taylor nicholson?

From the moment I was legally allowed to (at around age 14-15), I have been working at all sorts of jobs: from food service, to babysitting, to retail and office jobs. While the working conditions and tasks at hand varied from position to position, one thing was clear to me: the full time workers were under horrific stress.

To set the record straight, I have yet to work a full time job, every job i’ve had has either been part time or seasonal hiring. However, I’ve worked alongside many full-time employees who brave eight hour workdays, five days a week. From the rare exceptions, none of them seemed particularly pleased with this arrangement. Many of my coworkers yearned to have more breaks, to spend more time with family, to be paid more for the long hours they worked, and more. While I could sympathize, of course, I never really grasped how high demand corporate America’s workweek is until I read chapter 11 of Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again titled “The Places That Figured Out How to Reverse the Surge in Speed and Exhaustion.”

This chapter talked about British businessman Andrew Barnes implementing a four-day workweek at his offices after having an epiphany about the modern five-day work week. The results were happier, less anxious employees who could create more higher quality products in less time (while still being paid the same amount). Reading this made me wonder: if a similar strategy was implemented at all of the jobs I had worked at in the past, would the full time employees be happier? Most of my paychecks from my part-time jobs goes to fast food, new vinyls or video games, while my full-time coworkers need the money to pay off loans, support their children, and more. The stress gap between the both of us could possibly be alleviated by a four-day work week for full time workers. It could give people more time to do what they enjoy, and could help avoid burnout from the monotony of corporate America. I even made a comic about the very subject, attached below.

You may be reading this and wondering “well, companies will never want to change the five day work week,” and you’d be right. Companies won’t make this change as easily as Barnes did, so it’s up to the workers to fight for it, just as they did years ago. Before the five-day work week, it wasn’t uncommon for Americans to work 60 hours a week, with many factory workers averaging 12-14 hour workdays. In the 19th century, labor movements began to pick up steam, demanding five-day work weeks with eight hour workdays. They were faced with harsh punishments and job losses, but their efforts made the change possible, and is why eight hour days and five-day work weeks are the standard.

So, yes, change cannot happen overnight, but we cannot sit and wait and hope for companies to have epiphanies of their own about the mental health and focus of their employees. To see change in corporate America, we have to follow in the footsteps of the past labor movements and advocate for change ourselves. To quote the late Dolly Parton, “They let you dream just to watch ’em shatter / You’re just a step on the bossman’s ladder / But you’ve got dreams he’ll never take away / In the same boat with a lot of your friends / Waitin’ for the day your ship’ll come in / And the tide’s gonna turn and it’s all gonna roll your way.”