<p>There was a study a few months ago that suggested that in a typical 8 hour workday, people waste around 3 hours on unproductive tasks, excluding the 1 hour lunch break. Do you think the current system should be changed so that people are more productive in the work place?</p>
<p>Chances are that people would still waste 3 hours on unproductive tasks, even if work hours were cut. It’s the nature of the beast: chit-chatting with co-workers, spending time on cell phones, PDAs and the Internet, cigarette breaks, etc.</p>
<p>I think people would be more reproductive if they had less time to do the same amount of work.</p>
<p>People would spend MORE time complaining about having LESS time !!!</p>
<p>productive, not reproductive. ;)</p>
<p>i say cut it. it’ll help the people who need to manage two jobs.</p>
<p>i have a feeling most of the people who waste 3 hours a day ARE NOT people with quotas. they are probably people who are paid to do something semi-easy 40 hours a week. if you cut the hours to 5 hours a day, they would still waste time. </p>
<p>i will reference Office Space: </p>
<p>Bob Slydell: You see, what we’re trying to do is get a feeling for how people spend their time at work so if you would, would you walk us through a typical day, for you?</p>
<p>Peter Gibbons: Yeah.</p>
<p>Bob Slydell: Great.</p>
<p>Peter Gibbons: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can’t see me, heh - after that I sorta space out for an hour.</p>
<p>Bob Porter: Da-uh? Space out?</p>
<p>Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I’m working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too, I’d say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.</p>
<p>The quotas are usually very below what someone can do at optimal productivity, at least in my experience. In this one job someone gave me thousands of data to enter into the computer. My supervisor thought it would take me at least 3 hours to enter. Well I just used the equation function of the program and entered al the data in 10 minutes.</p>
<p>psh 40 hour work week… lazy punks. I just worked 67 hours this week, and with a full time college courseload. 40 hours is for suckas. :)</p>
<p>My parents work 66+ hours per week doing hard, manual labor (dry cleaning store). I’ve spent weeks at their store on hot summer days (it gets really hot with all the machines running, etc). I can’t imagine anyone working harder than they do… day in and day out.</p>
<p>There’s no idling going on either lol… they’re always running about, throwing laundry from bin to bin, going from one machine to the next, etc. They literally work the equivalent of 3 people each. How can lazy Americans complain so much?! :)</p>
<p>P.S.- Anyone else’s parents own a dry cleaning store? I wondering if this is normal or not.</p>
<p>sorry, double post</p>
<p>Yes. I say go for 35 hours a week, like the French. No wonder the French are so happy, even though they hurl baghettes (can’t even spell baghette. 
) at everything American.</p>
<p>I think I work about 16-17 hours on average. That amounts to about 80-85 hours a week, not including time I put in studying over weekends. Including that, I put in about 120 hours. Ugh. I think investment banking would be heaven, and that industry’s notorious for insanely long hours. At least the employer’s paying you through the nose for all your efforts.</p>
<p>fudgemaster: then maybe they should raise the quota, not reduce the hours.</p>
<p>The more you work someone, the less productive they are going to be. They may be doing more work, but the quality will be affected negatively. There is probably a way to figure out the optimal workload and the number of hours of work a person should do before he or she gets fatigued.</p>
<p>There should be no government mandated work week time.</p>
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<p>That’s practically economic suicide. The French and the other European countries with mandated short hours are not doing well on the productivity/efficiency, competitiveness, etc. It doesn’t do any good, perhaps harm. Workers are spoiled and lazy, high paid for work they are not doing efficiently. It’s a joke. The government should not meddle in the inner workings of the economy and mandate a certain number of hours per week. That’s just stupid, some work takes more time some less. We shouldn’t limit our potential and possibilities. It should be based on the job and the worker, not by some bureaucrat in Washington, Berlin, Paris or London.</p>
<p>And require ridiculously huge quotas.</p>
<p>what should require ridiculously high quotas?</p>
<p>Althouh Americans are working 40+ hours a week, productivity wise, I’m sure that many many other countries are boasting and beating us currently.</p>
<p>Yeah like the Asian countries and India perhaps. </p>
<p>The Western European countries are lagging behind the US in productivity, measurable in decades, completely against the Lisbon Agenda which was supposed to put them ahead. That sure failed.</p>
<p>I don’t even want to think about the work ethic of India and China. Their work ethic is short of amazing, but I’m honestly surprised at how Western countries are so behind though.</p>