Four-day work week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output - Sensationalist Headlines

Any study that looked at this noted that work effort never reduced and that after at least 2 hours of a break, people could work another 4 hours.

i've been thinking of switching from my current 9/80 schedule (work eight 9-hour days, one 8-hour day, get a day off) to a 4x3 schedule but damn a 8x6 schedule sounds like heaven. i'd travel overseas so much if i could do that

Even if it meant doing extra long days, I'd jump at doing 4/3. I've only been working in an office for 9 months (I worked retail beforehand, though admittedly not as a standard shop floor worker), but the lack of energy in the building on a Friday is palpable. We're a utilities engineering firm, and it's amazing how many of the project engineers have site visits on Friday afternoons Sadly I'm stuck in the office because I'm in Finance, but staying focused on that last day is tough.

Back when I was working retail I was on a 7 on, 2 off, 3 on, 2 off rotation (because it worked so well for coverage, i guess?) and while those 3 day groups seemed great, I was still only just barely recovered from working 7 in a row making even those 3 days tough to work. The only time I would ever be able to get fully recovered is after taking holidays and that rarely ever happened. Fuck walmart I'm always so glad I got out of that nonsense

Thanks for the reminder that I haven’t had a day off in 9 days now. Good grief. I hate my job.

Getting 2 days off in a row is so rare it feels like a fucking vacation every time it happens.

From experience you'd much prefer to have a day off in the middle of the week. I work four days per week and I typically take off Wednesdays. Working just two days before getting a day off is amazing, you'll get worn down a lot less during work and it's much less dreadful. And if Wednesday isn't an option then I'd say go for Tuesday, and then Thursdays after that. Having extra long weekends isn't really all it's cracked up to be unless you are planning brief trips or something over the weekend.

I proposed a 4 day, 10 hour/day work week to my boss 2 years ago and he sprung for it. I made donuts in a bakery full-time alongside one other that did the same thing, and we both flourished. It was so much easier to work an extra 2 hours a day for a whole extra day off, and output actually surged. The extra 2 hours a day were spent making more donuts and making them better, and customers noticed the increase in quality. We sold something like 13% more in donuts the following year. I even took on more responsibilities because I frankly had the energy to do more at work, so it was entirely a win/win. Just my $0.02 on the matter.

As long as the salary changed I guess 4-days could work for retail, but I think the point in comparing office and retail is that you're generally always doing something. Restocking, tills, cataloguing. Whereas in an office you can be sitting around literally doing nothing but bureaucracy or waiting for for an email, much of which could be done from home anyway.

As stated previously in this thread, an actually pretty significant portion of a lot of retail jobs is just completely pointless busywork.

I don't understand how people can have the view that big retail companies are both underpaying/overworking and employees also doing pointless busywork. I think you're also missing the point that retail isn't exactly something you can work from home on.

I've done weeks where I work 6 days a week but only for 4 hours a day its fucking absolute piss and sucks energy out of your soul, even when you aren't even working for that long

The worst i've had was when I was a supervisor at a smaller chain of stores. They were a disorganized store that held onto a skeleton-crew, people retention wasn't high and new employees would come and go all the time. (We were open right next to a high-school. Some of the teenagers stuck around and took their job somewhat seriously, others were what you'd expect from a workforce composed of nothing but highschoolers) So they fucking needed you all the time. Days off were spaced out so far and few inbetween, and even then; they'd try to coax you into coming to work on your days off. Management would bitch out my small (but dedicated crew, we were just understaffed and doing a job meant for a bigger crew), but even then; it was just a new manager who had gotten transfered. The old management that supported me moving up to supervisor was totally cool, and understood the shitty position the store was in. It was just the higher-ups that were fuckheads and would take advantage over company 'loyalty'. It was a job where the staff only gets paid 9/hr, yet it the workload definitely didn't justify all that nonsense. Glad I got out of there.

I've basically worked 6-7 day weeks since just before christmas covering the workload of 2-3 people by myself. Like I said, if I presented this to my bosses, I'd be laughed at, to my face. Fucking depressing man.

It makes no sense we've had skyrocketing productivity yet wage stagnation and no work hour decrease. Instead we've gotten rising inequality, destruction of the working class and the left's traditional dominance of it, a lost generation of young people who will own nothing, and dying faith in democracy and institutions. We've essentially hallowed out the nation for cheap consumer goods as the only form of prosperity left for the average person

the problem with a 4 day week is manufacturing isn't really structured for it and there's a crippling labor shortage in manufacturing trades that is making switching to anything even harder. My plant just axed its proposal to go 24 hours and I think the number one reason why wasn't the massive outcry but the 50+ people they'd have to hire just to make it possible.

That's a management problem, not a manufacturing problem. Our entire manufacturing process runs on a 4 day work week without issue.

is that 12 hour shifts though?

I'd tell my boss this but he spends about 4 months a year on holiday in the Caribbean so I'd need to wait for him to come back first.

10 hour in our assembly area, and we fabricate around 90%-95% of our parts in a fabrication facility which runs I believe three overlapping shifts, though significantly scaled back worker count from one to the next.

Had a breakdown before work again. I'm so tired of working so many days a week, 12 hours each day. Can't even get two days off in a row, and the one day I do have off I can't get anything done because I'm so god damn tired. I would do anything to only work 4 days a week. Sounds like bliss to me.

is it four 10's or four 8's?

I work 4 10 hour shifts with 3 day weekends, I love it. I do semiconductor production so there are always deadlines to meet with companies like Intel, but we just offset our schedules to retain full coverage, so half the people are monday-thursday the other half are tuesday-friday.

I work a 4 day 40 hour work week, 8:30PM to 6:30AM Sunday-Wednesday (meaning I leave Thursday morning and my next week starts Sunday night). It's great. I never knew this is what I wanted until I actually had it. Three days off is amazing and makes the 10 hour shifts feel shorter. I feel motivated to go to work every week even if my job is kind of boring.

wages, not salaries

I worked in a warehouse/factory job breifly a few years ago, and actually, a lot of warehouse/factory jobs already do this. They stagger shifts so that one shift works three days one week and four the next, and alternate so that everyone gets equal pay and workload. It allows the factory to have 24/7 production and reduce the strain that would be on a single shift of people working five days a week. Everyone there was an asshole and the working conditions were shitty, but the shift setup was one of the things I actually liked about that job.

this wouldn't be implemented without some objection from companies. Hell, the five day work week only came about after Henry Ford felt that, since Sunday's were spent at church, his employees didn't have enough time to go out and purchase Ford cars, and so he gave them an extra day off in order to encourage consumerism. Capitalism at it's finest!

I used to work in a whey processing plant that switched to 24/7 operation. Their claim was that people would work 12 hours a day at 3 on/4 off then 4 on/3 off. Somehow the guy in charge of scheduling managed to fuck it up to the point that my shift got 4 on/3 off, then 5 on/2 off. That was not a pleasant job.

At my job (Custumer rep for a cinema) when we're on season(school holidays) my roster jumps to 5 days and I basically hit 40 hours a week. I'd love to do 4x10 hour shifts every week and have 3 days off but in my work place and how our work flow is it's not possible. Which sucks because in any other work place this would work great but my job? Yeah nah.

ya that's what they wanted to move to but 12 hour overlapping shifts but they would have to double the size of our staff to accomplish that and with other things shifting around they ditched it and the fifty jobs they were going to make