I’ve worked 2nd (afternoon), swing (evening), and 3rd (overnight) shifts for the majority of my life. I recently moved into a training position where I’m Monday through Friday, 8am to ~5:30pm (I get OT while I’m cleaning up and writing reports).
As much as the 2nd/swing/3rd shifts screw with your life in other ways, the difficulty in scheduling any kind of life services outside of working hours is maddening. Doctor’s appointment? Nope. DMV? Maybe Saturday, if you’re lucky. Chaperone your kids field trip? Hahahhah no.
I don’t want to burn sick time for a doctor’s appointment (I need to save those for when my kid is actually sick), and I sure as hell don’t want to use up a “vacation” day for it. How tf are you supposed to get anything done?
Scrolling down to this actually made me burst out with a laugh. Well done.
It’s so fucn true though haha
That’s the neat part. You don’t.
Okay but really, you have to take time off.
Also depends on the country you’re in. In my case “sick leave” doesn’t have a limit. If you’re sick or you need to take care of someone who is, you just don’t work. There’s no day limit.
Also, if you need to go to a bank appointment or something like that, most places will either not even ask you to “recover” those hours or (at worst) you’ll just work an extra hour a few days.
In addition to what you’ve mentioned, in my country if you have a government job doctor appointments count as work. And works days are 7.75 hours a day in winter and 7 in summer, including lunch.
You’re not supposed to do anything other than generate value. Society doesn’t care about your DMV needs. Just work and consume.
I guess reproduction didn’t make the cut, hence the crashing birth rates.
This. If I take another 1st shift job, I will make sure it’s 10hr shifts with the same week day off weekly.
4-day work weeks are great, especially if you have a significant commute, because you’re cutting 20% of that right out. the adding 2 hours to every work day, not so much; but the longer hours can mean that traffic is a bit lighter. the guaranteed week day off is huge when you have ‘stuff’ to do.
I absolutely hate commuting. If there’s one thing I learned in the spring/summer of 2020, it’s that not driving to work is awesome.
The people who still had to commute places during that time also learned commuting is not stressful at all when theres barely any people commuting
Almost like theres just too many people expected to commute to work, all at the same damn times
Almost like if there was someway to offset start times and keep as many people WFH as possible, our lives would be 20x better
But no. Fuck you. You show up at the same time as the rest of the city, and you make profits for the overlords just like everyone else, fuck your life and happiness
Truth
worst time to commute is 7-9am, and 5pmish.
Oh I know all too well
However, lately in Toronto those times barely matter anymore and you get traffic from 6am or earlier until 730pm
Driving is really fun unless you’re just sitting in traffic, the problem is not getting paid for the time you spend commuting
A few months ago there was a major leadership change at my job. The guy who was 50% of the interviewers who recommended hiring me is now second from the top and my direct manager (I’m not third from the top, my company’s hierarchy is confusing).
Suddenly, after most of a decade of it never once being a problem, I have been forced from my 4x10 schedule into a standard 5x8. I fucking hate it.
I feel for you. That sucks to have your life thrown into chaos for a decimal number on the balance sheet.
I thought you were saying that the other way around, and was hoping to hear why you like 5x8 more
because yeah, I like 4x10 more. actually, I like having the flexibility to do either one based on how I feel that week and the needs of the company. I like knowing that I can get my 40 hours in and fuck off whenever I want Thursday afternoon for a 3-day weekend, or I can bleed into Friday as much as I want if there are meetings that need to have happen or other work I want to get done by end of week.
I get that some people would prefer 5x8 because they have before or after work obligations, but that’s not me so I would rather have a proper weekend.
So are you hiring?
… generate
valuewealth for the filthy richFTFY
The concept of burning vacation / sick time for a doctor’s appointment is weird to me (canada). I just say “hey boss, doc appointment this day” and he says “okay”.
I feel like it depends on the company here, but I don’t think I’d stay long if they made me use my time off for that.
Same thing here in Europe. You can then get a special permit from the doctor to show your employer that you were actually at a medical appointment and not smoking weed
This feels personal… I’ll have you know I can smoke weed AND go to the doctor.
In United States of Shit, you can get a doctor’s note to show employers. Most times I’ll make an appointment and get the date on a doctors card and show my manager. All unpaid of course
Ey! My GP’s notes don’t mention I wasn’t smoking weed. I’ll have to ask them to include it next time.
The concept of burning vacation / sick time for a doctor’s appointment is weird to me (canada). I just say “hey boss, doc appointment this day” and he says “okay”.
Look, I get that you live in a civilized country, but stop gloating.
that’s the point. the capitalists want every minute of your life they can get to work for them, then make you scramble to fit the rest of your life in the gaps. they make more profit and you have less time and energy to educate yourself, think, and organize
A tired worker is an obedient one
Especially if you have kids. Who’s going to pay for daycare, insurance, day-to-day needs? You basically become a slave to the company cause you don’t have the choice to quit in order to support family
That’s why we need strong communities, solidarity and mutual aid. Get the burden off of individual shoulders and make space to organize.
It’s as easy as asking your neighbours if you wanna take turns cooking dinner for each other or something like that so you have an hour to spare.
Where I work, they don’t really give a shit if you have to go to an appointment or whatever. You just let people know you’re going to be out at such and such time and that’s it. No micromanaging of time since we’re all adults and know what our deadlines and deliverables are. It’s a salaried position, though.
If I had no flexibility at all that would definitely be pretty miserable.
I come from a decade of high flexibility and autonomy. I now have a boss who basically breathes down my neck until the moment i need help, then is a ghost.
The “you have to be sitting at your desk the whole day, every day” thing is fucking insane. I can’t believe how much I dislike this job because of it
Same, brother. After working at a job that really doesn’t want you to randomly be absent by any reason to a job where you can come and leave any time as long as you got 40h a week - that is life changing.
Unfortunately, not all jobs can be like this. My previous job, just because of it’s nature, would never allow this freedom.
Yes exactly. And all of those appointments are even considerd work time.
In our company we also get a splndid lunch for €5 every day. I honestly can’t complain about my work life balance with this much planinf freedom.
Same here, middle of the road salary but as long as I can stand on business in meetings people generally dont care. The difference is I’ll finish early to collect the kids and then do an hour or two when they are in bed.
Thats the neat part, we dont.
We don’t. We just exist. And then we die. It’s monstrous.
Jobs paid enough so one person could stay home is how it worked. Growing up, dad made all the money and mom stayed home to do chores and whatnot. It’s just how things worked. These days mom’s living off of dad’s retirement fund since he died early and she’s always surprised when I have to ask her for money even though its her generation that made the world what it is. Even when I am able to find work my wife and I are check to check. It’s stupid.
Yep we could have kept taxing the wealthy like we did pre Regan and things would have been good still but both parties became neoliberal shit
Jobs paid enough so one person could stay home is how it worked
That’s a fantasy. In the 1800s and before there was so much at-home work to be done that it was a full time job for someone (virtually always the wife). She had to do the baking, cooking, mending clothes, cleaning, etc. all without any electrical appliances. That included no refrigerator or freezer, so shopping had to be done a lot more often. There were also no cars, so people either had to walk to do their shopping, or they used a horse. But, if they used a horse, then there was extra work related to keeping the horse alive and in good shape. Clothes were also a lot more expensive, so a lot more time was spent either making clothes at home and mending clothes that had holes, worn spots, etc. It wasn’t “to do chores and whatnot”, it was a full-time job involving more work than a typical a typical job from modern days.
Then there was WWI, then the “roaring 20s”, which is when electrical appliances first started appearing, and then the stock market crashed and the great depression hit. During the great depression, if either the wife or the husband could find work, they were lucky, and probably had to support the whole family. During the great depression, a lot of worker protections were put in place through the New Deal. But, the jobs weren’t there.
Then WWII hit, and for a while the US was manufacturing things for the rest of the world without being in the war itself. That helped the economy get going again. When the US joined the war, the economy was really going, but there was rationing in place so the workers who were earning money weren’t able to spend it. When the war ended, the US was in an incredibly strong position. Workers had savings to spend once rationing was removed. Every other country had had its industrial base smashed by the war. As a result, the US manufacturing was in high demand all over the world. For contrast, even though the UK was also one of the “winners” of WWII, rationing was in place until 1954.
So, high demand for industrial workers, worker protections left over from the New Deal era, labour-saving electrical appliances being available for the first time, cars everywhere… it was a unique set of circumstances that meant for maybe the first time in history a man could work a blue collar job and have a wife who stayed at home and just did “chores and whatnot”. That lasted a few decades. People blame Reagan for a lot of it, but really by the time he was elected that golden period for blue collar workers was already ending.
Also, keep in mind that strong protections for workers didn’t just happen. The government didn’t just decide that it would be nice to workers. Workers had to fight hard for those rights. The 8 hour day is the result of fights that were very violent. Bombs were thrown at cops. Supposed ringleaders were hanged by the government after show trials. FDR pushed for laws to protect workers because the alternative was rioting. If today’s workers want to share in the wealth, they need to riot, they need to be prepared to die. Nothing’s going to change if it’s just complaining that “this isn’t how it should be”.
Eh, except that was only ever true above a certain income level. There has always been a portion of the working class excluded from those perks.
I think the point is that the income level that could afford a stay at home parent used to be way lower than it is today. My parents bought a house in the hood in the 90s for around $100k in their 20s, got by with 3 kids on a single blue collar salary of less than $40k in the 2000s (like ~$70k today), and are doing great financially today. The oldest of us with no kids struggled to buy any home on a double income in specialized skills with degrees. We grew up qualifying for state benefits and pell grants and somehow us kids who are technically “middle class” are doing so much more for less.
Jobs paid enough so one person could stay home is how it worked.
Sure, but you get send your stay-at-home spouse to the doctor or dentist on your behalf. They can manage tasks that are more household than personal though.
We don’t. We come home around 7 and start doing the bare minimum to keep up the household letting daycares and schools raise our kids.
We clean and cook and pay our bills then we go to sleep irritated and tired and sick of the rat race.
We have sex once or twice a month and go to fucking florida once a year. That’s it.
I see you, stranger. I hope you can find some flavor in the shit that life has become.
This is why the rich don’t understand how the poor “can’t work”. They have kids yo. And lower end jobs oftenhave very strict hours. But the upper end jobs have lots of flexibility. And the rich of course just don’t volunteer at their kids school, or they have a parent home with the kids to do all those things.
Last month, I was looking for advice for burnout.
The advice I found was inevitably “take a leave of absence from work and get a therapist.”
What a sick fucking joke.
My solution has been THC and exercise. Your mileage may vary.
Wonderful combo that.
Maybe this is my pedantry showing – I would say not THC alone, but cannabis in general. I like my THC at a low-ish level, and balanced out by the other cannabinoids and terpenes, for a full-spectrum entourage effect.
why dont you just go to your summer home for a few months???
Have you considered forming a homeless band?
Burn PTO. Already get up at 6 to get the kids off to school, straight to work, straight to dinner, pick one chore until i pass out, get up at 6
If you have PTO. Contractors do not. Finding full time employment these days is hard. Finding full-time contracts is a lot easier.
Companies love contractors. No benefits to pay and doesn’t count as a full time hire.
If you can’t take time off as a contractor then you aren’t actually a contractor.
PTO, not unpaid time off
our contractors take UTO :/
Eat
Sleepe̴̡̙͈̼̬̼̜͈̯͌̓̊͛͠x̵̧̧̦̮̪͚̭̫̞̭̙̮̏́͛i̵̛̳̲̻̲̹̞̼̭͎͖͓͎̔̓́͜͜͠s̷̛̟̩̯̊̈̌̓́͂̓̈́̄́̑̀͋̿͜t̴̢̢͉̹͚͔̗̱͖͉̖̐͆͜ͅè̵̖̪̻̝͔̬͎̯̉͂͗̓̑͌͒̓͘n̵̢̢̧͚̤̖̞̪̺̭͈̞̙̈́̈́̇̌̂͌̄͛̃͋̒̽͘ţ̶̛̺̜̘̝̘̣̪̝̳̭͚̹̒̽̓̏͂̄̈́́͂̽͗̉͜͝i̵̛̖̭̗͚̟̲̼̪̰̙͇̭̟̿̋ͅa̴̢̨͙̤̺̱̮̠͙̾̀̿͆̈́̊͜l̶̢̢̡̖̭͙̩̻̯̺͔͓̬͉͚̈́̔̓͒̍͗́̃͒͆ ̴̩̩̯͍͔̯̽́̔̊͛͒̀͌͗̚͜ͅș̵͚͚̲̠̻̫̹̹̞̈́c̷̠̹̅̀̀̑́̑͌̐̕͜͝͠r̴̨̨̡̫̘͖̱̼̫̦̬̼̞̲̩̓̊̑̈́́́ȅ̸̞̗͖̩̯̝̰̝͕̞̏̓̃͊́͌͘̚͝ͅà̴̠̗͍͔̮͐̀͌͑͋́̔̓̾͜m̵̡̝̘͈̘̗̌̇̌̀̕̚i̸̜̱̯̞̬͎̖͑̐̎̊́̑̈́̾̕͠n̶͕͇̯̘̤͚̮̙̙͔̝̩͛̽̌̂̎͌͜͝͝g̸̢̺̻͈͆̿͝
Repeat
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Nice office jobs you can slip out for doctors appointments, but you kinda sorta still have to make up some of the time.
Yeah, this. You schedule of days or you ask your boss if it’s cool if you come in at 10 so you can get a new glasses prescription.
It depends a lot on the work culture where you are.
This is also a big reason people get married. It helps a lot if you have two people juggling this stuff.
I had a boss tell us we should forget about work-life balance.
That’s a weird way to pronounce “we’re an abusive workplace and I advise you to form a union.”
The correct way is to say that the company is like family.
Lol fuck that. It was either a really shit pahing job or a really high paying job. If it was inbetween tat company fuck can jump off a cliff.
