Unless, of course, you have children who are in school and Saturday and Sunday are the only days you can do things as a family.
Or, of course, if the things you need to “get done” can be done on Saturday and Sunday.
Or if what you need are consistent hours, as opposed to the kind of shifting hours typical of any job that involved weekend shifts.
My favorite schedule was 2 weeks on 2 weeks off but on call 24/7 when i was on. Of course that would be hard now that I have a family but it’s nice that when i work I just think about work and when I don’t work I don’t think about work. The two weeks shifts were better than the one week shifts because you had less time transitioning burning 2 days out of 7 off was tough but burning 2 out of 14 wasn’t bad at all.
For office work environments I prefer starting at 7 and if I’m in an office i generally take the hour lunch to workout so it works out to 7-4. I prefer having a little time with the sun out after work and I’ve never been much for running around late on a school night so being in bed by 9 isn’t an imposition plus in mountain time prime time is over at 9 any how.
Right now I’ve got the morning shift with the kiddo so work is 9-6 and by the time I get dinner cooked we’re eating dinner at 7 which is later then I’d prefer.
By “get stuff done” I assume you mean the kind of errands and appointments that have to be done during “business hours,” like doctor’s appointments or specialized shopping?
I think most nine-to-fivers deal with the issue by some combination of the following:
[ul]
[li]Find places that are open outside of regular “business hours” where they can get their stuff taken care of[/li][li]Have someone else, like a spouse or partner, who can run errands for them[/li][li]Have a job that allows personal days or taking time off occasionally during the day to go take care of stuff[/li][li]Just not doing the stuff[/li][/ul]
Unless most of your friends’ social events are on Saturday and Sunday. So if you work those days you get to miss that, but I guess you get to… go to the Post Office and DMV on Wednesday and Thursday? Yeeeah, I’d rather take the social events.
When I worked a 9-5 I tried to run errands during my lunch hour or on the weekend.
Most things other than medical appointments are open beyond weekday business hours from what I saw. I never had a problem grocery shopping, gasoline, the bank was open Saturday morning, etc.
Medical appointments were the only thing I had to take time off work to do.
If you have kids, nothing is great.
Heh, you must have bad kids. Mine are great. 
Of course, my oldest just started middle school, so who knows if that will last, but for the moment, they’re absolutely awesome people.
Working 9-5 is better if you take public transit to your job. Bus & train schedules are frequent for people working those times; they can become rather infrequent at other times.
But wait, where are these 9 to 5 jobs? That’s less than eight hours if you take any time off at all for lunch. IME it’s always been 8 to 5 or 7 to 4 or whatever.
Dolly Parton didn’t think it was so great
I work in a store, and I don’t mind working any hours we are open. I prefer to be off when other people are working. Things are less crowded, and I get more done.
“9-5” implies that you have a set schedule and you can make plans ahead of time. When you have to wait until Saturday to know when you are going to work in the next week, you can’t make appointments for the future or plan to go out with friends next Friday night. If you want to plan something, you have to ask permission to be gone 2-3 weeks in advance, and there’s no guarantee that you will get that time off.
What’s really frustrating about that is that the variation in schedules from one week to the next seem arbitrary. Why can’t a store have the same schedule from week to week, and only change it when there’s an exceptional reason to? If you have that kind of job, it’s like the powers that be have decided to make sure you have no security in life. I’d call it schedule slavery. Don’t dare think about having the freedom to make decisions about your time.
I think he means no schedule is great if you have kids. Everything is more complicated.
8 hours a day 5 days a week with 30 minutes (i.e 37.5 hours paid work) is full time hours, not a starting figure which you then add hours on to to get the real figure. Thinking otherwise is too far over the line of work-life balance. Of course the jackasses that set the 37.5 inflexibly around the worst possible shift pattern don’t help.
I think I have it good with 4-10 hour shifts per week. I work Monday and Tuesday, off Wednesday, work Thursday and Friday. An entire day off and still get my 40 hours in. Never work more than 2 days in a row, home by 6:00 every evening.
mmm
I work Sunday-Thurday, 330 PM-Midnight and I HATE it. I’m sure it depends on the company and the industry.
A few reasons it sucks:
Nothing sucks more than heading to the train station to go to work when everyone else is enjoying Sunday Funday.
Something will always be screwed up on Sunday after the experts update their code on the weekends. And, of course, the on call people have to be dragged kicking and screaming to fix any issues that arise.
Gotta love those late night train rides when all I want to do is go home. Only the finest in homeless, drunks, criminals, and domestic disputes on a red line train after midnight.
You can never do anything right, but you’re sure to get the blame if something goes wrong.
Social life during the week, nope! Unless you like closing the bar on a Monday night.
It’s almost impossible to get off night shift. The company knows they won’t find another sucker to work shit hours when the unemployment rate is 3.9%
Yes, I am job hunting starting next year.
I agree both with the OP, and with some of the dissenting opinions.
As to the OP, yes, having time off during the week is amazing. I worked mostly second shift, almost always covering weekends, which meant that I had all day, every day, to take care of the stuff that has to be done during business hours. I also enjoyed not dealing with crowds or traffic. Going to the grocery store at 3 in the morning after work avoids lines at the checkout.
OTOH, as people have pointed out, many social events are scheduled for the people who have nights and weekends off, and if those social events are important to you, then having that time off is useful. Having kids would compound that.
The main reason that there are variations in the schedule from week to week is to accommodate people who are requesting days off. If Jill wants next Wednesday off, then someone who generally does not work Wednesdays will need to work that day. It has nothing to do with “schedule slavery” or whatever that means.
Every manager that does scheduling in the world would love it if they could just re-post the same schedule every week. It’s a lot of work to make adjustments to accommodate employee requests; with only 14 employees, it usually takes me about an hour or two to write a schedule if there are requests, it take me only seconds to copy over last week’s if there are not. They are not doing it to make sure you have no security in life, they are doing it to accommodate your desires.
Quit bitching; 9-5 with a lunch break is a luxury. It means you’re only really working seven hours a day. I never worked a job that wasn’t 8-5, with a lunch break.
Re: Overtime. A lot of people want it because the 40 hour jobs don’t pay enough to eat without it. I have a job now (that I’ve mostly said nice things about here) that had/has a reputation for requiring a lot of mandatory overtime. I WANTED that when I applied. Unfortunately, in 14 months I’ve had a total of 8 hours of scheduled OT that wasn’t cancelled and the way things are going I think I will keep going with it but need a 3rd or 4th job to make a dent in some of my bills. When I was younger I sometimes did 80 hours a week between 2 jobs, with up to 56 (8x7) at the primary. I know a lot of people say that working so much is a sign of how terrible society is and I don’t disagree but when you are willing and it helps make the difference between not being able to eat (except when you are helping yourself in the kitchen) and being able to have a safe place to live, transportation, etc it’s not really a bad thing on an individual level.
When there are 300 people working there, there’s no need to disrupt everyone’s schedule every single week for that. If the schedule was pretty much the same every week, people shouldn’t have to request time off very often, because they can anticipate their schedule and work around it. Special requests shouldn’t happen every pay period; some people just need to learn to take no for an answer. And it’s not minor variations from week to week; it’s always different every pay period.
In my “industry” (television, on the documentary end of “reality”) days are typically 10 or 10:30-7 or 8. Loved these hours when I was younger, hate them now that I’m older and a parent. My wife works in the industry also and childcare is a nightmare, not to mention the diminished time I have with my daughter.
Also, everyone is actually paid on the basis of a 13-hour day–12 plus an hour break. There’s bookkeeping bullshit to show that Jane Employee worked 40 hours at X rate plus 20 at 1.5X to equal the real number–the weekly rate. If I made my staff work to rule, they’d show up at 10AM and leave at 11PM every day. I don’t do this because it’s a good way to get bad work quickly, but I also don’t feel bad about keeping people late a couple days a month during crunches because they know I’m usually relaxed about hours.
This applies only to post-production (editing). When in production (shooting), staff is paid based on a 12 hour day, really 12.5 or 13 depending on length of lunch break. And it’s not like the pay is better. Some days don’t go 12–and as a boss, I don’t push for every minute if not necessary. But I could, and many do.
TL;DR making movies and TV sucks. You can make good money but good wages shouldn’t have to come with insane hours.