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Comment by TheAdamist | Hacker News Reader

my dentist also takes fridays off.... foiled my plan of using off fridays to schedule things.

I think that might be a big take away from this. To gain a lot of these benefits more schedule staggering might be needed. If you are done with work 2 hours earlier but every bank or doctors office now closes two hours earlier you won't get any more people.

I believe that most dentists are only open 32 hours a week so that they don't have to provide benefits for their employees. It's an efficient, if uncompassionate, way of running a small business.

It's ironic/diabolical that SOP for a benefits provider is to deny benefits to their employees due to the horrendous healthcare/health insurance system.

Fortunately, the claim is not true at all.

*not always true

So you have any evidence for that brazen accusation?

My dentist is open 43hrs/wk.

Legally, 30hrs is full time for benefits, so it's hard to see any truth at all to anything you wrote.

Its hardly a brazen accusation. He said "I believe" and then made a fairly innocuous statement. Relax. Even still, just because your dentist is open 43 hours it does not disqualify his statement.

Accusing people of being ‘uncompassionate’ on zero evidence is not exactly innocuous - it’s sadly common on the internet, but it’s still a pretty jerk move.

I think dentists often keep short hours because they like them.

Plenty of other businesses do hire lots of part time people and manage their hours in order to avoid obligations. If you don't think that is true, well, I don't even know where to start.

Don't know if it applies to dentists, but I know surgeon's offices are open only 3-4 days a week because the other days they are doing surgery. When I saw my dentist office was only open 4 days a week, I figured it was similar- they weren't actually closed, but they didn't schedule standard procedures at that time.

Short term: Pro-rated jobs should have pro-rated benefits. There shouldn't be any advantage (in fact a skill drain hit) for breaking up jobs.

Medium/long term: Benefits really need to be a function of the government that taxes cover for all workers.

Here's a better idea: no benefits allowed. Cash only. Then employment would have lower barriers to entry. Two employees working 20 hours each should cost exactly the same as one working 40.

Health Care should be handled by a single payer.

Dentists seem to have really inconvenient hours for whatever reason. Which makes you wonder how many people have poor dental care not because of costs, but because the dentist surgery's hours are simply too inconvenient for them with their current working arrangement...

Too bad he's the only dentist in the universe so you're really behind the eight ball there.

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