Name: Nine to five.
Age: About 70.
Appearance: Clocking off.
Hang on, just let me finish this email to one of my bosses and tell the other one I can work Thursday this week after all, and … There you go, you see?
I do not see. What should I see? That the daily grind is over!
And yet I still seem to experience a lot of grind on said daily basis. So what are you talking about? The demise of the nine-to-five working day.
What is that? It’s a way of working that evolved out of the Industrial Revolution, which decoupled us from agricultural labour and, therefore, seasonal rhythms.
I thought everyone worked all the hours God sent down t’pit or in dark satanic mills during the conversion of our country from bucolic idyll to monstrous mechanised titan?
They did – 12 hours a day, six days a week. But gradually over the 20th century, trade unions, collective bargaining, workers’ rights and other progressive legislation, along with economic growth, reduced the standard working week to about 40 hours.
Mostly performed, I’m guessing, between the hours of nine and five? You have the right of it.
And now we don’t do that? According to a new study, just 6% of us cleave to traditional hours.
Is that because John Maynard Keynes’ 1930 prediction that, such would be the rate of our economic progress, in 100 years’ time we would be meeting all our material needs by working 15 hours a week has come to pass? And slightly ahead of schedule? No.
Oh. To be honest, I did suspect otherwise. The change is due to us working more flexibly. Partly because of new rights to demand to do so, partly because of globalisation …
People in different countries still insisting on getting up at different times, eh? Yes. And partly because there is a growing appreciation among businesses that working smarter, not harder, is more productive than presenteeism.
Which is? Just hanging around for your allotted hours even if there’s nothing to do.
OK, continue. And partly because the economy is rebalancing towards nontraditional jobs, freelance careers, zero-hours contracts and the like.
So we’re all scrambling for what we can get wherever and whenever we can get it? Yes. Until the robots come and take even that away.
Do say: “Dolly Parton, where is your anthem for the new gig economy?”
Don’t say: “And what kind of pension plan do you provide if I sign up with you, Deliveroo?”
