Would you prefer it over an 8-5 Monday thru Friday setup? I know I would. I bring this up because fuel prices are really taking a large chunk out of my disposable income each month.
It, in theory would save a significant amount of fuel, which is important with the looming gas crisis this summer IMHO.
I realize this would probably be a hardship for business but this seems to me to be a relatively painless way to save on fuel and allow for one less stress filled morning stuck in traffic.
Ok, so you all can take turns shooting down my opinion on why this wouldn’t work.
I have worked 3 12’s and 4 10’s in the past. We currently have people working 4x10 here. They cover Friday through Monday 2nd shift. I am thinking about convincing my boss to let me work a day from home every week to cut down on the $3.45 a gallon I paid today to fill my tank.
There is no reason it wouldn’t work depending on what type of job you have. Countless people have a 10/4 work schedule right now. I used to have one and didn’t really like it but that is just me. My wife works on a 4 day schedule but she usually racks up more than 40 hours.
My fiancee works that schedule now - 7 - 530 Monday thru Thursday.
Any work done on Friday/Saturday is guaranteed OT at time and a half. And he usually goes in on Friday & Saturday, so that’s 16 hours of OT.
Works well for us. 
I’d do it in a heart beat. In fact, I’d argue that if I got paid the same amount as I am now, but only had to work, say, 35 hours per week, my productivity would go UP.
I considered it, but didn’t do it, at my last job.
Instead, I worked a 9-80 schedule. How that works is, you work 9 hour days, and take one day off every other week (for us, that day had to be Friday, and on the Friday you worked, you worked 8 hours instead of 9). I miss it.
We had both 4-10 and 9-80 schedules available, as well as the standard schedule (which was called 5-40). The 9-80s and 5-40s were a lot more popular than the 4-10s. I’m not sure if that preference came from the supervisors or the workers.
It did change how things were done. Important meetings were almost never scheduled on Fridays, for example, because you knew a lot of people wouldn’t be there. It probably helped that we had a policy of never scheduling major changes on a Monday (or “virtual Monday”, which was the Tuesday after a Monday holiday) or a Friday.
A lot of places, especially in the technical fields, don’t like the idea because they want you to work more than forty hours a week. A lot of my previous IT jobs had an unwritten expectation of 45 hours a week. Given that, it’s a lot easier to get you to work five 9 hour days, or stay late a couple of days a week, than it is to make sure that you’re in the office 11-12 hours a day on the four days a week that you work. There are also scheduling issues to work out (you’re not available one of their available meeting days) and the subtle issues of jealousy that you’re not at work when they are. Then too, if you’re M-F, you can come in Saturday or Sunday to put in some extra hours. If you’re only 4 days a week, I think there’s a bit of suspicion that you’re less interested in coming in those extra ‘work’ days.
YMMV, VWP, ONAIA
I worked a 4-10 schedule for years at my last job. I originally switched to be able to have three-day weekends without having to take time off work. At the time I went on a lot of weekend trips to science fiction conventions and while I never had any trouble getting Fridays off when I needed to, it made life a lot easier.
What got interesting was when they started offering everyone overtime during on weekdays in addition to Saturdays. Due to the hours that the office was open it wasn’t possible for me to work all the weekday overtime that was available, but legally they couldn’t deny me the opportunity to work it all. So I was able to come in on Fridays and get paid at overtime rates.
The reason I always turn down those shifts is because I find them really limiting of my schedule.
“Hey, a dance class on Wednesday nights! Oh, wait, I can’t do that.”
“Oh, I would love to go out with you, Mr. Rich, Handsome Man! Oh wait, I can’t go out to dinner on Monday. Or Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Or Thursday.”
Sure you get a three day weekend but it doesn’t make up for the multitude of things I want to do during the week that I couldn’t do if I worked well into the evening or had to get up really incredibly early 4 days per week.
In a lot of jobs it works fine. Another option is to work from home one day a week. However, its a change it culture and fairly job dependant. If you are needed there to actually touch widgets five days a week, a four day schedule or working from home doesn’t work. If you go to a lot of meetings, a four day schedule means your coworkers need to work around what they perceive as your “day off.”
One thing to do is have management move to a “no (or light) Friday meetings during the summer” sort of schedule - this lets people move more easily to ten hour days (with Friday being the preferred “day off” and lets people make long weekends with their vacation days easily in the summer. But only some cultures are going to go for it. And in some cultures, it will cause a lot of resentment for people who have to be there on Fridays to answer phones, deal with customers, and keep the joint running.
I understand everyones responses so far and they make sense. Perhaps I should refocus the question a little. I was thinking more of people who have long commutes each day, say at least an hour each way. I should have mentioned my thinking in my OP.
In that case, chances are you would not have much time for a night life anyway, even if you worked 8-5 m-f.
I don’t know, it just seems like it would be a more efficient use of ones time and saving on fuel costs.
Notice I keep bringing up fuel costs? It is kicking me in the ass.
I’d go for the 10/4 any day of the week and twice on Sundays. Much of my job, however, is tied to live events that can happen almost any time, so it wouldn’t work for me unless everyone else at my rather large company agreed to it.
My wife would also go for such a schedule in a heartbeat, but her problem is the pesky 8-hour/day overtime rule in California. She’s full time but still paid hourly. I support the rule but would like to see a provision allowing a 10/4 schedule.
The fuel cost savings would be minimal. I take mass transit most of the time and she has a very short commute. We often drive more on the weekends than during the week.
This is sorta why I didn’t do it at my office although a bunch of people did. I work five 8 hour days and stay late as necessary. The people who get Friday off seem to wind up having to come in on Friday every other week or so for deadlines which is totally what I knew would happen. I think they actually wind up working more hours than I do.
I consider 8 to 5 to be 45 hours a week. It is 9 hours a day, and all that. I don’t want them givin me crap about lunch either, because half the damn time I can’t even eat it without someone calling me for a work related issue, or it’s a ‘lunch meeting’. That all counts as work time, IMNSHO, and since I’m salaried and don’t get overtime, they can pretty much bite my ass on the days I leave before 5.
This 8-5 bullshit is just that: bullshit. And so are managers who think nothing of infringing upon free time in the morning by saying ‘We can schedule that meeting for 7:00 am.’ Great, you do that. I’ll attend the conf call from my car, and btw, I’m not staying until 6 for another stupid conference call where one of the senior management weenies justifies his extremely large salary by presenting an idea a four year-old kid could’ve come up with as if it’s a stroke of major genius. My evenings, nights, mornings and weekends are MINE. Not the company’s time for rah-rah meetings.
I am a software engineer. Sometimes, it takes me 20 hours a day to figure out a tough piece of code. Sometimes, I can finish an entire customization in 3 hours. If I were to ever miss a deadline (never have) then I can see someone complaining that I work too few hours. Until then, fuck 'em.
My commute is about 45 minutes. I work from home one day a week. It does save on fuel costs. I can’t work ten hour days because I have kids - my commute is limited by their commute and their evening hours activities.
I’m working one now, or will till they lay us off. I much prefer it.
I’d prefer it. I’d also like the option of getting rid of my lunch. 'Cause then, I could, say, get in at 8 and work until 6. Which doesn’t horribly limit my schedule, really. Of course, I’d also love to just work (right now) 8-4 or 9-5 instead of 8:15 to 5. Whichever. Can you tell that I really, -really- wish I didn’t have to take a lunch?
There is no way I could at my current job. I work 7-3 and I get squirrely enough toward the end of the day now; if it hit 3:00 and I still had two hours to go I’d start breaking things.
I work 10 hour shifts, 4 days a week, for 24/7 operations. Absolutely love it. Three days off every week just rocks. We work Wed-Sat, the other side of the week works Sun-Wed, with all the important meetings scheduled for Wednesdays.
My mom works 4 10’s, and she loves it. She does work the occasional Friday because of mandatory overtime. Where I work, night shift works 4 10’s, but day shift works 5 8’s (unless you were grandfathered in to more flexible schedules during those heady 1990’s. 4 9’s and a 4 is still pretty common, and Friday afternoons are pretty quiet. I was not allowed to choose any alternative schedule when I started two years ago. No more of that nonsense.)