We've clearly created a utopia.

How do you feel about unions?
- Why should lazy people get the same pay as me when I work so hard? /s
Also if everyone is 9 to 5, how does anyone do any errands if they close at the same time they do?
- Well, personally I've found that to be a bit of a problem, so for some of us it is that we don't, unless we take like half a day off.
- Not to mention schools release at like 2:30. Need your kid taken care of after that? It'll be a few hundred $/mo for an after-school program. Sorry working parents.
- Simple: the 9-to-5 opening hours are not for the 9-to-5 workers, their services are for the ruling class who doesn't work 9-to-5.
My last job was 9 to 5 with an hour paid lunch. Unfortunately they had to shut down once covid hit.
God yes me too. I didn't even realize until I came out of university. A 9-5 job is a 9-5:30 job over here (we have a mandatory lunch break of at least 30 minutes if you work more than 6 hours a day, 45 if more than 9). Now calculate in the commute and if you're lucky you're at a 8:15-6:15 job.
I've never even been offered 9-5... It's always been 8-5.
9-5 doesn't include a paid lunch. It's 8 hours without a break
I work 8-5 when I'm lucky.
Technically I'm supposed to have 30 minutes unpaid lunch. However, no one really does. It gets paid. We just hit "no" on the time clock for the "uninterrupted 30 minutes lunch".
It went away way before that.

One less hour to do enough math to see it's two hours too.
- That's how the capitalists getcha. Back in granddads day, they just made sure you lost enough fingers in the machinery to keep from counting. Nowadays they gotta keep you too busy to realize they stole two hours instead of one.
That's been my experience as well, or even way worse. We should have more unions.
Damn. Why do you work this way? Don't you have regulations and stuff?
In Austria I already work 8-4 and we are currently talking about reducing it to 8-3.
- This is mostly an American problem. Here in the EU it's less of an issue. Even here in Spain, where we work 9 to 6 or 9 to 7, is always because, either we have a big break in the middle of something. And regarding kids, I don't have them, but those who do in my company usually take the time off to go, pick then up and get them home or something if the school is nearby. Otherwise they arrange some home delivery or something, as I recall.
- It's all on a state by state basis. So 'right to work' states like Alabama, Texas, Virginia, etc, there are very few regulations. There the employer is viewed as the owner of the job and can basically tell the employee to work anytime. States with stronger regulations like California have much more stringent policies and there it's if not less likely to work a lot of overtime people are likely to be paid for it.
Just 5 or 6 hours less a week, that's all
Just 20 or 25 hours less a month, that's all.
𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝟏𝟎 𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐨 𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐚 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫, 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐥.
I do 6pm-6am 5 days a week
Which was an improvement from my previous position of starting at 12am-4amish going to 9am-2pmish 6 days a week.

If you understand the way things are right now is broken, you should understand that you ALWAYS have a choice to stop being cynical, fight for your freedom and fight for what's right.

I wasn't ONLY talking about reddit in this post a while back. https://lemmy.world/post/858027

Choose to be creative. Choose to be sincere. Choose to be a human again.

Unfortunately I choose to eat
- See, there is the cynical reddit one liner again.
  You have made the choice to resign yourself to despair instead of fighting for your freedom from the reddit within. I can't make that choice for you, none of us can, but I do hope that you will change your mind one day.

2 weeks only? should change the headlines to "americans were made"

...You guys are going places for your two weeks off? Well lah-dee-dah, look at all the rich people!
Real talk though, it's not just Americans. Like, go check Japan out sometime for starters.

https://giphy.com/gifs/hamlet-drake-computers-laptop-800iiDTaNNFOwytONV

Image Transcription:

The image is titled "HUMANS WERE MADE TO".

Below the title are 5 images and 6 lines of text. The first image is that of a person sitting on a chair at a desk. The text beside it reads "Sit at the desk 9-5".

The second image is the Netflix logo, the text beside it reads "Come home every night to watch Netflix".

The third image is a person wearing a backpack, shorts, boots, and a hat. The text beside it reads "Explore the world for only 2 weeks out of the year".

The fourth image is that of a box containing an assortment of items, the text beside it reads "Have zero creativity".

The fifth image is that of a person sitting on the floor with their knees drawn up to their chest, the text beside it reads "Have every single aspiration beaten out of them".

Underneath the images is a final line of text reading "THERE IS nothing MORE TO LIFE."

[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. 💜 We have a community! If you wish for us to transcribe something, want to help improve ease of use here on Lemmy, or just want to hang out with us, join us at !lemmy_scribes@lemmy.world!]

You are doing great work.
- Thank you 💜

To be fair, you don't have to sit around watching Netflix

While true, sitting around watching Netflix has the advantage that it takes none of the nonexistent energy remaining after a full day of work + chores + you only get two hours before bed.
I used to think that's all I had the energy to do. Turns out reading a couple chapters, learning a bit of guitar, going on a short walk, journalling.. all takes minimal mental and physical energy, but feels 10x better to do. I got stuck in shitty habits and convinced myself that's all I could do.
True.
You could watch Disney+.
With all the energy left after an 8 hour job and all the money You make you can sit on the couch and imagine traveling the world.

The scary part is that this doesn’t even sound bad to me anymore.

Yeah, this has me feeling like that one meme "you guys are exploring the world?"
- This is why I love my partner. She helps bring me back to the 'it may not be the ideal world but it's our world' sentiment.

Man it sure sucks to be American in this time.

Not if you were born to rich parents. Oops, I mean if you work really hard and quit buying Starbucks, damn millennials
- Can't disagree. When I talk with my European and Asian friends, sometimes they ask about America, and my answer is usually something like "The US is a great place to live, the best country in the world, if you're rich!" and I think that's factually true.
Japan has entered the chat.
- Well, being Japanese sure sucked a lot more 80 years ago.
Yeah, and not like anywhere else. 🔥🇵🇱🔥

Work is a scam, take what you need and burn your bosses.

Two weeks?? Longest vacation I've been on in the past 20+ years was eight days, with the eighth day being unintentional due to an issue with the airlines.

Ever been sick? Vacation.
- Exactly. You get to spend vacation days exploring your own house instead of the world.
- Due to a serious illness, I've used up all my paid sick days. My bosses told me, "we want you to get better, so you can take as many unpaid sick days as you want." Thanks a whole fucking lot.
Mine's 22 days. And that wasn't all my vacation for the year either, only most of it.

damn when did everyone go full doomer?

They must have walked out their front doors.
Yeah, I remember back when depressive humor was funny because it was sad. Then, a few things happened in the last decade and now it's funny because it's true.
It was either 2016 or 2019. It was either making a politician out of Trump or COVID. That's when I started to realise how fucked I am and stared anticipating death.
Have you been living under a rock? Everything is bad, at least here in the US.
I think Gul Madred has Picard seeing exactly five lights right now
- He promised me a life of luxury if I said it.
According to this theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory (see the timings section)
We are at the end of the crisis cycle. The last crisis cycle was WW2.
So shit is about to get really fucking real in a hot minute, but we should then move to a better time - an awakening.
- Yea sorry bud
  while others have criticized the theory as being overly deterministic, unfalsifiable,
  This is where I stand on this. If you can't provide evidence against something then it's not science
There are plenty of people who are still into future building. But, indeed, a lot of the west is falling into decadence.
But I still see enough spark to hope it will reignite. With a better experience.
You have to understand that most of these people are NPCs who don't have the psychological capability to do for themselves. They are sitting around expecting the world to change for them because that's what they expect out of society: for all the important things to be done for them, and that's due to them internalizing a lifetime of being told that's all they're allowed to do. Instead of, you know, thinking for themselves or rebelling on their own.
As things get worse, expect to see a lot more bitching without any meaningful action.
Also expect a lot of them to get defensive when you tell them such because they know what you and I are saying is true.
- I used to meet a lot of these people in the office. They'd resign themselves to their situations and blame everyone else.
  When I come across it now, I'll listen and then ask what could make it better. 50% of the time it's "does not compute" + excuses.
  Choose to watch 2hrs Netflix every night or settle for a crappy job or relationship? Go for it, I'm not judging you. Bitch that it's your only option? Nope.

I dunno…I sit more than 9-5.

At the desk tho?
But seriously, try to stand up for at least a min every hour.
- It’s true I move around to get water and food and take a walk a lunch but the day lasts longer than 9-5.

Sometimes I tidy the house during the week so I can do nothing on the weekends! It's a miraculous discovery that gives life meaning!

I dont clean up during the week and still do nothing on the weekends
- This is the way.

Y’know…I’m reading The Way We Never Were by Stephanie Coontz.

For much of humanity’s time in modern civilization, everyone worked. Constantly. From childhood to old age. The worst period was from industrialization to the labor movement. Literally worked to death. Probably one of the worst periods in human history with massive disparity and horrendous working conditions. The modern era is luxurious for many compared to what we used to have.

I appreciate the balanced perspective you brought to the table. Modern life is fantastic in so many ways. This post hits so close though because despite the reality most of us yearn for something more. Not wealth per say; freedom to work to live vs most seemingly living to work. The vast imbalance is horrible and most of us aren't having the best time. Says a comfortable software engineer who is is doing... OK but seriously as a society we should have figured out some semblance of proper balance by now.
- I think something like the idea of the consensus engine would greatly help us if it could be built. It's not a magic bullet but it would provide so many avenues for not making things worse
I think the difference is that now more than ever we can see the ever increasing wealth disparity in our society. While most of us toil away we constantly see what the classes above us are able to do and get away with because of their insane amount of money.

Exploring the world for two whole weeks every year sounds awesome

You guys are exploring the world for 2 weeks? Lucky.

WRONG! Humans were supposed to be threshing wheat and hauling logs!

We've spent the vast majority of our existence as a species living in small pre-agricultural bands in which it was virtually impossible to accumulate real personal property or wealth. Consequently, a person's status was determined not by how much they owned, but rather by their merit and relationships with others.
Wheat is a relatively recent development in human history, as is agriculture in general. It changed everything but for better or worse, agriculture is a trap, and once you start transitioning to it, you can never go back.
- naw I just wanted an excuse to show a jerma clip
Most people would unironically take that over the fresh hell post industrial capitalism has become.

Wow, wow, wow!!! TWO WEEKS?! Calm down Bear Grylls! Too wild man, too wild!

2 weeks? I get 1 week. And if I want to split that up, too bad. It has to be 40 concurrent hours.

False. Actually includes 7 hrs of shitposting at night.

This truly is the best of all possible worlds!

Because you owe them

I'll never understand the 9-5 thing. Even years ago, the people who didn't have shitty hours worked like 8-4:30 or something. Most people don't actually work 9-5.

If the current definitions don't fit the target, change the definitions until they do. Dystopia 101.. which of course is redefined now to be Utopia 101.

http://principiadiscordia.com/book/45.php

I get four weeks, plus about 12 public holidays.

Sucks to be you.

6 weeks here, plus public holidays
- Also it is possible to actually like what you do for a job. Many people do.
  Then, some people clearly do not. I suppose their work will be replaced with robots. And people who implement these robots are doing it enthusiastically.
  Still, we would not want to disenfranchise people who see their work as nonfulfilling. This is a challenge.

2 weeks seems like a lot. Anyway I can dwindle that down to less?

Fuck, for someone who is stuck in this rut ( ie me) we probably have the greatest quality of life in all human history and still complaining.

Yes but there's nothing stopping us from being so much better. We have the tools and resources. They're just not being distributed well. That's sure as hell better then living before showers and toilets, but still it's frustrating when we clearly see we're capable of a better way and we're reminded of that every day.
- Yep totally agree with that!
Well you could at least have some proper vacation time, 2 weeks a year is way too little
- 4 weeks where I live.
It depends on how you measure it. People living in small-scale tribal societies tend to be universally happier than people living in big industrialized societies, but they also face a lot of problems and challenges that we've eradicated through technology.

Good Lord.

Bunch of depressed doomer bullshit from a bunch of people I hope are talking to a therapist.

Yeah we're supposed to never leave our village for our 40 year lifespan, fear this that go against our myths and tradition and violently castigate those we deem different enough for us.

Or maybe civilization itself was too much and we should live in even smaller groups with our numbers limited by no agriculture.

Why do we hate Netflix and abundant food?

Couldn't we keep civilisation and change how we spend our time?
- It was talking about what we were made to do. We've been around for 200k years and had agriculture for 10k years so that's what I was going on.

Humans were made to reproduce and expand. Trough pure luck of evolution we got in a position that we don't need to be afraid of being eaten by lion, or dying from appendix infection, or getting impaled by some random warlord at the age of 5. By comparison sitting at the desk seems like a good deal.

- What do you mean by rich? Some countries are not rich by comparison but you can stil have a decent life.

When the alternative is man Vs nature in a constant struggle to avoid violent or hungry death, or even worse - slavery, then we gotta count our blessings. I'm also greatful for every day I'm not plowing cotton fields with my hands or operating machinery in a factory.

There it is, the good ol' false dilemma
This is undoubtedly the more healthy attitude
There are more options than "be a wage slave who has been so beaten down by the system that they have nothing left in their lives" and "be a hunter-gatherer hunted by lions."
That's a lazy-ass dismissal to a serious problem. You could have at least put in some bitching about millennials spending all of their money on avocado toast.