Why do we still work 5 days a week?

My work doesnt really require me to be in the office 5 days a week, I dont deal with customers and as long as my work is done theres no issue. I worked somewhere before that tracked time, an incredibly stupiod thing to do when it comes to software development but they did it anyway so I decided to ask for a change in hours. I asked to do my 39 hours spread over 4 days instead of 5, the only real change would be that I wouldnt be present for the core hours on a Friday, the hours I work would be the same and the work I get through would be too. My manager looked like I had asked him to put a man on Mars, just did not get what I wanted at all, he eventually siad he would take it to HR and see what they said, Im guessing he just didnt bother at all.

Its something Ive toyed with doing in my current place, there are support staff here who do shift work as well as a couple of people that do part time so they seem like they would be more open to different working hours. Right now Im happy though, my commute isnt too bad so coming in 5 days a week isnt a killer and I do have the option to work from home if I needed to so I could do that if coming to the office became a bit of a pain. Its defintitely something Id like to try out though, the idea of a 3 day weekend is very appealing to me.

I work weekends with my band and do 2 shifts in the week in my other job. The band can be anything from 1 to 3 shows a weekend, often with a 600 mile round trip involved so as often as I may only do 3/4 "days" a week, it involves pretty crazy hours and weekends pretty much aren't a thing for me any more. Getting paid to play the drums isn't exactly the worst job though.

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:Because gooseberry fool needs to be done, and customers just keep on coming.

I do 5 days and I don't really mind it, I mean I don't work flat out all day but I don't want to.

I like that my time at work is more than I need as it means I can space out what I have to do and not feel I need to rush about to get everything done I can chill a bit and work through in my own pace.

I would like to have 2 days at home mind purely as i liked working at home and i get about the same done but don't have the travel eating some of my day.

5 days here as well. Most of the time is pretty well filled, although I'm not at 100% 9-5 every day. I do agree that for a large number of people we should be able to offer a much more flexible way of working in this day and age, but habits and traditions are always hard to break down!

I like the idea of working from home, but I do question how great my productivity would be when surrounded by so many possibilities for distraction!

I could never work from home. I get my work done when I am in the office, but I spend too much time on here as it is, I wouldn’t do strawberry float all work if I was at home.

I'm self employed; what I do wouldn't really be facilitated anywhere else and I have a disability that makes office work a living nightmare unless it's a really small team. I've commuted mental amounts in the past (6hrs roundtrip). So I'm able to account for my own reasonable adjustments which means working a 30 hour week including downtime from "meltdown" and needing mental breaks and my work pattern is typically 12 to 8pm so I can get the rest I need or choose to work late if I am in a rhythm or very busy (so same thing as condensed hours) and then I can work less the next day or whatever, I'm conscious of the fact that obviously if I am not working effectively my business is not going to succeed so that's the performance thing sorted by itself.

Obviously there are downsides to this, my finances are 100% dependent on my own sales and marketing performance, I have no holiday or sick pay, I have virtually no spending money and when I get it it goes back into the business. However I would argue that job security is actually better in the long run because there are less external and internal factors that will immediately affect me in terms of the viability of the work I do and how much I get paid to do it, which is completely up to me.

So yeah I already work effectively 3 or 4 "days" per week because the business is built around me. My customers can wait up to 2 weeks for their stuff no problem and I just tell them it will be better which is true. If I were to employ people in the future what I would probably do is use virtual assistants (as in real people on the Internet) to manage time and shift and customer enquiry stuff and everyone would be in flexible work patterns however it would be sorted out say a week in advance and back peddling wouldn't just be allowed.