4 ms·

A huge amount of those service jobs you listed, especially minimum wage, rely on specifically the 4 hour work day, or between 4 and 5. I just got out of food se

A huge amount of those service jobs you listed, especially minimum wage, rely on specifically the 4 hour work day, or between 4 and 5. I just got out of food service and the 4-5 hour shift was especially common. Their reasoning is they're getting your best hours, so they cycle a lot of people working short shifts.

fauldsh 14y ago
I used to get put on a lot of 3:30 shifts because if you worked 4:00 you were entitled to a paid 15min break (worked retail part-time in the UK)
jiggy2011 14y ago
Working times/practices will vary across industries. So things like part time shifts, split shifts etc will seem normal to people working in food service in the same way that weird irregular hours might not seem strange to people working in startups. I think though that once a particular industry has an expectation around certain working hours they will tend to try and apply that across the board in order to seem fair. I worked in IT for a bank, for example which had a very strict 9-5 culture. Things like taking breaks for coffee/lunch etc were to very strict times and taking 30 seconds longer than allowed was a serious business. I think they had these rules in place for the callcenter employees, where they needed to ensure adequate levels of availability throughout the day. In order to seem fair they made this a rule across all departments. When I work on my own , if I have a hard problem I will sometimes prefer to go and walk for an hour rather than sit in front of the computer as this can help me think more clearly. However a bank employee would never be able to do this.
johnjlocke 14y ago
I worked for many years in blue collar service industries. The sort shifts have more to do with ensuring that the workers don't get full health benefits, thereby driving the cost of each worker down for the company.

fauldsh 14y ago

I used to get put on a lot of 3:30 shifts because if you worked 4:00 you were entitled to a paid 15min break (worked retail part-time in the UK)

jiggy2011 14y ago

Working times/practices will vary across industries. So things like part time shifts, split shifts etc will seem normal to people working in food service in the same way that weird irregular hours might not seem strange to people working in startups. I think though that once a particular industry has an expectation around certain working hours they will tend to try and apply that across the board in order to seem fair. I worked in IT for a bank, for example which had a very strict 9-5 culture. Things like taking breaks for coffee/lunch etc were to very strict times and taking 30 seconds longer than allowed was a serious business. I think they had these rules in place for the callcenter employees, where they needed to ensure adequate levels of availability throughout the day. In order to seem fair they made this a rule across all departments. When I work on my own , if I have a hard problem I will sometimes prefer to go and walk for an hour rather than sit in front of the computer as this can help me think more clearly. However a bank employee would never be able to do this.

johnjlocke 14y ago

I worked for many years in blue collar service industries. The sort shifts have more to do with ensuring that the workers don't get full health benefits, thereby driving the cost of each worker down for the company.