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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: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday August 21 2018, @08:25PM (17 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 21 2018, @08:25PM (#724355) Journal

    Does anyone actually work 9 to 5?

    As long as I can remember it was 8 to 5. Except, in the 1980's it actually was 8:30 to 5:30 because we were all young and there were four of us. There were no official vacation days or hours. We would go on vacation when we wanted, and nobody put the company in a bind. My how things have to change as you grow and eventually get acquired.

    Even now, it is 8 to 5 as it's been for a couple decades.

    But 9 to 5? Is this a myth?

    I can actually have reasonably flexible hours. I am salaried. I have some latitude to manage my time along with certain goals I am expected to achieve. There are core hours (10 to 2) that I should be here any time that meetings might be scheduled across time zones.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @08:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @08:40PM (#724367)

    The more of your comments I read, the more I realize what a shallow, unthinking, Borg-like collectivist lefty you really are.

  • (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Tuesday August 21 2018, @08:55PM (3 children)

    by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 21 2018, @08:55PM (#724377)
    Yea I'll never forget when I got my first "real" white collar job and realized Dolly lied to us all...
    • (Score: 3, Funny) by arslan on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:34PM (2 children)

      by arslan (3462) on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:34PM (#724427)

      uhh.. I learned Dolly lied earlier than that when I found out she was enhanced, talk about shattering a boy's dream..

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @02:14AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @02:14AM (#724507)

        Who is Dolly? The musical hello dolly? Please explain

        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday August 22 2018, @12:49PM

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 22 2018, @12:49PM (#724630) Journal

          Go to IMDB. Look up movie called "9 to 5". Look at leading stars in that movie.

          It is a bit dated now. No cell phones. Typewriters. Obvious gender roles. But otherwise the same executives walking over the worker's backs that you would recognize today. And its very funny. Especially the Skinny & Sweet coffee sweetener.

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @09:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @09:17PM (#724383)

    I do 8:00 to 12:00 and 12:30 to 15:30. Working 35hr (32.5 in the summer) a week and being paid more than my peers who work 40h that is wonderful. Unions are not only there to collect membership fees you know.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Tuesday August 21 2018, @09:25PM (2 children)

    by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday August 21 2018, @09:25PM (#724389)

    I've NEVER worked 9 to 5. That's only 8 hours, including lunch and breaks.
    All my employers have always read "40 hours work week" as meaning 8 hours plus breaks, so 8 to 5, or 9 to 6.

    My current company has "anytime before 9:30 to don't-expect-to-leave-until-well-after 6:30", plus the occasional early morning intercontinental call, and regular stints past 8PM (or 11PM, recently). It's flexible, for sure, on the fattening side.
    Help, I need a less shitty job!

    • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:02PM (1 child)

      by zocalo (302) on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:02PM (#724402)
      Nor me, but maybe it's an industry thing? There are certainly plenty of professions where shift patterns (e.g. 24/7 manufacturing) or nominal opening hours (retail) mandate fixed hours, but tech professions don't really need to adhere to that, and often benefit from being outside it - one job I had required the IT team collectively cover at least an extra hour each side of the "normal" working day to ensure support for other teams, for instance, but we could sort out amongst ourselves who worked when.

      While I've had nominal contractual hours based around some variation of 9-5 or a minimum of x hours per week, every job I've had in almost three decades has either had some flexibility on start/finish times, or has essentially been "as long as the work gets done, we really don't care how long you spend on it". Not sure if it's just my work ethic or not, but I also tend to find that the employers that give me the most flexibility actually get the most back. It's not at all uncommon for me to do 70-80 hour weeks if I think that's what's required; the most I've booked is 96 to successfully hit a particularly important (bonus paying) project milestone, or spend the time I would otherwise have spent commuting doing working when I'm at home, etc.
      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
      • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday August 22 2018, @02:57AM

        by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Wednesday August 22 2018, @02:57AM (#724523) Homepage Journal

        I got paid twenty-three grand for it. I mean I really did. How cool can that be?

        My client said he was down with it because I sent him "daily" progress reports at all hours of the day and night, as well as having flawlessly implemented lots of features and killed lots of bugs dead but good.

        Too bad the dot-com crash hit my client as its very first victim with me second: all his investors disappeared a couple weeks before I billed him for $21k.

        I discussed it with quite a reputable commercial collection agency. They advised me that to have enforced collection would have driven them into bankrupty.

        In the end my client sold the website, all the trademarks and the like to some guy I don't know anything about. That has been... let me check... yeah it's still there EIGHTEEN YEARS LATER!!!! That's like Millenia in our line of work. Whoever they sold their site to must be quite the Cool Frood.

        It happens that they abandoned the original trademark name as well as its trademarked logo quite a long time ago.

        I have not the advice of any actual attorney but the advice of several experienced industry pros who have reason to assert that I own the code now. This is from Y2K - my original clients either offed themselves, blended into the burbs or struck it rich in some entirely unrelated way. Knowing my client I'm quite certain it's that unrelated way.

        I'm planning to ship this product but only after extensive revision. I _might_ register their trademarked name but would not use their logo. Even so that would be asking for trouble. The trademark I actually use would be based on availability of the domain name as well as defensive domain name registration - not just the .com but the .net, the .org, the .co and so on as well as a USPTO (R) trademark search and Googling for unregistered (TM) trademark search.

        How many of you think to consult the USPTO _before_ you register a domain? Yeah I thought so.

        In other news, I was puzzling over paying two grand to a "domainer" for a truly valuable name but after screwing around with "$ dig tarfu.org" stumbled across a whole whack of even more valuable domains so fuck 'em if he can't take a joke.

        It is only in the last few months that I've come to regard all the bazillions of new TLDs as being a wise decision: it totally _destroys_ the domainers, many of whom paid thousands or even tens of thousands for once-valuable Internet Real Estate that now no one at all gives a damn about.

        "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke." -- J.R. "Bob" Dobbs

        --
        Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @09:45PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @09:45PM (#724395)

    The more of your comments I read, the more I realize what a shallow, unthinking, Borg-like collectivist lefty you really are.

    • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @09:55PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @09:55PM (#724398)

      Why must we suffer such trolls? Go boil your own head if you like it so much, the rest of us like the idea of labor laws and work-life balance.

  • (Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @10:16PM (#724410)

    The more of your comments I read, the more I realize what a shallow, unthinking, Borg-like collectivist lefty you really are.

  • (Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @11:07PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21 2018, @11:07PM (#724445)

    The more of your comments I read, the more I realize what a shallow, unthinking, Borg-like collectivist lefty you really are.

  • (Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @12:44AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @12:44AM (#724491)

    The more of your comments I read, the more I realize what a shallow, unthinking, Borg-like collectivist lefty you really are.

  • (Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @04:24AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @04:24AM (#724549)

    The more of your comments I read, the more I realize what a shallow, unthinking, Borg-like collectivist lefty you really are.

  • (Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @05:18AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @05:18AM (#724561)

    The more of your comments I read, the more I realize what a shallow, unthinking, Borg-like collectivist lefty you really are.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by looorg on Wednesday August 22 2018, @11:09AM

    by looorg (578) on Wednesday August 22 2018, @11:09AM (#724610)

    I think it's only Dolly Parton that worked 9 to 5, the rest of us normally did 8 to 5 since the company wasn't giving us an hour for lunch for free.

    That said I have not worked a job like that in over a decade, now it's more like come and work when you want/need as long as the work you are supposed to do gets done.