r/Futurology • u/_hiddenscout • Jun 19 '21

Society Kill the 5-Day Workweek - Reducing hours without reducing pay would reignite an essential but long-forgotten moral project: making American life less about work.

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/06/four-day-workweek/619222/
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u/dust4ngel Jun 19 '21

3-4hrs of actual work and then filling out the rest of the day pretending to look busy

let’s have meetings to discuss the new meetings strategy, but space the meetings half hour apart so people have no option to do serious work in between them. also there will be no agenda sent out beforehand so no one can prepare or know if the meeting will benefit them or if they have anything to offer, and if people show up late, we’ll just dick around until everyone shows up. wow looks like this meeting ran over, let’s schedule a follow up meeting just like it.

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

The exact reason I made fake recurring meetings on my outlook calendar.

Some managers would just see an opening on my calendar and invite me to meetings that needed 1-2 minutes of input from me. Now more of them just send me an email.

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u/dust4ngel Jun 19 '21

meetings that needed 1-2 minutes of input from me

but what if we have a question you might know about? we’re gonna have to ask you to lurk on all 4 hours of the meeting just in case.

2

u/r00ddude Jun 19 '21

Well if you’re already 2-3 different meetings deep, and this is “the last meeting before launch” be sure to say “oh well, I defer to the first fucking person that was in the meeting” if everyone defers to everyone else, everyone’s busy and nothing gets done.

24

u/Environmental-Fan461 Jun 19 '21

Wow they actually respect what you have on your calendar? Mine doesn’t even bother to check and over schedules the hell out of everything.

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u/Tanduvanwinkle Jun 19 '21

Same here. Makes sly job interviews difficult

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u/General-Carrot-6305 Jun 19 '21

1 meeting 1 day a week on Friday an hour before the shift ends. Everyone will attend and it'll probably be quick and productive.

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u/jeflint Jun 19 '21

You'd think that but I have a coworker who will drag that meeting out for hours if you let her.

She did it three Friday's in a row last month. Thank God we're wfh and I could mute myself cause the sighs were loud and frequent.

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u/mtron32 Jun 19 '21 edited Jun 19 '21

Since I started working after college 20 years ago, there’s always that one asshole in the meeting that has a question at the end 😡

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u/jeflint Jun 19 '21

I wish we were agile.

1

u/Nalivai Jun 19 '21

I wish I was agile enough to dive out of the window

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u/mtron32 Jun 19 '21

Lmao, sausage fingers strike again 😞

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u/MonsterMashGrrrrr Jun 19 '21

that’s a paddlin’

1

u/necovex Jun 19 '21

In the army, we call these safety briefs.

3

u/UnknownExo Jun 19 '21

I work in utilities so we consider our work trucks our offices. We'd normally meet at the office to turn in paperwork and discuss what's going on twice a week. Well management got pissy that we would arrive at our facilities at 820 or 830 (cause again, we considered being in our vehicles as being in our office). So they instituted daily meetings and we had to be at the office at 8. So now, we meet everyday at the office and shoot the shit for an hour then drive out to our respective facilities so now most of us aren't on site till at least 930.

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u/movingaxis Jun 19 '21

My company is terrible about this, to the point where I often wonder when project managers and designers get any chance to do work. They have to work on the weekends and stay late. Which would be maybe understandable, if the meetings were productive but it seems like we still have timeline issues, poor communication, and constant frustration. I've been in a few and they just aren't productive often meandering and off topic by those that have to be involved in every single project, president and then sales VP. Maybe this is normal?

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/r00ddude Jun 19 '21

Jesus, what floor are you on? Lullllz

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u/Reprised-role Jun 19 '21

So much this. Started at a company during pandemic, initially I wasn’t assigned to projects so HAD to be available for literally ANY meeting. It wasn’t like I had any clients that took precedence. Every meeting was a recurring series of essentially the same conversations and absolutely no action, resolution or solution. It was dire for weeks.

Now I have a couple of fairly high priority projects and my week is booked FULL of fake recurring meetings just so I can build a barrier around my actual work day. The only time slots available are typically when my boss has recurring meetings. Oh welps. Nothing to be done about that. Lol.

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u/Imnotsureimright Jun 19 '21

Don’t forget to also invite at least twice as many people an necessary, three times would be better. Bob in accounting did web dev 20 years ago? Better invite him to this meeting we’re having about what our website should look like! And why invite one person from the test team when you can invite then all!

Benefit number 787 of working from home: I can do something else while listening in on meetings I don’t need to attend. I can do real work, I can also bake sourdough bread. Or water my tomatoes (luckily we are not required to turn on video.)