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Comment by cableshaft | Hacker News Reader

One year a company did mandatory 'half-day Fridays' during the summer where the company closed after a half day on Friday.

But in order to do that we had to work 9 hour days Monday - Thursday.

That extra hour those four days felt torturous, so it meant four days of feeling awful just so I could leave a few hours early on a day in which most people (and myself) already weren't working too hard anyway.

I hated it.

This was at a very low output insurance company, btw, so there often wasn't huge pressure to get things done quickly (new software releases were once a quarter, and IT would complain that two months lead time wasn't enough time to provision a single new server that was a clone of an existing server, as an example of how slow things moved), and the days dragged on way long.

I worked more high pressure startups before where I was often there for 9 or more hours by necessity to meet deadlines that didn't feel so bad.

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I had a job that offered your choice of 4x10 or 5x8.

Many people took the 4x10 but then discovered they couldn't handle 10 hour days every day. Like you said, the last 1-2 hours were so unproductive they might as well have been not working.

So some people didn't even try to work those last 2 hours. They'd sit at their desks and watch things or play games, pretending to work when anyone came in. Kind of ruined it for everyone.

So you traded 1 whole day for 2h a day to do whatever you wanted but at the office?

Sounds like you spread Friday across the other days. Still a good deal to me, I'd take some online courses or something I wanted to do anyway in my free time.

> 2h a day to do whatever you wanted but at the office?

Oh, joy. I definitely wouldn't prefer a prison cell with a bed, tv, bookshelf, and privacy. What were those WFH people crying about?

> One year a company did mandatory 'half-day Fridays' during the summer where the company closed after a half day on Friday.

> But in order to do that we had to work 9 hour days Monday - Thursday.

This is SOP at my work in Spain. It's fine for me, they're very flexible anyway. And I work from home so much that it doesn't really exhaust me.

I wouldn't have had an issue with it if I was WFH at that time, but I wasn't.

But I have been WFH the past six years and at this point I can't really handle going to the office for a full day anymore. Every once in a while I go into the office for something and after 4 hours I'm staring at the clock and itching to leave (even if I have work to do).

I usually duck out after about 6 hours, I say it's to beat the worst of the traffic (which is true, it's still pretty bad, I still have a 60-90 minute commute home), but also just because I feel super antsy by that point.

And my current office isn't terrible (but it's not good either). The one where I had to work 9 hour days that one summer was twice as sterile, with terrible dim flourescent lighting, and it was way too formal.

> But I have been WFH the past six years and at this point I can't really handle going to the office for a full day anymore. Every once in a while I go into the office for something and after 4 hours I'm staring at the clock and itching to leave (even if I have work to do).

Agreed. I have to go twice a week officially but I wouldn't know how to cope if I actually did that. I end up going once every two weeks or so and I come late and knock off early. And yeah like you say I'm super drained after it. One time my vision even started flashing when I was in the metro. Now I have to say I'm neurodivergent so these things take a lot out of me.

But the office has changed also. Before the pandemic I used to come 2-3 times a week but I had my own desk, sat beside colleagues who I actually worked with and that understood the thing about IT which is if I have my headphones on I don't want to be interrupted because I'm concentrating on something.

Now we have people from all departments all over the place, like sales and marketing blabbing on the phone. It's very distracting. We have to fight over desks (often people take my booked desk and other people book one and don't show up), I have to carry around my stuff like I'm in playschool. It just feels like it's just a show, it no longer accomplishes anything. It's a very hostile work environment now.

WFH is just so much better. I'm more relaxed, my head is clear, I have more time to chat with others on Teams, and if I need to do something at night I just grab my screen because it's all open anyway. There's much less barriers.

I had a similar experience. I worked for a place where if you worked 48 minutes more per day, you'd get every 2nd Friday off. This was a unionized place that was pretty strict about not working extra hours due to overtime rules. After being hired, I didn't partake in this but had pretty short workdays. I would start at 8:30 and then leave at 4. It was great. However, pretty much everyone in the company did the system to get the 2nd Friday off. So I tried switching to that and I felt the same. It just felt so much longer.

> But in order to do that we had to work 9 hour days Monday - Thursday.

We actually work 9hs here in Argentina (1h is for lunch, although you're probably still at the office and discussing work-related things anyways so...)

Is the common thing in the US to work 9-5 (8hs) with lunch included? Or do you guys just not take lunch?

I always saw half time Fridays as just as bad as Fridays as a full work day. Now you’re just kinda making fun of workers with that. If I’m already doing the commute and the shower and the crap I have to do in the morning what’s the point?Might as well get some real work in and do a full day

Agreed.

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