All this talk of working compressed hours, so you can do a four-day week, really does make me laugh.
The idea is that instead of spreading your hours over five days, you work ten hours a day over four.
But the reality is that many employees already work ten hours a day, effectively for free, just to meet the relentless demands of their employers.
They may be contracted to work 37.5 hours a week, but routinely do 50 instead, often for no extra compensation at all.
Some would simply call these people dumb. But those that do are not living in the world we inhabit, where ever more is asked of ever less resource.
They’ve been down the futile funding and recruitment route. In the end, they’re not motivated so much by self-interest as by an accute sense of service and responsibility.
These are the kind that never truly log off from work. They’re always on duty, even in their so-called downtime. They know the four day working week is just a pipedream, soon to vanish from public discourse for good.
Last modified: 6 October 2024
