Why are most jobs 9-5 (Monday thru Friday) rather than other hours/days?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Even though 2nd & 3rd shift hours, along with weekend availability, could work for most jobs, it’s rare to see offices and doctors/specialists open after 5 pm or during the weekends.

IMO, I don’t see an issue if some businesses stayed open during the weekends or anytime after 5 pm, but I guess it doesn’t make sense for some businesses to stay open during those times, even though they’d generate more business if people were able to see doctors on Saturdays or Sundays or go to the post office after their 9 to 5 job.

On an extra note, staffing may be an issue as well, but it would create more (full & part time) job opportunities if businesses stayed open later or during the weekends.

2

Part of it is no doubt that having widely agreed to “business hours” helps families and communities plan social and recreational engagements. If you know that virtually everyone is free on Saturday afternoons, Sunday mornings, and Friday nights, you can schedule sporting events, church services, and parties without wondering if most people will be available.

I think the system is gradually breaking down, though. Smart service providers realize that being available outside the M-F, 9-5 restriction can really help people who don’t have the freedom to take time off from their jobs, and/or it can help employees. My PCP does 4 10-hour days each week, M-Th, so everyone who works for her gets 3-day weekends. Conversely, my vet opens at 7am and has Saturday hours.

3

The obvious answer is that it was done so that Dolly Parton could be in a movie and write a song about it:

//i\\

4

9 to 5 is 8 hours. Do folks get paid for lunch?

I think most jobs are 8-5 with an hour lunch. I work from home, so my hours are very flexible.

5

I always figured a standardised work week means you can more easily coordinate with others in your field. They will be at their workplace during the same hours you are at your workplace, facilitating a smoother business relationship.

Of course, certain kinds of jobs have differing hours, such as deliveries or manufacturing, and dealing with other time zones will also upset things, but no system is going to perfectly align.

6

Yeah - I always thought that odd.

7

I can’t find any definitive source for “9 to 5” other than it being traditional business hours more than, necessarily, traditional working hours. An employee at a 9-to-5 business might have to get in at 8:30, which would leave half an hour for lunch.

Of course, many (probably most?) hourly employees don’t actually get 40 hours of work per week.

ETA: Here’s a cite for average hours by industry.

8

Hi there!

-Sky, 8:30 - 5 federal office worker (we also have two paid 15-minute breaks per day; virtually everyone rolls them into their lunch break).

9

From 8 to 9 she is in the office but does not do any work.

She does, of course, take a lunch as well.

10

I work in higher education, our teaching day goes from 9am to 7pm (M-Th) and to 6pm on Friday so that would be a lot of time to cover if we kept our offices open all that time. The admin staff are contracted to either 36hrs or 37.5hrs per week and our agreement is that the admin office is open from 9.30am-4pm daily. Since we have hybrid work patterns, there’s often only 3-4 people in the office each day so trying to schedule cover for the entirety of the teaching day would be a difficult job. Plus, we have people who commute to work and that can add another 2-3hrs to your day. I am sure nobody wants to be working until 7pm on campus and not getting home until 10pm every night.

11

Yeah I used to do that. Now that I work for county government, my hours are sort of my discretion. I’m paid hourly. But I put in my 40. I have a job to do, and people to support. Our whole team is that way.

But, we all just flex the hours, and we know it. Some weeks maybe 30 hours, some 50. It’s even in the end. This week I need to work Saturday for a big software update. I’ll probably cut out early today. Depends on what comes down the pike.

12

I can but I’m customer service now, which requires 8:30 - 5 a few times a month for assigned phone duty. Easier for me to maintain a regular schedule but I still flex on occasions when necessary and not on an assigned phone day.

13

That’s how it is for me. If I work weekend/night hours it just goes into a mental flex zone and I try to take them within a few weeks.

Otherwise I clock exactly 40 hours every week. Barring scheduled stuff getting in the way, I get in when I want (first person in the office) and leave roughly 8.5 hours later (first person out the door).

It’s fucking fantastic.

14

Interaction between businesses is probably a factor.

You have a small business. You have to be in regular contact with the other businesses that are your customers, your suppliers, and your support.

If they’re operating on a nine-to-five schedule and you decide to operate on a ten-to-six schedule that means they can’t contact you for the first hour of their business day and you can’t contact them for the last hour of your business day. You’re reduced an eight hour business day to six hours and you’re trying to get the same amount of business done.

15

You’d be surprised. But I’m sure most people don’t want to do that.

And interactions within a business. I worked for a large employer, and we had flexible hours, but there were core hours everyone was supposed to work. That meant you could schedule a meeting during core hours and assume that most employees would not be inconvenienced by it.

16

At NASA the standard shift was 8 and a half hours. But if you were working 2nd or 3rd shift it was just 8 hours as those shifts were considered “operational” shifts to conduct research and you were expected to eat lunch on the job. At some point, maybe around 2000, NASA adopted a Flex-time philosophy. You could start as early as 6:00am or stay as late as 6:00pm. You could take a lunch of any length as long as you worked 8 hours and covered 6 to 6. All flex hours need to be approved by your supervisor but that was just a formality. It made for a more relaxing job to me.

17

As others have noted, the 9ish - 5ish, M-F operating hours are there because it’s effectively a norm, particularly for businesses which conduct their operations with other businesses.

I’ve spent most of my career at advertising agencies; our entire business is creating work for our clients (i.e., other businesses). A significant part of that is participating in meetings with each other, and our clients, and answering phone calls and emails from our colleagues and clients. It behooves us to be available when our clients are doing business, and unless it’s a client that’s not US-based, that’s typically 9-5, M-F. (I’ve known colleagues who have worked on accounts based in Europe and Asia, and it leads to having to take meetings either very early in the morning, or very late in the evening.)

Even if your business is one that sells directly to consumers (i.e., a store, a restaurant, etc.), you need to be open and operating when most people are able to patronize you; with some exceptions, that means being open in the daytime (though it often also means being open earlier than 9 a.m, and later than 5 p.m.)

A business which has little or no direct interaction with other businesses in the course of its daily operations could, in theory, operate with whatever schedule they chose – for example, a manufacturing company which just cranks out widgets could choose to operate its production lines from 6pm until 2am., Wednesday through Sunday. At that point, the challenge is finding employees: most people have families and friends with whom they do things away from work, and they want to be able to do things (have dinner, watch TV, visit, go to sporting events, etc.) when their friends and families are available, and that usually means evenings and weekends.

I have a few friends who work second and third shift, and their social schedules wind up being very limited, because when their families and friends are awake and available, they are either at work or asleep.

18

Me too. I’m gonna flex and then come back to run some code this afternoon. Working tomorrow at 5am (Saturday), until this update is done. Can be very stressful and am looking to retirement. Not counting days yet, But I am counting months.

There was a big problem for micro-managers everywhere. They suddenly found out they had nothing to do when COVID struck and everyone went home (well office folks did).

19

Yeah, we have core hours one day a week. Which day depends on which bargaining unit one is in.

20

Oh boy, I know this. You get home and have to be very, very quiet. So, at that time in my life I started cooking (it’s quiet, won’t wake others). One of my very best friends also worked those shifts.

One of my best memories is going to a matinee the movie Jungle Book with that friend. The good part about 2nd or 3rd shift is that stores are not crowded when you want to shop. The bad parts is that it really messes with your mind, and your are often saying “What day is this?”

I feel for people at 24 hour stores, I do. It really changes your life.

I’m finding that after working from home for… 6 years. I also wonder what day it is. Doesn’t matter. I have a home to take care of and a job to do. It’s good and bad.