Do 9-5 jobs still exist in the U.S.?
Ever since I graduated, everywhere I've worked has been 8-5. My current company is going to soon start expecting us to be in 7-5.
How many of you here work a 9-5 with a paid lunch?
Productivity keeps going up but so do working hours.
I saw a law office once in the early 2000s that was 9-5. And the entire office shut down for an hour, while they all had lunch together in the conference room. The phones all went to voicemail and everything. I was working on replacing a few of their computers that day. They made me stop and join them. Seemed like a great place to work.
That's what happens when the business is structured as a worker cooperative (as law firm partnerships basically are).
That's not uncommon for doctors offices and such
Most high-skill jobs (e.g. software dev, engineering, research, higher education) are usually flexible with time. No one really cares when you come or go as long as you get the work done. People (read, good-for-nothing management people) are trying to make some of these more time-bound, but it's usually counter-productive. Turns out when you want creativity from someone, you need to give them some freedom.
7? to goddamn 5? I'm not in at 7, and out way before 5, and if the boss don't like it, then that's not a me problem. 10 hours each day as in a 50 hour work week? That would be illegal in the EU, where you can't work more than 48hours on average per week over a period of 4 months https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/human-resources/working-hours-holiday-leave/working-hours/indexamp_en.htm
Technically I come in at 7 and leave at 4:30, but it's a 9 hour day (30 min unpaid lunch) and I get every other Friday off in exchange. Also most days I work from home. No way in heck I'd ever go in for something like that.
OP, start job shopping. Longer hours are a sign the business isn't doing all that well and they're trying to squeeze out some more labor. Or a sign they're doing well but are not interested in taking care of people by hiring enough staff and would rather you burn yourself out.
I worked at one company that was 7am-5pm for corporate office work. The company grew from a small retail parts company decades ago, but never changed the mindset. So even the office work was treated like shift work. Office workers wouldn't even check email before 7am. Many times just hanging out in the cafeteria until 7 on the dot when they had to be at their desks. Further as soon as 5pm hit exactly, all the office workers would drop what they were doing and walk out to the parking lot with all of the other blue collar shift workers.
This resulted in things like Purchase Orders getting delayed by a day because it arrived at the approver at 5:01pm and the approver was gone. There was nearly no weekend office work, which caused its own problems.
It was such a strange place to work.
So... they knew the value of their own time and didn't overwork when they didn't have to?
Most office workers could probably learn from that mindset.
So… they knew the value of their own time and didn’t overwork when they didn’t have to?
This worked the other way NOT in favor of the workers. Sat down at your desk at 7:03am even though you're not customer facing at all? Expect to be called into a conference room with your boss and your bosses boss about your attendance.
Do you work in IT and need to work off-hours to perform work requiring downtime until 2am? You better be at your desk at 7am on the dot or you're going to get written up.
Have a doctors appointment at 3pm for an hour? You have to take vacation time for that.
There was this really odd notion that if you weren't sitting in your chair typing, you weren't working and would get questioned by bosses.
Most office workers could probably learn from that mindset.
Office workers would learn (or be reminded) about how hellish it was to work a minimum wage job with zero flexibility.
They were still having 2 hours/day stolen from them, though.
My current company is going to soon start expecting us to be in 7-5.
Before I start spazzing dignity and self respect.
Can you provide more context on how this was presented to you. Also your career stage? Junior?
As mid level, they can't really try too much of this or I will just reduce my productivity to bare minimum and change jobs. I dont negotiate with terrorists ;)
Newish into the workforce, junior role
My current schedule allows me to work when I want, so long as I work 40 hours over the course of the week. I've settled into an 8-4 schedule and work while I eat.
We are now switching to a condensed work schedule where every other Friday will be off.
As a result we are expected to work 9 hour days (reasonable) but also required to take a 1 hour lunch away from our desk.
That sounds pretty dope honestly
Do you prefer the shorter day and eating at your desk, or the longer day with the lunch break?
That sounds similar to my work, as long as you work 40 hours a week they don't really care when you come in, I usually try to be in the office by 6 so I can leave at 2:30
I'm interviewing for a job that has a similar set-up: 8:30 - 5:30 with a required 1 hr lunch break. Any idea why that lunch is required?
The hours are a red flag to me, but I've been a teacher for the last 6 years so I'm not sure exactly what I'm getting into. I have a 2nd interview coming up, but I can't get a read on whether they're trying to make sure I'm taking the job seriously, or if I'm headed into an abusive work situation. Any ideas?
Will the other Friday be shorter, too? Because otherwise they're getting an extra hour out of you every other week.
I do this at my job (my choice). I do 7 to 4:30 with a half hour for lunch. I don't actually take the lunch when I'm in the office since there's no place other than my desk to be, and thankfully my supervisor is fine with me just leaving at 4. When I'm at home I try to actually be away from my office for that time.
I do like 3 day weekends and when I'm WFH I don't even notice the 9 hour days. Idk if I'd do it for a job I had to be in the office every day for, but hopefully it will work for you.
If you aren't getting a paid lunch and two 15-minute breaks during your 8-hour shift, your employer is stealing from you.
I've never had a paid lunch. 2 paid 15 min breaks and then unpaid lunch is the law where I am.
my dumbass state has no requirements for breaks at all. one of my jobs has no official breaks. we've all mastered the art of looking busy while eating 💀
Unless you are salaried. Being salaried normally comes with flexibility but gives no guarantees for breaks and number of hours worked.
I'm technically 9-5, though I can choose 7 to 3 or 8 to 4 if I want. I usually work 7-4 and take extra breaks throughout the day (or a really long lunch). Granted, I work for a non-profit which has a LOT less bullshit to deal with. I also have the option to work 7-5 or 8-6 if I want to only work 4 days a week. Flex time is an amazing fringe benefit.
Outside of salaried jobs, I haven't seen anywhere mandate 7-5 schedules for hourly employees (unless it's a 4 day work week). Companies do not like paying overtime, so most I've dealt with will send you home the moment you hit 40 hours.
Flex time was one of the best parts of working in government. Being able to craft basically any schedule so long as it was 40 hours and not more than 10/day was really useful.
Flex time alone was worth the pay cut I took when I went corporate to non-profit. You can't buy time, but flex time is the next best thing.
I'm salaried so I don't have a lunch break. I work from home so I basically set my own hours as long as I can be contacted from about 10am to 3pm and go to any meetings I have scheduled.
Same, it's glorious. That said, on the other side of the coin during go-live weeks I've worked multiple days in a row until midnight or later. So it balances out in the end.
Yeah. There's always a chance that a customer could have an issue on a weekend and then I've gotta fix it. Once I was on 27 hours of conference calls over a weekend. But as I've gotten better at my job those sorts of things happen less and less.
Honestly the worst part of my job is doing my timesheets and updating weekly status, but when the weather's good I do that from my hammock with a cold beer in hand which makes it suck less.
My company was more flexible, but is getting less and less flexible over time. This correspondingly means I'm not going to be working late during crunches, by my own decision, since it's not like they're paying me for the extra time, or letting me take off a few hours here and there to make up for it the rest of the year.
Salaried employment exists, and there are more jobs out there than they want you to think. The employer-employee relationship is a constant negotiation, and you're always free to walk away.
We don't know how much time we have on earth, and you're selling some of it in exchange for money.
They are going to keep pushing to get more of your life from you, and you need to push back to keep as much as possible.
you’re always free to walk away.
Yeah, and die of starvation or exposure, which ever comes first..
Maybe take a look around at the reality most people face before giving such out of touch advice..
If your choices are between working one specific job or starving then you owe it to yourself and your family to improve your marketable skills or value
If you're really only able to work for one particular, shitty company. You might want to invest in yourself. Learn a trade or read a self help book.
Right, that's the violence inherent in the system. I wasn't giving advice, I'm saying that's the only leverage you have. You're selling the minutes and hours of your life, little chunks of being alive, and you're selling it for less than it's worth. You have to, because nobody would buy it if they weren't profiting from you. It's good for them if you believe you have no choice, especially when you do.
My advice is always be applying for jobs. Or go into business for yourself, if you can manage it.
Don't think that exists anymore.
I have never been 9-5 with paid lunch and I’ve been in corporate world since 1998. 8-5 with an unpaid hour.
Many of my jobs in software have been a sort of 10 to 6 schedule. Most of them have been pretty flexible about that so long as you attended all the required meetings and got your work done.
For the past 10 years or so, companies have gotten rather fond of 8am meetings.
I have a 9-5 job as a software engineer. Though really I can stop working whenever I'm done with my assigned work. I usually stop around 3 or 3:30.
Same. I am available 9 - 5, but I tend to be actually working 10 - 4. It fluctuates depending on how badly management wants things. And of course there's the rotating on call schedule where sometimes I have to wake up in the middle of the night to confirm that a service my team owns is impacted by some other service's outage. FUN!
Was literally going to ask this same question last week. Past three employers are expecting 8-5 m-f but only pay 40 hours.
I've just been coming in at 6 before the boss to look like a hardworking then leave at 2 so I only work what I'm paid.
That's because you get a 1 hour lunch break. I would make sure to spend 60 minutes a day eating lunch.
Sure, just depends on the business. Self-employed and small business are often much more flexible. I pretty much work 9:30 to 4:30.
I'm fully remote, with no clock to punch, but with co-workers all over the world. I try to focus most of my hours between 9 and 5, but don't sweat it too much because a few times a month I need to be on a call at 5 in the morning or 10 at night.
There is simply no good time to schedule meetings with someone 12 hours away.
I'm on 9 to 4:30 with half an hour lunch. Or I could do anything from 6 - 1:30 to 9:30 - 5.
And yes, I get paid for a full time job.
Unions are awesome.
I work in tech. Most people I work with pick their own hours but are in office during core hours (10-4), some (like me) will do a pretty strict 9-5, I've seen some do 6-6 (eew). There's def a type of people who do more hours to try and get ahead or impress, but I don't think it's worth it.
I think if I ever worked somewhere with strict arrival or departure requirements I would leave. I'm an adult and work will get done, too much external control will strangle that.
The only places I’ve worked that were that strict were positions providing 24h coverage and you had to be there to do turnover between shifts (I’ve don’t both 8h and 12h). Thankfully those jobs have been a minority of my career.
Mostly I’ve had broad flexibility where the company would declare “core hours” from say 10-3 and allow employees to flex 3 hours in either direction (anywhere from 7-3 to 10-6).
7-5 is bullshit.
7-5 might be acceptable only if you get 2 hrs off (ex. 7-11, siesta, 1-5)
I didn't even know paid lunch breaks were/are even a thing. Most jobs I've been in had 30 min unpaid lunch.
I work 9 to 6 with 1 hour unpaid lunch at my current job. I don't really do anything during my lunch besides sit in the office wasting time for an hour. Home is 30 min drive away, so I can't go home. No parks nearby to walk around. Makes it feel like I am working a 9 hour shift getting paid 8 since I am sitting in the office for 9 hours...
Back when i worked an office job this is why lots of people would just go sit in thier car during thier break.
I started doing it to take a undisturbed nap. Also so people stop bothering me while I'm on break.
My mouth is full of food and I'm chewing in the break room. Why the fuck are you here to talk to me about work...
I have a salaried work from home job with no defined working hours. As long as the work gets done within SLAs the hours me and my team work are irrelevant.
9-5 is definitely no longer standard, although traffic does get noticeably worse here after 8am.
That being said, what is their justification for 7-5? Unless you're taking a 2 hour unpaid lunch, that's mandatory overtime, which most companies aren't super fond of paying.
they said the US so I'm assuming the company doesn't really do anything properly and no one regulates it
...overtime?..welcome to the world of exempt employees where anything less than 45 hours requires "voluntary" salary deductions...
Lol. Overtime. In the US. Wage theft is the largest form of theft in the United States.
Not US, but Canada. I don't work a desk job, but but drive around doing work out of a van full of tools, with ladders on top.
Most days I can do 6-2, 7-3, 8-4, 9-5, how ever I want.. After 8 hrs I get over time. After 12 hrs is double time.
Lunch is paid.
Usually I set an alarm, either get up, or snooze a bit, and find myself on the job site sometime between 7 and 8 put in 8 hrs of work that day, and go home unless we get busy and something comes up, and the over time is there if I want it. I take it more often than not. It pays off come Christmas time as a pay bonus
Seattle electrician here. My schedule is 6-230 with a 30 minute unpaid lunch.
Do you mean you're available on-call from 6:00 to 2:30? 20 hrs a day is too much even for third-world country standards
2:30 pm or 14:30, that's just an 8 hr day plus lunch.
Covid happened and gave me work from home.
The order to return to office happened and I said no.
In the back and forth, I defined my official schedule as 9 to 5.
Now, typically I work late a night or 2 a week so I start work a couple hours late/stop work a couple hours early a night or 2 a week.
Anyone discuss traffic?
For my area, traffic is a nightmare starting at 4pm thru 7.
Few get off at 5pm, but most head out the door at 3.
This is why work from home is so valuable to me. They don't pay me well enough to have a commute under 45 mins because the cost of living in the city is high as heck. And there's no public transit option. So basically that's 1.5 hours a day that I'm not losing to being stupid traffic
Facts. Let's not even get started with having to get ready for work. I work a hybrid schedule, prefer to rollout of bed to get my day started.
My dad technically works 9 to 5 in the tech field for the government. It's just that it's 9-5 in a different time zone than the one he lives in (it's a remote job). IDK about his lunch though... 🤔 I assume it's paid only because he is salaried, not paid hourly.
This is the answer - Only salaried jobs are 9-5, otherwise you get an unpaid lunch which adds 30m-1h to the time range. These days, salaried jobs also try to exploit making you work outside of these time ranges...regularly.
Similar but only because I skip lunch
9-5 and I work from home. Salaried, and in a department of one (me), so I do occasionally have to log in on a day off for a few minutes if something has a hard deadline.
I'm also 9-5 salaried, hybrid with 1-2 days in office each week and the rest from home. It's very nice.
Salaried can be a double-edged sword. The occasional self-motivated "I actually really need to get this done" is no big deal, but some workplaces will pile work onto salaried workers with no respect for work-life balance. So you're left with either not getting your work done and feeling stress because you can't keep up, or regularly working extra hours for free so you feel stress because you don't have enough personal time. What kind of job it is can depend really heavily on your direct supervisor and general workplace culture. I had to suffer through a few of the bad kind of salaries positions before I lucked into finding a good one.
I do get some extra load some times as a salried worker. It's my first salaried job, so I don't know if maybe I'm just lucky. Sometimes I work overtime to finish what I'v started, but compensate it the next day by starting an hour late. If the work becomes too much, i will try to work harder, but if that doesn't fix it either, it's possible to either extend the deadline or get extra help.
It's a total culture shock from my previous, hourly job, where I just had to always work more and more for the same hourly rate. They didn't care that it took longer and they didn't care for me as long as it got done, but I didn't want to work more hours, I wanted to spend more time with my kids.
Can't say for the US, but in NL, Europe, 9-6 with an hour mandatory break is the default for programming work. We hear the adults complain about 9-5 as students, we go to work, turns out its 8-5 or 9-6. Fuck.
Uneducated works tends to be 8.5 hours per day, instead of 9; only because half an hour breaks are the norm, there.
Officially I work 8 hours of my choice between 7am and 7pm with 30 minutes lunch.
In practice I work at least 8 hours (most often about 8.5), usually get a lunch, have to be at my desk at 8:30 for standup, and am always on call to some degree. If any of our infrastructure isn't working then I am, but after hours stuff isn't all that common.
Naw, there's only about 3 now. Being rich, being poor, and being a cop.
I work a 9ish-to-5ish in a science field, salaried. Nobody really cares when I arrive or when I leave, as long as the work gets done. Sometimes science stuff goes off the rails and I have to arrive early or stay late, but I keep track of my hours and arrive a little early or leave a little early on other days to compensate.
I mean, it took four years of college and more than six of a PhD to get to this point, which stunk. But now I can monitor my chemicals stirring in a flask for a few minutes while hanging out on my phone, which is nice.
Mine is 9-4 some days. I do automated QA for an enterprise application. Management budgets 2 hours a day for lunch and overhead (meetings, emails, chatting, etc.) for each employee. If I don't hit that then I can get off early.
Expected work hours seem to be increasing everywhere over the last twenty years or so. It's gotten pretty nuts.
I noticed recently that MS Teams allows you to set a workday that defaults to 9 hours. I found that odd, but if most people in the US have a 9 hour day with a 30 min lunchbreak and two 15 minute other breaks, I guess it makes sense?
Teams defaults are pure scummery.
No, don't alert me on a Sunday night with notifications that I might have missed over the last two days.
This, but the thing is it used to be 8 hours total including the hour or so lunch, 9-5 right, and now its 7. 5 hours of literal work with three smaller breaks, an extra 30 mins of work a day still.
(fixed lol thanks)
I just signed an offer for a 8am-4pm job, so I guess they do but it’s been a long while since I’ve had a job with those hours.
I work 8:00 to 4:30 with a half-hour lunch break. Frequently I’ll put in a few extra hours in a week for some overtime ‘cause the job isn’t hard at all.
My old job was oppressive clock watchers so everyone just strolled in as close to 8am as they could and left at 5pm sharp (people would be lined up at the turnstiles waiting to badge out). So why are they having you there for 10 hours a day? I'd rather come in an hour later than get a 2 hour lunch.
8:30-3:00 baby, though honestly 3:45 or 4:00 would be better. I get 40 minutes for lunch and 90 minutes alone without students. I've got it nice.
I've been working for 30 years, never seen a 9-5 job.
Never had a paid lunch
I work 9-5 with a paid lunch.
But I am in Canada (which is fairly similar to the US in terms of work culture.
Also I'm unionized.
I've been working 9-5 and taking 1 hour for lunch for the last 6 years but recently I saw my job description and it says 9-6 (with 1 hour lunch) so 🤷
My work agreement is supposed to be 8-5 with hour lunch. I work 9-5 or 8-4 and eat at my desk when i can. But i do have mandatory overtime which sometimes makes it 7am-9pm. Fun times
I thought 9-5 was an old trope. I’ve never heard of anywhere that offered 9-5 working hours. I don’t know anyone with them.
Where I'm at in Canada it's almost always 8:30 to 4:30
Many research jobs are like that
For the last 20 years, I’ve worked in smaller tech start ups (10-50 people) and one larger more corporate tech place (300 people), and they’ve all been salaried, 9-5. Since they're salaried, it’s a paid lunch period.
Yes, they still exist. I am both salaried and clock my hours. I have to clock 80/2 weeks and I need approval to clock more than that. If I do, I get comp time or overtime if pre-approved. Including for traveling for work. I don't clock my actual times, just hours worked per day. So no annoying 15min accountability that I've heard of from other companies. I think I technically have to take a 30min lunch but I haven't heard noises about that for like, a decade. We've got hours we need to be available technically as well (9-3). I'm also 80% telework and I despise that 1 day a week I sit on the same Teams calls in the office.
Most of the year I work 8 to 6-8 few months in the winter its 8-430. With a forced 30min unpaid lunch.
9-5 never made any sense to me.
I thought working 40 hours was the standard, but 9-5 with a paid lunch is less than 40 hours. So, the math never made sense.
The only place I heard of people working 9 to 5 was in Dolly Parton’s song. I’m enjoying reading everyone’s answers though, and I’m hoping someone chimes in that has actually worked a traditional, in office 9-5.
Edit: I meant to say with an unpaid lunch.
Might wanna check your math. 9-5 is eight hours. The paid lunch would be one of those hours. 8x5=40.
Unfortunately a lot of employers expect eight effective working hours a day so you'll see a lot of people working 9-5:30 and stuffing a Sammy down their gullet in their ten minutes of freedom in the middle of the day.
We're guaranteed the ability to take a lunch break without retribution but it being paid or unpaid is less of a guarantee - especially if you're salaried (aka hourly but not paid overtime).
It's been 8-5 or 8:30-5:30 or 9-6 everywhere I've worked an office job. But I had a friend move to NYC and she said there everyone worked hard but came in at 9, took an hour lunch and left at 5.
My job is 8:30 - 5 with a 30 minute lunch break. So almost.
But, we also get 2 days/week at home, and can flex time as required. Tons of international work, so the flexible hours are a godsend when time zones are against us.
It's a salaried position and depending on your supervisor and stage of your career, you're expected to work 40-45 hours a week. Deadlines and ugly projects tend to increase hours work. I'm very lucky, as my industry can be pretty brutal with sudden ends to projects and unexpected layoffs.
My last job was 9-5 with a paid lunch. It was toxic AF tho