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why doesn't the US change standard work week to 30 hours?

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vi edit said:
My wife is an inpatient pharmacist and I could only wish for a consistent schedule for her. The only set thing is that she has to work every third weekend. From there every six weeks it's a lotto system to see how fucked she got from the schedulers. One day she'll have to work from 6:00A-2:30. Then she'll have two 2nd shifts. Then a 7:00AM shift Then a 2nd shift. A day off then her weekend. And then one week she'll have a Tuesday off. And the next a Thursday. And then she'll work a week straight of 1st shift. Then the next week a week of 2nds.

It blows trying to keep all that shit straight as a spouse/parent. I seriously want to punch whoever does her scheduling in the ovaries.
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My girlfriend is an RN in an ICU and her schedules are awful. She usually works 3 or 4 days with 4 or 3 days off, but it changes quite a bit. Last week she worked Thur-Sun. This week she would works Wed-Friday.

To make it worse, managers only have to schedule a week in advance. Sometimes they schedule you 2 months in advance, sometimes they wait until the last minute and schedule a week in advance. Its makes planning around her schedule nearly impossible because we don't know when she'll get her new upcoming schedule.
 
Leros said:
Its makes planning around her schedule nearly impossible because we don't know when she'll get her new upcoming schedule.
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No doubt. If my wife wants a day off she has to book it 6 weeks out. Unlike me if I need a day off I just call my boss and say "yo, I got stuff to do, can I take PTO?" and I can usually get it. Thank god I've got a flexible job because nothing would ever get done with hers.
 
vi edit said:
No doubt. If my wife wants a day off she has to book it 6 weeks out. Unlike me if I need a day off I just call my boss and say "yo, I got stuff to do, can I take PTO?" and I can usually get it. Thank god I've got a flexible job because nothing would ever get done with hers.
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The trade-off is that she can get long periods of time off without using PTO. She has to work 3 days every week, so she can work the beginning of week 1 and the end of week 2, having 8 days off in between. Basically, she can arrange her schedule so she can take vacations without using PTO. Granted, she doesn't always get the schedule she wants.

I, on the other hand, only have 15 days of PTO a year that I have to carefully allocate.
 
I took a one year sabbatical from work to finish some writing and personal projects, still have 10 months left.
 
Find something you like to do and this won't be an issue.

I work 40-70 hours a week at all times a day and I can't remember the last time I really felt like not going in.
 
You should feel lucky to have a job where only 40 is required. Most salary jobs expect extra. You do whatever's required to fulfill task at hand assuming you like having a job.
 
halik said:
Find something you like to do and this won't be an issue.

I work 40-70 hours a week at all times a day and I can't remember the last time I really felt like not going in.
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I'd like to know what that is. Work sucks that's why they have to pay you for it. Even if I were to become a professional fisherman (and I love fishing) I'd quickly grow to hate it on a professional level because of professional preparation and performance required to make a living. I bet Tiger hates golf.
 
Zebo said:
I'd like to know what that is. Work sucks that's why they have to pay you for it. Even if I were to become a professional fisherman (and I love fishing) I'd quickly grow to hate it on a professional level because of professional preparation and performance required to make a living. I bet Tiger hates golf.
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Algo trading. It's intellectually challenging and just the right amount of economics, finance and comp sci to keep it fun. Plus slinging large amounts of cash gets your heart going.

Plus every now and then you end up with amusing points where comp sci meets real world - the other day i had an integer buffer overflow, because bank of japan decided to put in 2+ Bn order in the market (intervention). Max int space is 2^32-1 or 2,147,483,646
 
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Red Squirrel said:
What I hate is not the hours per week, but the way it's laid out. Why do we have to work all day every day? Why can't shift work be a standard? I would rather put in 12 hours a day for a couple days, then get more days off. I usually work 8:00-4:30 but occasionally 8:30-5:00. I hate working till 5:00. First off, everything is closed after 5, so I can't even do anything. For example, I need a haircut, I really should have got it last week but just never ended up getting it. This week I finish at 5, so I have to wait till next week. I don't know how people who work at 5 non stop manage to get anything done.

I have a new job that I will start eventually when my company decides to actually let me (same company, different job) and it will be shift work. I will be working 40 hours per week instead of our company's standard 37.5, but it will be shifts. I so can't wait. I will be able to get so much stuff done on my own time. Some people there were showing me some of their schedules, and it's not uncommon to get a full week off. Only downside is I could work Christmas and other holidays, but I will take that to know I can get weeks off all the time. Will be awesome!
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There is nothing stopping you from getting a job that allows that.
 
I live in a bullshit area of the country without public transit to speak of, and I spend about 12.5 hours a week commuting. It's mind-numbing, and it's really getting to me. Maintaining my car with 100 daily miles sucks too. People who say they have plenty of free time either don't care about having a nice house with a garage, make plenty of money to have such things closer to the city (and pay to maintain everything), or don't work in a career that's only available in the city. I'm gradually putting myself into that first category. It's about time I move to a major metropolitan area and say "fcuk it" to this exurban lifestyle.
 
Our 40-hour workweek was invented to give everyone a job. Wrenching the nut down a little further would help us is our current economic situation.

I think salary exemptions for overtime should be tweaked for professional non-executive employees of medium-to-large companies.
 
Zebo said:
You should feel lucky to have a job where only 40 is required. Most salary jobs expect extra. You do whatever's required to fulfill task at hand assuming you like having a job.
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That's unfortunately very true. I've been busting my ass to make up for the incompetence and laziness of <edited>, and my job title coming into the company had nothing to do with such work. <edited>
 
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Howard said:
Do you not care about the state of your nation?
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I don't think we'd see a 25% cut in productivity. Being clear-headed and well-rested would increase the efficiency of the workday. There are definitely diminishing returns for the extra hours, especially in a "job" that's not the "career" love of your life. Further still, I'll bet having more time to "step back" would even allow us to clear up the inefficiencies of tedium and reexamine processes, resulting in a net increase in productivity.

There are 168 hours in every week in every corner of the world. Americans work a lot more of them than most, yet our per-capita GDP is not the world's highest. Working smarter--and not harder--doesn't mean working more.
 
a person has 168 hours per week, minus 8 hours per night sleep = 112 hours -40 =72
is 72 hours of sniffing your mommys panties not enough?
 
DesiPower said:
coz counterpart in India and China spend 60 hours a week in their office.
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:hmm:

Nike-Sweatshops-05.jpg
 
For me it's not the hours, it's the days. I would rather work four, ten hour days than five, eight hour days.
 
I think 40 hours is fine but 32 hours could make more sense since companies I worked for in the past allowed me to get benefits if I worked a mininum of 32 hours a week. Plus you could add an extra person for every 5 people.
 
Vic Vega said:
For me it's not the hours, it's the days. I would rather work four, ten hour days than five, eight hour days.
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Then do it. I see people complain about this all the time, if you want to then do it. Its not hard to find shift work jobs if you really wat to. My current job i work 12 hour shifts, 3 days one week and 4 days the next week, works out to 42 hours a week. I work Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and every other wednesday. So i always have 3 or 4 days off a week.
 
Rifterut said:
Then do it. I see people complain about this all the time, if you want to then do it. Its not hard to find shift work jobs if you really wat to. My current job i work 12 hour shifts, 3 days one week and 4 days the next week, works out to 42 hours a week. I work Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and every other wednesday. So i always have 3 or 4 days off a week.
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It's not an option for what I do. :\
 
Vic Vega said:
It's not an option for what I do. :\
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Thats the kicker, but if you really want the shift work hours you need to pick a shift work job. Not that thats's a bad thing you can make good money in emergency services and manufactering(where most of the shift work jobs are)
 
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