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?
I work from home, and I’m paid based on various billable tasks. I work up to three times as fast as they think those tasks should take, and I only really work from 11am-3pm most days.
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.
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.”
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.
Block it in your public calendar as “doctor’s appointment” weeks in advance, so nobody schedules a meeting with you at that time. And send an email to your boss so they have it in writing.
Be prepared to show the receipt to hr the day of, for documentation.
Other things like friends meetups, laundry, grocery shopping happen after work and on weekends.
Doctor’s appointments are considered as showing up to work in my country so people don’t go undiagnosed for years before it gets worse. Anyways I don’t have a life as well. I just do things that are possible to do in the evening (gym, studying, meeting friends). Weekends are for errands. Fuck life
A 9.5 hour work day is insaaane
Try doing 12 hours of physical labour which is what most warehouse/factory jobs in the UK are.
one hour is unpaid lunch, so technically it’s an 8.5 hour workday. But yeah, no thank you.
Still a nightmare compared to my 8-16 with half an hour lunch.
You don’t. That’s why I am only working 4 days a week (with respectively reduced pay). But it’s worth it, I much rather reduce the money I have available for my free time, but have a much more relaxed work week.
Fucking this. I am lucky enough to have found a job that’s Tuesday to Friday. An extra days worth of money dosnt make up for all the shit I can get done over a three day weekend.
Go get a PhD and an academic position. The pay is shit but nobody will care whether you show up or not.
Privileged to have flexible time, WFH, paid OT.
Trusted professional career where as long as you get the work done, then if you start later, have a longer lunch or finish earlier every now and then no one bats an eye.
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.
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.
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.
You highlighted why I want a 4/10 schedule so much. A designated day for this sort of thing would be a huge boon.
I did that for a few years at a former job, was terrific! Sunday through Wednesday. Had two days during the week for appointments and getting to places only open “banking hours”. Biggest hitch was Sundays, family always wanted to do get-togethers and I had to use vacation days, or just miss out.
For me its the other way around. I worked 3 different shifts, including weekends, all the holidays and my shifts would be so random up to 6 workdays in a row with one or two days off in between. Most weekends I’ve worked, and my friends were available only on the weekends, so I missed on many stuff. My sleep schedule was non existant and I’ve felt constantly tired - i couldn’t recover after those night shifts with 2 days off. I wouldn’t get to spend time with my gf, even though it’s daily routine - cooking food, watching series before bed, etc, cause most time when she was free i would be either sleeping or working.
Getting the stuff done, your appointments is nice, especially in the mornings when you got evening shift later, there are definitely upsides to working in shifts. But definitely not for everyone, the random sleep patterns caught up to me and since then I’m working in office hours, feeling much better even though the pay is less.
I guess where are working matters a lot. My current workplace let me leave earlier if I need to, or WFH, there’s no pressure in time-keeping and I love that. So many places feel like you’re working in ER, but you’re just making someone rich :D. Also the city I am living in is a 600k European city, where distances are smaller, most drive <1h here to work. But I would move to smaller town for sure of we had children.
I don’t want to get into American vs European labor laws, but I’m getting 4week/year PTO as much sick days as I meed (with reduced pay) and child care days off, meaning 1 day off/2 months whenever you want.
Sensible employer, decent sized town, and good enough country.
I don’t get anything done.
I don’t consider work separate from life. I wasn’t happy in my previous job so I started my own bussiness and now I do what I like to do. I still wouldn’t work if I didn’t have to but because I do, might as well do something that I enjoy and feels meaningful. Admittedly I probably work more hours now than I did before and I took a paycut as well but for as long as it covers my expenses it’s all good. Atleast I don’t need to ask anyone’s permission for… anything.
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.
