4x10 vs 5x8
 

Does anybody in here work four ten hour days per week? Would you recommend it? Summer is rumored to begin soon, and my boss said it would be fine if I wanted to switch my schedule around.

We did 4x10 for a while at my office. I liked it and it supposedly saved a lot on energy bills not having to fire up the ac that one extra day. It was also nice having 3 day weekends every weekend for a while. I pretty much work 10 hour days anyways most of the time so the longer day wasn't bad to me but some other people in my office were complaining about being tired. I would say go for it and make sure your lights are charged up in case of a dark ride home.

I did it for 2 consecutive ski seasons when I lived in CO, but now I live in IA so now I prefer 2 day weekends and 5 sunny afternoons. Now that I commute by bike, I get my exercise done on the way home so I can spend my evenings relaxing.

Didn't you hear summer was canceled?

I did 4x10's off and on in years past. I liked it at the time but the job demands changed and I'm back to a conventional 5x8 schedule now. When I did 4x10's I sometimes had Wednesdays off which was sweet because I never had to work more than two days in a row. But working 10 hour days doesn't leave much time for afternoon/evening activities beyond dinner and sleep.

Another viable alternative is to do 9x80's where you work 9 hours Mon-Thu and 8 hours every other Friday. Or half-days every Friday. Get as creative as you want if your job allows it.

I currently work a regular 5 x 8 schedule, but did the 4 x 10 schedule at my old job for about three years. It was wonderful. Three day weekends every week were awesome. :thumb:

Kinda depends on what other activities/functions/events that go on outside of work and how much time you spend on your commute.

If you're interested in trying it, then go ahead. It's nice being able to take care of business on a week day that you're normally hard pressed to do otherwise.

At my auto repair shop we have been doing 4x10 for several years. Days off are staggered as we are open 5 days. Nobody here would ever want to go back to 5 days.

Don in Austin

I did 4x10s for about 10 years at my old job. With the extra day off, I went back to school and earned 2 masters degrees back to back. After that, I did part time consulting for another company to increase income. Great arrangement if you can get it.

The times I've found when it is bad are:
1) when you have external commitments on the 4x days that get impaired by the 10
2) when there is enough going on with everyone else at work on your free 1x day that you lose out on something important

Absent that, 4x10 is a GREAT thing.

Seems that I work 5 x 9.5. According to my boss, I should be working 6 x 10 if I want to get anywhere with my career. I get to work by 9, I'm very lucky when I leave by 6:30. Academic life for ya! Many weeks, I have 40 hours in by noon on Thursday. I'd love to walk out at that point, but seems that's not in the cards.

I'd love a 4 x 10 schedule.

As a supervisor, I experimented with 4x10 a number of years ago and found that it was a royal pain to sustain. There were about 15 people to schedule and we had to stay at operational levels each week day. That meant that the day you had off rotated and could be any day of the week. The trouble was that a lot of folks, when they had Tuesday or Thursday off, would ask to take a vacation day too (for a 4 day weekend) and that was tough to accommodate given the reduced staffing levels. We made an attempt to be fair, but I started getting a lot of griping about "so-and-so has had more Fridays or Mondays off than me". Additionally, I found that I had 3-4 people who would not hold up their end of the bargain. They would stretch 8 hours of work to fill 10 using the extra time at work for non-productive purposes. This caused conflict with the folks that were working hard. I decided to abandon the scheme at the end of the 9 month trial. Interesting note about human nature - everybody would remember that the scheme worked great for them while at the same time forget about all the times they would complain to me that they could not get their own work done because they were too busy filling in for someone who was gone that day.

-G

I have, Switching back to normal hours is and will be a drag... You get used to three day weekends really quick!