I just want to note that working from home offers some of the same benefits (more personal time/less commuting, ability to get stuff done during business hours, ability to get chores done at times other than the weekends, etc…) without necessarily upending the apple cart of a five-day week.
If I had the option of four days in the office or five at home, that would be a considerably tougher choice to make.
But four days at home is even better! Cite: I work at home, and have a four-day week this week, due to an unexpected paid day off yesterday.
Not necessarily, speaking from experience with some quite well-paid hourly co-workers I’ve known in the skilled trades. They were just obsessed with making more money and personal enrichment or family time meant very, very little to them. It was just all about the benjamins. They would chafe at not being allowed to work more than 16 hours in a day 
.
A different situation, but firefighters in my city work 8 24-hour shifts per month. (They’re paid even while sleeping overnight at the station, as they have to respond to a call any time of day or night. Plus it’s a busy city.) They have all the other days off. They actually have more duty hours per month than 5 8-hr shifts per week.
Consequently, many of them have 2nd jobs self-employed in things like construction work. Or just enjoy all those days off.
My former boss sat on my desk one day and asked, “Would you work four ten-hour days a we- . . .”
“Yes,” I said almost pouncing.
“How did you decide that so quickly?”
“Because,” I explained, “I’m working five 12-hour days now.”
He didn’t go for a four-day week.
Four 10 hour days? No thanks. I would be too exhausted in the fifth day to enjoy it.
I will be honest, as a teacher if ypu held me responsible for the kids learning as much material but cut my class time by 20%, I don’t think we could do it. Already, i wish i had 20% more time for what I need to cover.
The idea, I believe, is not to compress the same hours into four days but rather to cut unnecessary work and work more efficiently. I do think a fair percentage of my work involves unnecessary meetings, email management, or writing reports that nobody reads.
Back in my youth I worked for a couple of years in a factory job that was four days a week, 10 hours per day.
After a short adjusting period, the four-day / 40 h week was a total boon; every weekend was now a long weekend, which opened up completely new avenues for hobbies / travel / shopping etc.
The full extra day off more than compensated for the longer, 10 hour work days. In some ways, once you’re on the job, the hardest part is already over, and inertia takes care of the rest. But heading home thursday night, and knowing you have three days for yourself was SWEET.
Best schedule I ever had was a 10 hour day, 4 days on 4 days off. It was a slide schedule so your first day back to work was a day after what your first day was the previous week. So sometimes you had to work weekend days, sometimes you didn’t. It was totally fair to everyone regardless of rank or seniority.
It functioned like this:
Work- Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Off- Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday
Work- Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
Off- Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday
Work- Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday
Off- Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
And so on.
And the shifts overlapped:
1st shift- 6am-4pm
2nd shift- 2pm-midnight
3rd shift- 10pm-8am
So while the fresh shift was doing roll call and debriefing there was still a full crew out on the road.
This schedule cut down on absenteeism by over 62% due to people having more days off to recoup if they were sick. It also cut down overtime by 31%.
We were still able to swap shifts as long as we got 40 hours in during the payroll schedule.
And when you took a full week of vacation starting after your scheduled off days you actually got 12 days off (4 off days, then 4 vaca days, then 4 scheduled off days) rather than 9 from a 5 on 5 off schedule.
It was a beautiful schedule. Wrote up a proposal trying to get my current department to adopt it. The Chief loved it, especially when I introduced the data on how it reduced absenteeism and overtime, but the municipality rejected it. They didn’t like the idea of having to pay an extra 2 hours OT on holidays.
That amount is chump change when compared to the other savings. Penny wise pound foolish.
Had a 4x10 schedule, MTRF with Wednesday and Saturday/Sunday off.
Wouldn’t do it again for that job, I didn’t have a long commute and those ten hour days were brutal when it was busy and it was always busy.
There’s something to be said for this idea. Think about it. Work days are already something of an unpleasant write-off, so why not get all the misery over with in three grueling days and spend the majority of the week doing what you really want to do.
I have been having most Fridays off since last year some time. Only because there is a limit to how much leave we can carry forward and I have no desire to take a long holiday. I love it.
Years ago I had my job converted to 3 days a week for a couple of years. Most part timers work, say, Monday to Wednesday and have 4 days off. I worked Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So, no matter how shitty things at work were, every day I could cheer myself up with the thought, “Oh well, I’m off tomorrow.” It suited the business better too. A request on Wednesday afternoon wasn’t met with, “I will be back next week.”
I did this once. 12 hour shifts, 3 days on, 3 days off, then 4 days on and 7 days off. Loved those weeks off!
I’m of the opinion that hours spent in meetings should count double towards your work hours. My workday is 7.5 hours, if I get stuck in a meeting all morning, for 3.75 hours, I should be allowed to go home at lunchtime.
This way, they’ll only schedule meeting that really need to be held, and they’ll get to the point as quickly as possible. Last large meeting I attended, the first half was just someone repeating the same information we’d gotten several times before, just to hear herself speak. Making me sit through that should cost them something.
I had a summer job similar to that once, except that we switched day and night shifts. I forget the exact schedule, but it worked out to a three week schedule, with a week’s worth of days, a week’s worth of nights, and then 6 days off. For a summer job it was great, because the 6 days off hit exactly when I wanted them all summer. And hours outside the “core hours” of 9am-5pm paid a premium, which since the shifts were 7-7, meant that more than half were paid at the premium rate. 7am-9am, 5pm-7pm on the “day” shift, and then all of 7pm-7am on the night shifts.
And the night shifts were easy, because at around 11pm, the pace of work dropped off enormously. We spent most nights playing cards, with only a few minutes of work every hour or so. Days were a lot busier.
For about the last year I’ve been taking Fridays off. But I don’t work longer hours Mon-Thurs. I’m salaried and my boss told me as long as I get my sht done, he doesn’t care. And I do get my sht done. That one extra day off is wonderful. I can get so much accomplished at home and then have the next two days to do what I want - relax, read, watch TV, etc.
My husband works three 12’s but gets paid for 40 hours. He works Fri-Sun then has Mon-Thurs off. He’s been able to get a lot of projects around the house done and still have time to relax.
Note that I’m off the days he’s working. I love him, but those three days to myself are heavenly!
I’ve been on a non-traditional work schedule almost my entire adult life. 5 on 2 off is totally for chumps.
And yes, the world of office work totally needs a revamp, where workers are paid time-and-a-half on top of salary for every minute they spend in a meeting.
My post-retirement job at the local hardware store already eats up 5 hours on 3 days, every single week. I don’t think I can handle a 4th day. Much of my work is pointing customers to the aisle they need, and that 4th day would involve a 33% increase in pointing time. Are human index fingers able to sustain that kind of effort?
I work 4 days a week, 7 hours a day, during the not-busy season, which is April 16 to December 31. I still occasionally run out of work near the end of the year, even counting prep work for the busy season. I work regular 40-hour weeks starting January 1, and usually starting around mid-February, the hours start skyrocketing. It would not be possible for me to have the same schedule all year.