I do it. Well, kind of. I do two 12-hour shifts (Monday and Tuesday) followed by two 8-hour shifts (Wednesday and Thursday). I start at 10.30am each day.
Plus my commute takes between 90 minutes and two hours each way, so Mondays and Tuesdays are about a 15-hour day - leave the house at 8.45am, get home just before midnight (or a little earlier if I can get away by 10.15 and catch the fast train).
I get on it with it fine - I figure that, with the long commute, I wouldn’t have much of an evening if I was doing a normal shift, so why not have no evening at all two nights a week and get three unbroken days off? Not that I have a choice anyway - that’s just the way my job works (I work on newspaper production/editing).
My Wife does the 4 tens and likes it. Every other weekend is four days off. I probably could. But I’m not sure I would like it.
I work 7-3:30 5 days. They call it flex hours. Half hour lunch (got a little refrigerator in my cube). Though I often get there at 6:30. But I must say, when 3:30 rolls around, I’m outa there. That’s nice.
Getting home earlier every day really helps. I often have to plow snow so my Wife (and I) can get up the drive. That usually takes about 45 minutes. Since I get home before my Wife, it makes it easier to not have another vehicle to jockey around.
Well, first of all thanks for nobody jumping on me for spelling feasibility wrong on the title, damn spell checker… CatsixI was just using 8-5 as an example, I am aware that many people work odd hours. I have for many years as well. It just seems to me that it would be way more efficient, especially for people who have long commutes. Yeah, eight hours is long but will an extra two 4 days a week really kill you?
I love three day weekends like Memorial day or Labor day. I could get into this mode of work very easily. YMMV.
My point is that only management types consider 8-5 an 8 hour day. It’s not. It’s 9 hours, and those same managers who consider 8-5 to be 8 hours are the ones who think nothing of expecting people to come in at 7 and stay until 6 and don’t consider that an 11 hour day, they consider it still to be an 8 hour day.
No way will I do ‘four tens’. I have enough difficulty rabidly defending Saturday and Sunday.
I was afraid this thread would go off on a tangent.
Ok, say you have rational bosses and no lunch hour. So 8-4 five days a week vs. 8-6 or 7-5 four days a week?
I’m not sure how efficient someone would be near the end of the day. When I was working for a large microprocessor company I worked 4 12 hour days and one 10 hour day. This was a “show them we’re tough thing” - they served dinner and claimed they didn’t take attendance. Not a lot got done those last few hours. One guy working for me planned his honeymoon, which was fine with me because the whole thing was absurd. So, you might get 4 real 8 hour days at best.
I guess if you are answering calls, though, you can’t goof off as easily.
There is a great paper, call IIRC “the $200 hour” which shows that when you work over about 45 hours a week you start making so many mistakes that you are really working 40, after fixing the problems you created. I think that would come into action here.
That’s from the management perspective. From the worker’s perspective, it’s great.
I’ve worked 4 -10 for 6 years. second shift, 2 till midnight. I really like it, long weekends every week, I dont have to deal with rush hour traffic, I can do things in the morning that I cant working “day” shift, like getting easy open appointmentsfor doctors or taxes and the sort, or I can just loaf around the house for a couple hours with the dogs if I want to.
down side is getting used to 10 hours instead of 8, not being able to do things during the week with friends and family if somethings going on, and staying up too late and surfing the straight dope till3 in the AM… man I gotta go to bed.
No way. Like the encroachment that is already made into my free time and the stretching of an 8 hour day into 9 hours being seen as expected, I can easily picture this involving a lot of annoying me on that ‘extra’ day off. Kind of like there was a time when I worked 8-4 and had lunch.
I think no matter what bosses say, their goal is to get as much time out of their salaried employees as possible, because they don’t pay extra when we work extra. The ‘four tens’ would quickly turn into an expectation that you show your dedication by being their five days anyway.
My workplace is open 9am-8pm Mon to Thur and 9am-Sabbath Sundown on a Friday, and most of us are allowed to work any combination of hours we like to make up our rostered hours.
IOW, if I was really keen (and smart and sensible), I’d do Mon-Thursday (say) 9-7 (that’s forty hours) and have a long weekend…I DO have a long commute (3 hrs per day) so cutting that down by one day at least seems like a really good idea.
However, once I’m AT work, I find all sorts of reasons why I can’t do the extended hours, so I end up having to come in every day, even if it’s only for 4 or 5 hours to make up the time.
In theory I’d love to do 4 days of 10 hours a day. And I could do it. We get flex in our job, anything over 7.21 hour is flex time, so if I stayed an extra 2.5 hours, then I could have every Friday off.
However I find myself in the same boat as Kambuckta. I get in at 0715, with the intention of staying until about 1630 or so, because hubby doesn’t finish work until 1700. But at about 1400 I start getting tetchy and usually decide to hightail it by about 1515 so I can get an earlier (less crowded) train home.
This is definitely a problem in IT. There’s a ridiculous “can-do” culture fostered at many IT companies, whereby employees are expected to, for example, fly to a client site at a moment’s notice, or pull all-nighters. It’s often still a college-mentality industry (especially at the smaller firms, like the ones where I’ve worked) and also at firms where there are lots of unattached young people who think nothing of starting work at ten and drifting out at midnight to go catch a flick at the all-night cinema.
I’d love to do 4-10, I dearly would, but as catsix says, it wouldn’t work. The first time a big job had a deadline on or near my off day, the pressure would be there to come in. Or to stay till two the previous day or previous two days.
I did it for about 18 months. It was an office job, no heavy lifting, but required the reading of many technical documents and writing reviews of those documents. Four 10 hr days is “doable”; however, I gave it up. Those last two hours are just like dragging rocks for some reason. I would not go back.
I currently work 4-10’s. It sucks that my evenings are pretty much shot during the week. By the time I get home, work out for an hour, and eat supper, I have very little time to myself.
I did try the 5-8’s for awhile. The extra time in the evenings was great, but I work at a job that the pace varies. Most of the time we’re busy - busy enough to warrent overtime.
I don’t really mind the overtime since it is paid. But, when I was working 5-8’s, sometimes I’d have to come in for a 10hr day on Sat then I’d only get one day off before going back to work. Now, if I have to do OT, I can come in for 10hrs on Friday, get a fatter paycheck, and still get two days off.
The commute thing really isn’t an issue. I do the 4 mile drive in about 6 mins.
Having 8 hours to exercise one day per week doesn’t come close to making up for having 2 hours to exercise 4 days per week.
My work days still have a lot of valuable leisure time in them. I can see the gas cost argument, but it wouldn’t make up for how much I enjoy my off-work hours during the work week.
How much would it really save you anyway? What vehicle, and how far are you driving. That would probably save me about $25-30 per month. It’s probably $6 per day in gas costs for me, and we’re talking about saving 4 days per month. That’s not worth wrecking every week to me.
Not just the US. And it depends on the industry. As I wrote above, IT is notorious for not paying overtime. I’ve put in thousands of extra hours and never got a penny for OT. My raises have been good, and sometimes there are bonuses, but no OT pay at all. Maybe an extra day off here and there. The idea is, show us extreme dedication, and you will eventually be rewarded (salary, stock options, etc.) The model doesn’t really work anymore (if it ever did), but plenty of us are still stuck with the same management expectations. Old habits die hard. Sure, I should quit and find something else, but I doubt I’d have the same salary, I wouldn’t necessarily be allowed to dress like a slob, and the place wouldn’t be five minutes from home…
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