LogFAQs > #979416198

Monopoman posted...

Well that and no way is any worker outside of one with a very strict deadline requirement pushing every minute they are at work. People find countless ways to either slow their work speed or spend extra time in the bathroom or sitting at their desk doing non-work things.

Sure if you work at McDonalds it's hard to slack off unless the place is dead, but at an office job there are a dozen ways to do so unless you have a very strict deadline or boss. I find it funny that in Japan the bosses like it more when employees stay at work longer no matter what, a guy could literally be sleeping at his desk and it's past normal work hours the boss is impressed.

It does vary from job to job, but that's pretty much what most 4-day work week experiments have found: With shorter weeks, employees have generally been found to be more productive, getting the same amount of work (sometimes even more) done in fewer total hours. Naturally, there's no one-size-fits-all solution (especially when dealing with jobs where being present and waiting for customers to show up is important), and to that end I'm not sure how well blanket legislation would actually work, but there's plenty of evidence out there that blindly sticking to a 5-day/40-hour standard yields no actual benefit to justify the impact it has on employees in many cases.