That’s adding another forty minutes on top of an already unfathomable ten hours.

I know, cry me a river. I would still get Fridays off, and no one is forcing me to go to therapy. But while I’m no longer in the “I’m going to die if I don’t get in any help!” realm of things, I still think I’m getting many benefits from going to sessions. They aren’t expensive for me, and I’m in the process of developing some useful skills that may help my career and adultlife. Anyway, so getting rid of therapy isn’t an option…at least right now. So I’m resigned to working 10.666 hours (which does not include 45 minutes for lunch) three times a week. I can think of much worse situations to be in, but it’s going to take some adjusting to. (Friday appointments are out, since the good doctor doesn’t work on those days).

Oh yeah, did I mention? I’m used to walking seven miles a day. I don’t like the prospect of changing this routine (walking wakes me up in the morning and winds me down afterwards). But I suppose I could make up for the lost mileage on Friday? Or maybe not give it up at all, but just be resigned to having less time to do other things throughout the work week, like investing time into my fledging side-business?

Any advice on how you make it through long workdays? How do you keep from going insane?

2

I worked four 10s years ago and I loved it. The extra couple hours (or 2 hours and 10 minutes for you) isn’t that hard to adjust to and the extra day is just heaven. You can get all those pesky errands and appointments done on Friday and have full, free, uninterrupted weekends to enjoy.
My uncle worked 7 on/7 off, 12 on/12 off for a while. I thought that might be interesting to try, he loved it but most of the other folks on the schedule weren’t fans.

3

I’ve been doing it for 2 years. I work Monday/Tues/Thurs/Fri. So, my day off is in the middle of the week.

The Good: Having that one weekday off allows me to schedule appointments and do errands so I can keep my weekends free. I’m also lucky that I live close to work. I’m determined to keep the mileage on my car as low as possible, so not driving an additional day helps. If I can schedule vacation around a long holiday weekend, I can usually have a 5 day weekend!

The Bad: A bad day just seems to drag on forever. Those days when you’re not feeling well, but not sick enough to call in, are torture. I’m useless when I get home after work. All I want to do is eat and go to sleep. I have managed to keep my workout routine by forcing myself to get up early for the gym. Also, taking vacation means I’m using ten hours of vacation rather than 8.

4

Monstro, are you not allowed to pick your own 4 days to work? If so, just take Mondays off.

I, myself, used to work 4 10s, and I miss it terribly. There’s something to be said for being able to come in before everyone and just bang out as much as possible before the time vampires show up.

5

When I lived with my sister, she was doing that.

She LOVED it. Saved 20% on gas - and the same in commute time. Had one weekday free to run errands and go to the grocery store - those things that are always busy on the weekend - she’d do them mid week.

6

I worked four-tens for a long time, and didn’t have much trouble adjusting. In my case it was voluntary, and I could have picked any weekday as my nonwork day. It was nice having Fridays off, particularly since that was the day my manager usually had her “I’m going to read you all the memos you’ve been e-mailed this week and then give you a pep talk about how we need to increase our productivity” meeting.

7

Move your therapy appointment to the day you have off.

8

Unless your therapist is on the same 4-10.

9

Nope, nope. From the OP: “Friday appointments are out, since the good doctor doesn’t work on those days.”

10

It seems doubtful that she’ll get to pick her day off, since one of the reasons they’re moving to this model is cost-cutting facility overhead.

11

I work the Mon,Tue,Thu,Fri schedule and I love it. In fact, if I could, I’d compress even more to just 3 days a week. Yes, the days are a little longer and I’m more tired than I used to be after a shorter day, but I think the benefits outweigh the costs.

  1. Longer days seem bad, but I actually prefer them because, when I get my head in my work, I like to have the longer day so I don’t have to spend that much more time getting myself back into and out of it. I’m more tired afterward, but I feel more productive because I can waste less of that time getting back into and out of projects.

  2. The added weariness from longer days is easily made up for by getting to sleep in a bit and rest on your RDO. In my case, having it in the middle of the week, it helps break down the week and I seldom feel like it adds up at all unless I had other things adding to it as well.

  3. Only commuting 4 days a week saves you even more time. For instance, my commute is around 35 minutes, so it saves me more than an hour a week, not to mention gas and wear and tear on my car, so it’s money too.

  4. Having a day off in the middle of the week means less time taken off of work to get errands done that need to be done during the day. You won’t have to take time off to see the doctor or the dentist or take your car to the shop. So, instead, you can save that leave for longer or more frequent vacations, or just take a sanity day a bit more often.

  5. You don’t have to interupt your weekends with regular routine stuff like grocery shopping, so you’ll be a lot more flexible. Moreso, if you have a Mon or Fri RDO, then you can easily schedule short trips and long weekends with less or even no vacation time used.

  6. There’s a lot of things that can be packed on weekends that are relatively empty on weekdays. For instance, want to go to your local amusement park? It’s a lot less crowded on a Wednesday than on a Saturday. Or even something mundane like going to the mall. So it can save you even more time and frustration.

  7. You mentioned getting stuck at your computer screen while the sun is shining even longer, but with and RDO you’ll actually be able to take advantage of another entire day of sun a week, rather than a few tale ends of sunny days like you get now.
    So, sure, there’s drawbacks, and it can be hard to adjust to, but I think once you do, it really isn’t all that bad, but now you get all these benefits.

12

Can you go to therapy and then return to work?

13

When I was out of high school, I worked on an engineering surveying crew in Hawaii. We were doing one job that was scheduled to take us 4 weeks. We were getting a per diem for food and lodging. The crew chief told me we were going to work 4-10s and take each Friday off. I liked it because I had an extra day off each week to go surfing. It wasn’t until much later that I found out that this was actually somewhat fraudulent since we were getting a per diem for a day we didn’t work.

Later in life, I was on a 9-80 schedule that I absolutely loved! A 9-80 is where you work 9 hours a day Monday through Thursday. On the first week, you work an 8-hour shift on Friday, and the next week, you get Friday off.

We were a programming division of a Fortune 500 company, with about 300 people working at that location. Our whole plant was broken into 2 teams, with each team working the alternate schedule. We ended up just not scheduling meetings for Fridays since it was too hard to coordinate who would be in the office.

I loved having the extra day off every other week, though, and would return to that schedule in a heartbeat.

14

Take Wednesdays off! That way, you’ll never have to work more than 2 days straight. It’s my dream schedule but unfortunately they don’t have that option where I work :frowning:

15

I just came off of a year working 12 to 15 hour days, plus 10 to 12 hours on Saturdays. Now I’m down to a reasonable 10 hours per day, including Saturdays. It feels like I’m only work half days, now. Oh, and when I get back to the main office, that eight hour days (no Saturdays!) are going to feel like not even working.

How do I get through it all? Well, I love my job and I love what I do. (And since I’m exempt, no, thinking of all of that lucrative overtime pay is clearly not an incentive.)

16

I spent a few years working 10 hour days - 7 days on, then 7 off. I loved it. You get used to a 10 hour workday. In fact, in my experience, you end up getting much, much more done than you’d expect from just having two extra hours, simply because you have so much more uninterrupted time. Of course, the 7 days of were much better than the 7 days on, but still.

17

We’ve floated this idea at work but the big wigs never like it, for one unstated reason: We’re an IT shop, which means that most people do tons of time for free. It’s just the culture. To go to four tens would mean the company takes a huge hit in unpaid work. They’re used to having five tens or more (50+ hours) for 40 hours pay. Unpaid time here is roughly equal to the company’s profit. Why we put up with this, I have no idea. Probably because salaries are pretty good.

18

I spent 8 months in a 4/10 situation and even with no Sat/Sun off during that period ( it was a complicated compromise I won’t go into ) it was the best working 8 months of my employment. I don’t much like going to work ( don’t hate it, either ) so three day “weekends” was heavenly.

But my job is mostly low stress, I get paid for my lunch period ( so 10 hours really is 10 hours ) and I could do an extra 2 hours standing on my head. Having to do the functional equivalent of ~11 three days a week when you’re already feeling squirrely at 8.5 I can imagine might seem onerous. I honestly don’t have much advice for your particular situation, but one thing you might consider is using your new extra day off as a pure “decompression” day - no errands, no chores, no nothing that you would just as soon not do. Afterall you’ll still have a full weekend after that to do all the necessary nonsense of modern living. It might ease things a bit.

19

I suppose it depends on the kind of work you do. I did this back in the early 90s as a programmer analyst. Although I like this kind of work generally, it has its ups and downs in the sense that there are some necessary but very boring parts of the work in addition to the more interesting aspects. So sometimes a ten-hour day can seem like twenty.

Moreover, in my case, we were told up front that this was considered a perk, and that we were expected to take care of our own business on our own time. This meant that we would no longer be allowed to take a couple of hours off in the morning or afternoon to see the doctor or go to the DMV. We could still schedule a whole day of vacation, but then we’d be blowing ten hours when we only needed one or two. Nobody expects to get free time off, but when you’re supposed to have a bank of PTO to use as you see fit, you should be able to do so given reasonable notice.

I never seemed to have time. I left home early and came home late on workdays, and the “extra day off” was invariably filled with all the errands, chores, and other obligations I would have been attending to during the week after work, on a normal schedule.

20

I loved working 4 days 10 hours. I also had a job which was 8-12-12-8, which was also great. You get used to it.

Every place we had it, we stopped eventually as upper managment realized you got more work for 8 hours 5 days, because of salaried employees worked more, simply as they were at work more days