I estimate I only work 32 hours a week mon-friday but I do sometimes work a few hours here and there on my time off or vacations. On average, it’s probably 35h/week.
When I first got out of college, I went into defense work, and found a job helping to design airborne RADAR and FLIR systems. Once nice thing about working with classified stuff is that you had to be in the office between 8:00 and 8:30 am, and out between 5:00 and 5:30 pm. Anything else was a security violation. You couldn’t work overtime unless a whole bunch of people approved it first, so we worked straight 40 hour weeks, 8 to 5 with a 1 hour lunch.
I worked on the F-16, a Japanese version of the F-4 Phantom, and the “Flying Dorito”:
We never called it the Flying Dorito while I worked there. The shape of the plane was classified. I didn’t need to know what the plane looked like, so I never knew what it looked like. A few years later, the plane was declassified and I could finally see what I had been working on.
When that plane was cancelled, I became a defense cutback. I got out of defense work (too much hire and fire) and got into industrial control. I haven’t worked a straight 40 hour work week since.
Despite the 40 hour work week, I don’t miss defense work.
I’m retired now, but when I was working a work week was anywhere between 50 and 100 hours. There was an employee once who had only been with us a couple of months who asked the mill manager about working four 10 hour days. That guy got fired shortly after. The mill manager said, “If he’s not already working five 10 hour days, he’s fucking me.” So, yeah, a forty hour week would have been extraordinary.
Poster child circumstances for why unions get formed. 