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posted by chromas on Tuesday August 21 2018, @08:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the what-a-way-to-make-a-living dept.

Is it the end of the 9 to 5 working day?

Traditional workplace hours of 9am to 5pm are now only the norm for a minority of workers, research suggests. Just 6% of people in the UK now work such hours, a YouGov survey found. Almost half of people worked flexibly with arrangements such as job sharing or compressed hours, allowing them to juggle other commitments, it found.

Anna Whitehouse, a campaigner whose own flexible working request was refused by her employer, said there were still misconceptions about such arrangements. In her case, her employer refused her request for 15 minutes flexibility at the start and end of each day to enable her to drop off and pick up her children from nursery. "They denied it because they said it would open the floodgates for other people to request the same thing." [...] Since then she has started the Flex Appeal, aimed at convincing firms to trial flexible working and also to make people aware of their right to request flexible working.

[...] Polling firm YouGov surveyed over 4,000 adults for the survey, which was commissioned by fast-food chain McDonald's.


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  • (Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday August 21 2018, @08:23PM (14 children)

    by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 21 2018, @08:23PM (#724353) Journal

    It many cases, it wouldn't matter much if employees' start time varied by an hour from each other. And as the PHBs keep chanting "productivity and deadlines not activity and hours."

    Working environments with the flexibility tend to be less stressful and more productive. I really can't understand why some places are still so strict about it.

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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @08:35PM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @08:35PM (#724364)

    They don't understand why you're so fucking inept.

    Take your kids to work 15 minutes earlier in the morning, so that you show up at work at the time to which you already agreed.

    Life sucks; that's not your employer's fault.

    • (Score: 2, Touché) by turgid on Tuesday August 21 2018, @09:25PM (2 children)

      by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 21 2018, @09:25PM (#724388) Journal
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @02:40AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @02:40AM (#724516)

        Ha ha!

        • (Score: 2) by aiwarrior on Wednesday August 22 2018, @02:38PM

          by aiwarrior (1812) on Wednesday August 22 2018, @02:38PM (#724662) Journal

          Anonymous Coward does not know that children start classes at a specified time.
          Anonymous Coward will argue that then children should also be able to have flexible time. Anonymous Coward does not understand child/adult autonomy.
          Anonymous Coward is perfect

          There AC, you win!

    • (Score: 5, Touché) by arslan on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:31PM (4 children)

      by arslan (3462) on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:31PM (#724425)

      Lol, so if you agreed to a pay rate at the onset of employment, that's set in stone for life yea? Excellent, where can I send you the employment contract?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @11:10PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @11:10PM (#724447)

        Why are you content with your vapid analysis of this discussion?

        No wonder you proles struggle so much in life; you can't think straight. That makes democracy all the more terrifying.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @11:41PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @11:41PM (#724465)

          You do realize that AC stands for Anonymous Coward and not Annoying Cowpie, right? At least it used to.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @11:56PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @11:56PM (#724477)

            Your situational insult doesn't work when you're the one who sets up the situation.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 22 2018, @04:31AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 22 2018, @04:31AM (#724551) Journal

        Lol, so if you agreed to a pay rate at the onset of employment, that's set in stone for life yea?

        No matter what you agreed to in the beginning a healthy business can't pay its employees collectively more than they provide in value to the business. There are natural constraints to what conditions a business can provide, in pay, schedule, etc.

        Thus, there are certain things that make for more rigid working days. For example, my current accounting job has several accounting deadlines during the course of the day that both I (and the downstream people) have to work with. I can't shift my working hours by a couple of hours here and there unpredictably because the company can't work around that - a two hour delay on my part means a two hour delay of several more employees waiting on my work to finish. Work needs to get done at particular times of the day in order for the accountants to get the job done efficiently.

        Similarly, my employer is a tourist business. It needs to have people working at particular times because that's when the tourists are there. A waiter can't decide to show up half way through a meal period because that would mean that half the shift isn't covered (including a lot of prep work before the shift even starts).

        Just like it's foolish to treat people as if they're interchangeable plugs, it's similarly foolish to treat employers and jobs as if they're fully equivalent. I see the same mistake happen with demands for universal shorter work weeks. Not all jobs are the same. Some have rigid time constraints that don't change just because the worker changes their mind.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:07PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:07PM (#724406)

    9-5 is garbage anyway. It should probably be closer to 30 hours a week.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:22PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:22PM (#724414)

      Capitalism. Where you choose your own adventure.

      • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:46PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:46PM (#724438)

        You can work two back-breaking jobs or die in the gutter. Your choice.

        • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:56PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:56PM (#724443)

          It depends on how (including where) you choose to live your life.

          Quit blaming other people for your problems.

        • (Score: 0, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @12:41AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @12:41AM (#724489)

          It depends on how (including where) you choose to live your life.

          Quit blaming other people for your problems.