Weekly Calendar Template 5 Days

Op-Ed: The end of the 5-day week, and good riddance

How to engage employees in the workplace? Remote working is on the rise. — Image: © Tim Sandle

The 5-day week and technology have nothing in common. The return to the office movement has lost the war and lost fatally. Like the obsolete and expensive business models that demanded a return to the past, it just can’t continue.

Business has a very strange and insular view of itself. The hellish high school-like hate-filled environment and massive stress levels had no impact on this smug corporate self-image. The end of the 5-day week will destroy that image.

This was the world of the 1950s sitcom. Daddy went to work at a single job, and Mommy fussed around the house. The kids had little adventures and misadventures. That was also when anyone could afford anything and commuting made any sense to anyone.

That world doesn’t exist anymore. Daddy and Mommy probably have 2 jobs each, and the kids are trying to survive the nutcases at school, on the street, and everywhere else.

…Or did someone not mention that repeatedly every second for the last 40 years? The old 5-day week is now about the equivalent of 10 days. Nobody can do that.

Now let’s try to drag something current into the frame of reference for a change. The sheer obsolescence of this situation isn’t the only problem. The other problem is that people seem to think this disaster is the way things “should” be.

The workplace is a dangerous place. WHO stats tell a grim tale of exactly how dangerous. That’s not an issue for morons who never do their own jobs because they’re at meetings, but what’s new?  

The people trying to do that are becoming homeless on an hourly basis. Main Street is a series of gigantic train wrecks over those decades. Nothing works. Costs of living are long since out of control.

Why spend most of your life doing a job which won’t pay for anything? Mainly because the fossilized business models say so. There is no actual reason to spend most of your money going to work and paying more for essentials. It’s a loss-making exercise at best.

Remote working did the job during the pandemic. The same people complaining about remote work are lucky they’re still in business. They could have been dead.

You can manage time if you have time. Office work eats up time going there and going home. It then kicks you in the teeth by making it impossible to manage your own time.

Mommy and Daddy don’t do too well in this pleasantly overpriced psychopathic environment. If ever the writing was on the wall for a well-past-expiry-date way of life, this is it.

Then there’s reality. You may remember it from such events as getting born, etc. People are not working in healthy environments, physically or psychologically.  The most heavily and perhaps uselessly medicated country in the world might have noticed that people aren’t healthy or anything like healthy. Note also the billions of prescriptions filled in a country with only 350 million people or so. The corporate world isn’t too good with maths, stats, or anything else, you’ll notice.

It didn’t notice, and it still hasn’t. Sick people can’t do their jobs well, if at all. Stress makes it worse.   Going to the office and spreading whatever it is doesn’t work, either. Any manager with the most basic experience can and will tell you that. You can lose half your staff for the sake of “being in the office”.

Let’s not get into the maniacal costs of offices. They’re just commercial dolls’ houses anyway, and unless you need to be onsite, you don’t need an office. An ever-higher worldwide vacancy rate seems to prove that.  

If you remove the commuting, the meetings, and the rest of the rituals, a 4-day week looks like the only option. As long as the work gets done, what do you care?

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DisclaimerThe opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.