I read this article this week. Aside from the fact that it was written by an American who misses the obvious sequitur that his country regards two weeks as sufficient annual leave, it makes a valid point in that the split in the working week is specifically split between 5 work days and 2 days off, largely because it always has been. But I have often wondered how business and industry accepts and tolerates a certain amount of inefficiency out of a need to find something to do for an ever growing population and workforce in a world that relies ever more on technology to satisfy its needs.
In my mind, those who are quick to calculate and pronounce the lost revenues to the national economy of perhaps an additional annual bank holiday never seem as ready to assess the extent to which that same economy could function just as efficiently, if not more so, with a little streamlining here and there. Management roles exist out of a need to manage people or situations. But wouldn't most people admit to wanting to be free of managers, and to make their own decisions? Don't most examples of office politics derive from differences of opinion on how to do things, or about who is not pulling their weight or performing to a subjectively determined standard of quality? Unless you work on a freelance basis, you are part of an organisation that obligates you to spend most of your waking life in a place that was not designed by or for your personal tastes, and with people that unless by sheer coincidence you would not ordinarily choose to surround yourself with. But you spend more time with them than your own friends and family.
I am nearly 40. I never have, and probably never will reach a point where I could say that work / my job is something I do 'happily'. Given the choice, I'd much rather be somewhere else, doing something else, that fuels my interests and services my own needs rather than those of others (by which I mean other people who, but for their own jobs, would probably be saying the same thing). And yet through work we are all bound in some way to a 'customer - service provider' type relationship, where one has a need, and the other needs to provide. But all for the good of, and to the benefit of... who? National GDP has no soul. None of us surely wants (on a deep, personal level) to do what our jobs require of us. We do it, ultimately, for the money. But I need to find an alternative to the 9-5.
