to your added question: yes. sometimes we compute "fake hours" for people working by the day but it's for administrative purpose (like tax stuff, or unemployme

to your added question: yes. sometimes we compute "fake hours" for people working by the day but it's for administrative purpose (like tax stuff, or unemployment benefits). I think in the context of the mathematician during the war, we can assume he was thinking of a worker in an factory in peace time or something very cliché like that. At the time, 40 hours weeks and paid vacations were a quite "new" (like less than 10 years) thing.