3 ms·
I'm fairly sure the 40 hour week is far from arbitrary. There's someone on HN who has a long post about working hours and the wide variety of studies that were
by rndmize 14y ago
I'm fairly sure the 40 hour week is far from arbitrary. There's someone on HN who has a long post about working hours and the wide variety of studies that were done demonstrating that 40 hours resulted in higher efficiency than 50 or more as far back as the 1930s, and that peak efficiency for white collar work is even less (6 hour days). I'll have to see if I can find it.
- electromagnetic 14y agoThe thing is, 40 hours less my hour lunch a day ends up at 35 hours, which over 7 days is only 5 hours. To me personally I would prefer to work 5 hours a day every day than be getting up at 6am to get home for 6pm, and forget it if I want to do groceries on a night, I'll be getting home in time to have a shower, read a chapter of a book and fall asleep. My weekend work usually averages around 4-5 hours a day, I get to relax, I get to run out and do groceries and don't even notice having worked.
- wildgift 14y agoFYI, the standard US lunch is 30 minutes and doesn't count toward the 40 hours. It's been this way for a long time.
- yardie 14y agoThat is if you are waged. If salaried your lunch break is supposed to be built into your renumeration. But I know plenty of people taking 15-30 minute unpaid lunches verses an hour unpaid lunches just so they can leave the office in a reasonable amount of time.