9 to 5. That’s the concept of normalcy. People work 7 hours, from 9am to 5pm, with an hour break for lunch at noon. Bankers hours.
A lot of jobs don’t fall into this mold, and I contend that this is a good thing. Imagine if everyone, every business, was only open from 9am to 5pm. Business that rely on commerce would be limited strictly to those that do not work (admittedly, a bigger demographic right now than anyone wants it to be). People that have errands to run outside of work would be out of luck. They’d have to use their vacation days exclusively for things like grocery shopping because nothing is ever open.
Why is it that this does not make sense, and yet so many companies cling to the perception of the 9-5 job?
Proposal: you can break a 24 hour period into 3 distinct 8 hour blocks of time. Take the companies, and split them into 3 different shifts. Not just manufacturing jobs, but everything. Banks, insurance, lawyers, clinics, you name it.
Suddenly, you have one third as many cars on the road during the morning commute. Suddenly, you have three times as many parking spaces available to you. Suddenly, the lunch rush isn’t as crammed. Eateries would have to stay open more, but the revenue might actually be made up for the fact that there is a more even flow of people, with fewer ones giving up to eat someplace else because a given place is always mobbed during the lunch rush.
Utilities would like it. There would no longer be as much of a surge during the day when all of those office buildings fire up their HVAC systems and computer networks.
Real estate moguls might not like it. One location could house three business instead of one, which may mean three times as much rent, but it would also mean you would only need one third as much office space. A sudden surge of available real estate would cause prices to plummet. Then again, that would lower business expenses, expenses that those businesses could pass along to the consumer.
There’s my pitch for the evening.
You don’t have to limit it hours of being open
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