4/40 weeks sound good, but often don’t benefit the employee in the long run. In my experience with it (just temporarily, with one job), I found:
[ul]
[li]Management expected us to be able to do ALL our personal business on the weekday that we had off, so no more taking the morning or afternoon off to see the dentist or attend to other personal business, not even as PTO.[/li][li]For me, at the time single and living alone, I found that all the things I no longer had time to do on workdays filled up the “extra” free day.[/li][li]Depending on the kind of work you do, it can be hard to maintain focus and productivity over a 10 hour day.[/li][li]An hour lunch means an 11-hour day total. Cut lunch down to a half hour? See above comment. Add a half-hour commute each way, considered pretty good these days, and you’ve got a twelve hour day.[/li][/ul]
As I said, this was just my experience with one job at one company, and YMMV. Still, 4/40 is definitely not a cure-all. Its ‘benefits’ don’t come without a price.
I really hope high gas prices change the way Americans live because the way we have been living is ultimately unsustainable. In fact, I wish American gas prices would double. Europe has figured out a way to maintain very high standards of living while dealing with gas prices much higher than ours. People will need to live closer in to work in cities and drive more reasonable vehicles. Not only is this good for the environment, new technologies and industries will provide new economic opportunities for some.
There are always people who can’t adapt to major changes in life. It was true when America shifted from an agrarian society to an industrial one and it is true now. Some will adapt and some won’t.
All I’m saying is that when you find one that’s profitable, share what it is! Some of us (cough cough) get tired of driving. I still have 8 years till retirement from my current job and then go to part time self employment; if I could find something to speed up this process, or not leave the house, that would be swell
My husband is having a hard time. Or he would be having a hard time if he acknowledged what’s going on. Yesterday he made four trips to town (20 miles round trip) when one would have done. Retired farmers might be able to afford going to town for coffee with the guys three times a day, but he’s not a retired farmer.
His attitude (and I think it’s common) is “I don’t ask for much – just let me have this.” It’s true – he doesn’t ask for much. That makes it even harder to cut back.
Oh, come on. You’re obviously young, healthy, and have lots of free time. Tell me a 50 year old woman is going to bike 15 miles to work and back every day. Or walk four miles in the morning. Or that someone who could drive to work in 10 minutes is going to spend over an hour walking.
In places like China, where there was already a powerful bicycle culture, people are abandoning their bikes as fast as they can as soon as they can afford a car. Because biking sucks unless you’re just doing it for fun.
I hear this a lot, but it makes me wonder what people are thinking when they say it. I live in a rural area about 11 miles from where I work, not because I particularly want a commute that is unreasonable to bike (due to 1000’ elevation change in 4.5 miles on the road I live on), but because I can’t afford to live in town. My 14 acres cost me $40k 5 years ago - I couldn’t have bought 1/8 acre in town for that much. My house was appraised at $160K 3 years ago, and I pay $2600 in taxes. A similar house in the town I work in would cost at least $300K and the taxes would be at least $6k.
This is very minor compared to the difference between living in a city and a suburb. There you are talking about similar lots costing tens of millions v.s. hundreds of thousands.
When you need to haul cargo frequently, what vehicle is more reasonable than a pickup truck? Yes, there are people out there who drive hummers as a status symbol, not realizing that they’re paying a premium for a regular pickup truck with an unusual body (suckers!) I think it’s far more common for people to have a vehicle that is appropriate for their needs.
Small pickup trucks would do the job in most cases. Ford Ranger, for example. And they get much better mileage than those big honking trucks you have to clamber up into.
Agreed, but many people just assume that people with large trucks have them only as penis extensions, even when they are not jacked up off road vehicles. At least around here, most of the larger pickups are owned by farmers or other people who need to haul heavy loads frequently. FTR: My daily driver is a Subaru Outback, and is appropriate for my needs. I can always borrow my BIL’s pickup (which is appropriate for his needs) if I need to haul something big. My pickup is a '93 Nissan hardbody, and hasn’t been street legal in years - I only use it in the woods on my property for hauling firewood/sand/gravel.
I think they’re partly talking about people living in one suburb and working 30 miles away in an office park in another suburb – you’ll see that a lot around here, people switch jobs but don’t want to move and so they’ll just put up with the hour-long commute. If you work downtown you’re actually set, it’s not hard to find a bus or train that goes downtown.
Gah. I have a 20 mile daily commute. My husband’s is 80, in the opposite direction. Neither of our vehicles is particularly fuel efficient, as they were bought not only for daily drivers, but to suit the rest of our livestyle (boating, dogs, gardening, etc.) And I’d be stupid to get rid of mine, as it’ll be paid off in 1 year.
No (practical) public transportation. Can’t bike to work. Can’t carpool (no one close enough who works near either place, plus the usual scheduling issues.) Tried having a small, fuel-efficient car, but the insurance ate up all the fuel savings.
There’s no chance for either of us to find jobs paying as well (or even nearly) anywhere close to home, either, and the housing market stinks too bad to move, even if we wanted to (which we don’t.)
So we’ll cut back in other places. We’re already limiting any extra driving (other than the vacation to NC we just returned from, which cost us about $350 in gas). I’m sure there must be other places to cut back as well. We’ll find them.
Wow… that’s just… Stoopid! The hell with saving gas, who in their right mind would waste 2 hours a day stuck in traffic instead of moving from one suburb to another? It’s not like they can have some generations-old connection with the land!
I thought about it a bit more, and it seems that various call center type jobs are often done from home, so those could be viable options too if phone sex isn’t your style. Phone sex just lept to my mind because I was reading a “ask the phone sex operator” thread on somethingawful.com.
yeah, that’s it
