Scratchin' Out A Little Living

Years ago, in what feels like another universe from another lifetime, I worked as a Claims Specialist for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Our team worked the standard forty-hour work week and were often mandated to do overtime on weekends. The hours took their toll on my body, mind, and spirit. We were given the option to work four tens, and I jumped at the opportunity to get Fridays off and get a three-day weekend. Four tens, at first, seemed like the answer to my problem. My problem was I needed more down time for me because work was sucking my soul, and I was a writer; I needed hours to daydream and generally be unscheduled. I needed to walk the streets of Albuquerque and watch the clouds. The VA had other ideas, and I became a very dark soul on this new and exciting four day a week schedule. Working ten hour days overwhelmed me, and my normally calm, patient demeanor quickly deteriorated into a stressed out, impatient, scowling employee. Four tens was not the answer. The three day weekend became three much needed days of rest and recovery. I approached the manager of our section and earnestly requested a thirty-hour week. I’ll never forget her words: “No. You will suffer like the rest of us.” And suffer I did…until I resigned.

Thirty hours, to me, at that time, and still today, seems like the maximum amount of time a person should be at work. Let’s say 9-3:30 with a half hour lunch break. Perfect. Emerging research from the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research shows that after a worker has put in six hours of productive work, performance begins to deteriorate after that. I honestly don’t need a research study to demonstrate that. Just walk around any office after say, 2 pm, and look at people’s monitors. When I worked at UNM, I saw a whole lot of cat videos, Orphan Black (employees w/earbuds of course), Pinterest, and people checking their personal email, not because they were poor workers or lazy, but because their brains were fried, and they could no longer WORK. They needed to be done for the day, but because our modern day society has decided that eight hours is the sweet spot when clearly it is not, workers are forced to stay at the job and appear productive.

Slaves in America worked 10-16 hour days, six days a week. I don’t know about Sundays. This is not a model we want to return to. They also were not paid wages. Definitely a cruel model. In the 1830’s, dangerous manufacturing jobs in textile mills and coal mines often claimed 70 hours a week from people trying to survive. The eight hour workday became popular in the 1920’s when Henry Ford created a 48hour work week over six days. This soon evolved into a 40-hour work week. By 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt was behind a bill that was also passed in the Senate to establish a 30-hour work week. I don’t know what happened after that and why we are still working a 40-hour work week. Possibly, a government employee was too tired and overworked to file the proper paperwork and stamp whatever dockets need to be stamped to make new legislation official, and here we all are - tired, depressed, addicted to painkillers, unable to cook healthy home cooked meals for the kids, unable to play a sport very well because of little to no practice time, sleep deprived, overweight, and not having the time we need to daydream and just be idle so we can come up with great ideas for novels, poems, inventions, gardens, and art The average worker in Denmark logs 32.5 hours a week. These people also happen to be near the top of the World Happiness Index (2022) just trailing Finland in first place. Maybe it’s time to look beyond the GDP (gross domestic product) and focus on quality of life so that the USA can again be a leader in innovation and creativity. Working more hours will never get us to where we dream of being on a personal level or institutional level. Maybe it’s time we all examine our schedules on a personal and societal level and see how we can create more “down” time, so that we can actually elevate ourselves and live more meaningful lives.