Re:Against the synchronous society
by emodendroket on Saturday January 06, 2018 @12:30PM
(#16086334)
> Aside: lots of industries are shift workers, and most low-income people work off of the Mon-Fri 9-5. It's oddly a pretty solved problem but we decided against adopting that for office work in most cases. I bet kids and school don't help things
But I mean, really, if you're obligated to keep a schedule anyway, don't you want to keep one that allows you to be awake during the day and sleep at night, and to generally be available for other commitments? I've done both and I'd take the 9:00-5:00 over the irregular schedule every time. Convenience scheduling a doctor's appointment or job interview doesn't make up for all the inconveniences.
Think about tourist locations. Intense seasonality means we have to build up huge infrastructure for a peak ... Month? Per year. Mainly because kids are off at a certain time of year. Hotels are emptier during the week. Dentist appointments are impossible to get on lunch breaks.
I agree that synchronicity is valuable because a phone call is 10x more information dense than an email sent 3 hours ago. But wouldn't it be interesting to add a bit of flexibility to everyone's work schedule and see what happens?
Aside: lots of industries are shift workers, and most low-income people work off of the Mon-Fri 9-5. It's oddly a pretty solved problem but we decided against adopting that for office work in most cases. I bet kids and school don't help things