Elders of LRC: Does a 9-5 work day still exist?

Ernie anders wrote:

The 8 hour workday never existed for the most successful among us, only for the average person who is content with a life mediocrity.

Seriously--name one person with an interesting and high-status career who has a shift start and shift end time. Mr. President: what time do you have to be in at work by? Tim Cook: does Apple give you a 30 min lunch or did your union get you an hour? Ludicrous.

I used to work in the city in London in finance where this long hour culture supposedly exists.

First they would come in late eg 9:30-10:00. Then sure they would work late but if you actually stayed behind you would see them leaving 30 mins after the general clocking off time and they generally spent that 30 mins chattting

In other businesses I've noticed some directors working longer hours. Come Fri afternoon and they have all cleared off early + if you add in long lunches 'working' from home etc they actually do no more hours than anyone else

Nutella1 wrote:

brorunner wrote:

I'm 27 and work 9-5. 30 minutes paid lunch every day.

it exists, plenty of places

That's 37.5h per week. You can get by with this, but you won't get any promotion.

you're right, anyone who works more than 30 hours a week is a sucker.

12-8pm. Paid one hour lunch.

I probably really work about 20 hours a week, with the other 20 hours a week, conversing with members, working out here and there, a little lolly gagging, etc.

General manager of corporate Fitness center.

Life is too short to work long hours and kill yourself, just make enough money to make a decent living.

I work 6:30a-5p.

One of my first jobs out of college was editorial assistant at The Viking Press, which in those days was located at 625 Madison Avenue, one block from the Plaza Hotel in NYC. Work hours were 9 to 5 with an hour off for lunch. Some people came in late; a fair number of the editors took 1 1/2 hours or more for lunch when they had a "meeting." I always left at 5 and nobody eyed me. This was 1980-1982. My salary was around $14K.

Publishing back then was still a gentlemen's game. It was assumed that you took manuscripts home and read at night. Reading had to get done SOMEHOW. In that respect, it was a lot like grad school, except you didn't get tested or graded.

My boss was pals with Claude Brown, Wole Soyinka, Sally Bedell. An editor down the hall was Thomas Pynchon's editor. Elizabeth Sifton, the editor in chief, was the daughter of Reinhold Niebuhr. Malcolm Cowley came in once a week and sat at a desk in a room that otherwise went unused--except when I brought my bag lunch in there, opened the desk drawer, and stared at all the worn-down pencils.

9 to 5.