Did the concept of 9-5 included a 30 minute lunch and two 15 minute breaks?
Did the concept of 9-5 included a 30 minute lunch and two 15 minute breaks?
You always hear the phase “9 to 5” and also the song with the same name. Assuming you include 1 hour worth of breaks (30 minute lunch and two 15 minute breaks), you’re only working for 7 hours a day which comes up to 35 hours a week.
Now it feels like you have to work 8 hours a day (for a total of 40 hours of actual work), plus your other time off meaning you’re really there for 9 hours each day (for a total of 45 hours). Am i looking at that wrong, or did expected times change, and if so, when?
Hour long mandatory lunch, no pay. Switzerland.
7Half an hour mandatory lunch, paid. Austria.
(pretty much depends on your job a bit, just wanted to continue with the same comment style)
2
I guess it depends on the company. Mine clearly expects us to work on 37.5 hours per week whether you work non stop from 9 to 4.30 or from 7 to 7 with many long breaks. And any overtime I do during the week makes my day at work on Friday that much shorter.
3You're thinking small-time, like an hourly worker. Good office jobs are generally salaried positions and the idea of clocking in and out is... not a thing. Some days you work more, some less, whatever needs to be done. The idea of 9-5 is just a general time frame. And no one gives a shit when you lunch or break. In a real profession the yardstick is, are you getting it done or not?
I'll catch grief for saying that, so I'll preempt by saying, if your job isn't like that, you likely have a shit job.
51Gentle reminder that without "small time", hourly workers doing real labor your easy, sweatless, office job would disappear overnight. Perhaps some gratitude? Maybe even some solidarity?
As a former IT professional turned baker, I dislike the condescending attitude too many white collar workers have toward the actual wheel turners of the world.
4Me laughing in salaried 9-5 with clock in and clock out. Pay deduction if i forget to do clock in or out even if everyone know i work that day. Got paid 50% less than people who did the same job same position who didn't need to clock in/out.
I have a shit job and the only thing that keep me going is the job close to where i and my family live so i can check on my sister (found out that she do self harm once and I'm scared to go faraway from her ever since).
Desperate people make a good cheap employee.
9I have a salaried position. I don't clock in. But it's typically only used to deny us overtime pay. If I work 35 hours a week, I'm paid 12.5% less than my colleagues who do 40. And if my lunch break is too long, I'm expected to stay late sometime within the month to compensate.
And while I do have a shit job (save me) I've never seen someone whose employer didn't mind their hours as long as they got shit done.
9You cannot be salaried and deducted hours you don't work.
Either you are hourly, and paid for the hours you actually work, or you're salaried, and paid regardless of how many hours you work.
What your employer is doing is illegal, and wage theft.
15You're not an exempt (salaried) employee if they deduct your pay for working less in a given week. I've never had an employer who cared about hours as long as work got done.
5As others have said, I'm in the "put time in, get shit done" camp.
Provided I deliver a job well done, my bosses don't give a fuck what or how many hours I clock per week.
3Mine doesn't give a fuck how long we work.
3I used to work at an engineering firm and one day I saw one of the engineers leave at like 2pm on a Wednesday and he was like, "Bye, see you next week!" He had been busting his ass to finish a project and already hit his 40hrs for the week.
I was a temp at the time but needless to say, I jumped at the chance when they offered me a real job.
2
Everything changed. You're not crazy. If you watch movies made before the 2000s about office culture, including the movie 9 to 5, you can see that the hours included a lunch break. Which was paid.
Yes, those of the older generation had it easier in every way.
167Is the part about being able to socialize also a mythic fantasy? Where ever do people work that they find the time to have conversations?
2Is this a US thing? Do you not get paid for your lunch hour? That's wild.
71For the record, lunch time is not considered paid time in Sweden either.
1Most people don't. So, for an average employee, it would be 9-530 to account for their unpaid 30m lunch required by law.
41I live in Canada. We get a half-hour lunch that isn't paid in my province.
Also, if you take more than 3 sick days a year, your boss can fire you. And the 3 sick days are unpaid. The government lowered the number from 10 to 3 shortly before the pandemic, and didn't raise it again! Oh, and to count, your boss can demand a doctor's note. Which cost money to the patient.
14Depends on the state, in my state you legally have to get paid for 30 minute lunches but not hour long lunches. No idea why but because of this most office jobs will give you an hour lunch in addition to your mandated 2, 10 minute breaks.
Honestly I would love to just take a 30 minute break and get out earlier. It's not even about the money.
5Typically no but my current employer pays us for 1/2 of our 1 hour lunch.
2I work 10’s and we get 2 paid 20 minute breaks that are actually usually 25-30 depending on how caught up we all are individually since they let you walk away early if you’re caught up and how long after you get up, go to the bathroom, get some coffee , put your stuff up.
They’re actually pretty chill as long as you stay caught up
1
Those old tv shows where they casually eat breakfast before work make more sense. They weren't up at 6, rushing to get to work by 8. They had a whole hour more.
33They also had someone to make it for them. One income was enough for the household.
14
Different jobs are different
Sorry for rambling
8I am 51. When I started working my job was 9-5 with a one hour lunch an unofficial 30 minute coffee break and about four unofficial ten minute smoke breaks.
75My job is 9 to 5 including one hour lunch time when I started, it at least that's what the HR person and my boss told me when I started. Early this year I saw my position "obligations" or whatever is called and it says that I work 9 to 6 so 🤷 I hope they never enforce it
3Your math ain't mathing.
The stereotypical "9 to 5" is an 8 hour shift with a paid hour "lunch break". This includes two 10-15 minute breaks, which are also paid. You come to work at 9, do work, take breaks, take lunch, and then leave at 5. That's 8 hours.
My job is 8 to 430. I come in at 8, work till 12, then I have a half hour unpaid lunch. The unpaid lunch means I cannot be required to stay on site, which can happen with a paid lunch. Then from 1230 to 430 I work until I go home. There are two 10 minute paid breaks in there. I work 8 hours total in an 8.5 hour work day.
6Yes. And if you interview for an 8 to 5 job, you tell them that it sounds like a crock of shit and you don't want the job.
So sick of that shit. Fuck any employer who pulls this shit.
35I don't WANT your crock of shit job! I'll go live on the streets!!! I'll give blowjobs for $20! And hey.....you want a blowjob? Got $20?
22I think i would just not apply if i felt like you do
3Employers don't usually broadly advertise their anti-perks. This is the kind of thing you usually discover with a question during an interview or when you're handed your employment contract.
5
It has definitely changed, I don't know when, but it's been like this for at least the last decade.
Though, in my experience (NB: I'm a software engineer, which is a notoriously lax field.) only what the piece of paper says has changed. Hell, most of my employee handbooks have claimed that "full time" is 50 hours a week. They get away with it because I'm classified as a "computer employee" (lol) and make more than $35k/year (super lol) which means my employment is exempted from minimum wage and overtime pay laws.
Nobody that I know actually works that consistently. Most people I know don't even do 40. I do 9-5 (or 8:30-4:30 usually), I take breaks when I need them and nobody has ever complained to me about the amount I'm working.
My only guess for why it's this way is that having that be the official working time means it's easier to fire anyone for no reason because they're not working their "contractually obligated" amount of time.
13I actually had an argument with a former employer quite a few years ago about that 'computer operator' / ~36k limit thing.
My scummy boss at that time was telling me that because of those stipulations I wasn't eligible for any overtime and they could demand I work as many hours as they want - even though I was hourly. When I said that didn't sound right he dared me to look up our state's employment laws.
So I did (side note: I'm in one of the most employee-friendly states), and it very clearly said that my boss was profoundly wrong. So I sent him the URL to that page. And he and the piece of shit HR person shut right up about it. Me and all of my colleague never heard that ridiculous argument again.
My last couple of jobs, including my current one, have been much more reasonable and accommodating. Even though I'm now salary, they aren't exploitative of me or my colleagues.
So my advice to other IT folk is: take the time to check up on your state's employment laws. If you are being exploited by your employer they may be totally in the wrong.
8So my advice to other IT folk is: take the time to check up on your state’s employment laws. If you are being exploited by your employer they may be totally in the wrong.
100%
I'm unfortunately in a state with even more vague and useless definition of who gets to be exempt than the federal definition.
4
As a guy with an actual office job. It's usually 8-5 or 9-6 with an hour lunch, plus whatever time you spend on coffee or whatever.
It's pretty standard, and it's been that way for a couple decades at least.
21And that lunch hour is unpaid.
3
I work in a salaried office job in the US, and in 2 decades of working at different companies I've always worked 9 to 5 AND taken an hour lunch. Of course, I've also had plenty of pressure to work outside of those hours when needed. Which escalated to 50-60 hour weeks with night and weekend work at the worst (I left that job shortly after).But I've never done 9 to 6 as official hours.
15Same. For professional work nobody really cares how you punch the clock as long as you get your work done and don't try to be too annoying about your hours. The only time I've ever even heard it brought up was when someone tried to work like 5am to 1pm meaning they had a very small window to schedule meetings with normal people.
13
Where are you working where you are expected to work through your breaks? 9-5 should include your break times as well, yes.
21Every job I've ever had.
59
All my jobs have either been 9-5 or 9:30-5:30 with an hour lunch included. TBH I've never tracked my pay by the hour, just the day.
4Dutch law describes a mandatory break of 30 minutes (or 2 15 minute breakes) if a working day is longer that 5.5 hours. Break is not work, thus not payed.
8This neglects that the breaks are not free time spent as desired and is entirely constrained to the circumstances of employment. You would not eat or do the same tasks in the timespan. Therefore it is not your time and should be compensated for. Like owning a vehicle, you still own it even when you are not driving it or it is broken down. Pretending ownership is only limited to the time the vehicle is in gear and moving is delusional logic for any such pro slavery State. Employment must include far more ethical responsibly than this.
14Using that logic this includes commuting, as that is also not free time spent as desired.
1
It's one of those ambiguous things that employers seem to be leveraging to their advantage. Where I work, plenty of people do 8-5. Those of us who have been around longer and don't give as much of a shit will count lunch as part of our day.
8did [...] included
Nope. It's 'did include' .
-2Oh, the grammar folk have made it to lemmy! You're right tho
1
My time sheet totals 37.5 hours of work per week and I can take take a lunch break of 30 to 60 minutes. The break is unpaid and a minimum break of 30 minutes is required after 5 straight hours of work so the lunch break is mandatory.
Typically this works out to 7.5 hours work with a 30 minutes break totalling 8 hours on site. Smaller breaks are untimed so if we need to stretch our legs or get some fresh air no one is watching the clock. We also have a pretty good culture of not interrupting people's lunch with work issues so that does feel like an actual break.
5It depends on where you are and whether you join a union or not. Labor laws vary by state and by country. Paid lunches and breaks may or may not be part of your employment contract.
6In Canada, the regulations have been 8 hour workday with two paid 15 minute breaks in that period and an unpaid 30 minute break for salaried workers, unless otherwise agreed by contract, since I started working in the early 90s.
This means a lot of people work 9-5:30 or 8:30-5. Union jobs generally have a 8 hour day in total with a 1 hour lunch break, and other professions have other arrangements.
For a number of years, I took my “lunch break” at 5 and just worked a straight 8 hour day with two 15 minute breaks.
4Shit, 45 hours a week would be amazing, my now former employer wanted me working 5 12hour shifts and pay me so little I needed a weekend job on top of that.
3What the fuck job did you do
2Professional blood donor
1