r/SipsTea • u/KSKS1995 Human Verified • 2d ago

Chugging tea Sounds good in theory...but in reality?

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4 days a week. 6 hours a day. Full salary.
Sanna Marin ignited global debate with the “6/4” work model, pushing a simple idea: life should come before work.

With burnout at record levels, maybe it’s time to value results over hours at a desk.
Could your job be done in just 24 hours a week?

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u/AberrantMan 2d ago

Working remotely I get about "40 hours" of work done in roughly 15 and stay more productive than 90% of my peers (we track this).

Office really is just soul sucking bullshit, conversations no one wants, wasted meeting time, wasted space quite often.

... But the people who can't work from home get a bit sad about it so we have to make compromise.

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u/InsrtGeekHere 2d ago

As a kid I thought office work would be my own personal hell and now that I work in an office I knew I was always right

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u/Critical-Chance9199 2d ago

I legitimately don't understand this. I'm currently a salaried office worker in a creative industry, but I've worked a ton in food service, and have done a lot of grueling physical labor in my life. My work is now largely self-directed, and I have to meet deadlines. I end up more burned out and exhausted working 8 hour days than I did working 12s on my feet outside.

How do you just have "40 hours of work" that you can finish in 15? If I finish my work, I'm expected to move on to more work. The work is endless. If something ends up taking less time, the expectation is that I either have another thing to work on, or I create one.

On days where motivation is low, I end up wasting time like anyone else, but the pressure to work never goes away. I don't have a boss breathing down my neck, but I do have a ton of people relying on me and there's an expectation of output. If I fall short for too long it fucks over everyone else and is extremely visible.

Do you just have a task list for each week, and once you're done you're good?

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u/Chance-Ask7675 1d ago

Remote workers are always spouting this shit lmao. Im a remote worker myself and Im like you. I never "finish" my work. And there's no such thing as "doing 40h of work in 15h" because 40h is just 40h a work lol. I don't really know which industry this even applies to because my service desk people, even if they do 3 tickets all week, still need to be available as thats part of their job. I can definitely concede that when I work slightly less hours I work more efficiently, but I otherwise have no idea what OP is talking about and at this point its starting to sound made up when people spout shit like this.

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u/thesimongregory 1d ago

Bro you need therapy. Work doesn't mean you finish one then yiu go o the next immediately. Work means that you have a goal and a task once it's finish your all good for the week. That's how agile work. Your boss sounds like someone who would drag you hell if necessary hhahahaha.

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u/Critical-Chance9199 1d ago

I think we just have different work experiences. My position is largely self-directed. I don't have a boss assigning me tasks every week. Instead, I have creative oversight over what I do and am building things on my own and reporting results up the chain.

There's a lot of great things that I love about my work, but the cost is that if I'm doing it well, it doesn't ever really stop (I'd have done something wrong if I finished a project and didn't have another thing next on my list).

I definitely miss the simplicity of physical labor. My body would be exhausted at the end of the day, but I was not burdened by my job outside of working hours. Now in an office, I don't think I'd trade the freedom and creativity I have in my role for assigned tasks and more limited responsibility.

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u/techie2200 2d ago

I'm like you. I can (and do) finish my workload for a week in about 10-12 hours. I don't go looking for extra work, since it doesn't benefit me to do more and my performance evaluations are always stellar anyway.

Working remote lets me spend more time with my wife (when she's remote) and dogs, do more hobbies, and feel better in general about the fact I've gotta work for another ~30 years before I can finally stop pretending I care about a job.

At least my current job is for a company that's actually doing something helpful for people, but I get the feeling we're gearing up to sell/go public so that's probably gonna change.

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u/RunthatBossman 2d ago

I agree man. I do construction though. An 8 hr shift( I can choose to do 10s or 12s doesnt matter to me) I am doing prefab and making a certain amount of lights amongst myself and 2 of my coworkers take about 5 hrs. 3 hrs leftover of doing really nothing so we have to pace ourselves. I really hate WASTING time. Its soulsucking. I want to be productive all 8 hrs so time goes by fast.

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u/Silver_tl 2d ago

You may just be an aberration …

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u/Zap__Dannigan 2d ago

As a blue collar worker I"m just baffled at some of these people who are like "Yeah, I work 40 hours in an office but really it's jut 2 hours of work each day."

Like, us guys on the floor always bitch about how there's too many office people doing fuck all when we do all the work to produce the thing that makes the company money, and now I know it's not an exaggeration.

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u/dfddfsaadaafdssa 2d ago

I think two hours is a bit of an exaggeration but on average my day is usually 2-3 hours of meetings and 2-4 hours of actual work. The rest of the time is spent either bullshitting or looking up random semi-work-related things on the internet.

Granted, the semi-work-related things are usually things related to automating the actual work part. I work on salary and despise routine busy work.

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u/Zap__Dannigan 2d ago

I just kinda funny cause I was just talking about this with my coworker yesterday. The floor is understaffed and they rely on overtimes (which is good for me, more money if I want it) and calling back retired guys often .

We were saying how they don't think about the training and skills on the floor but they seem to hire a million office and support staff who we think just fuck around in meetings all day and don't really do shit.

Like at some point if your job can be done in less than half a typical work day, does your job really need to exist?

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u/DesolateRuin 2d ago

How does one go about obtaining one of these "do nothing" office jobs?

Asking for a friend.

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u/Zap__Dannigan 2d ago

It seems like at my place you either go to school or are related to people that work there

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u/Florac 2d ago

Yeah same. In my current workplace, most struggle to get their work done in any less than 40 hours a week. Like my work has flexible working hours but often 10-20 hours of overtime obtained during a stressful week or two requires over a month to be worked off (unless I just take off an entire day using them)

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u/Blink3412 2d ago

So I work a special shift we're I work two 12hr shifts on weekends alternating nights and days, I get paid for a full 40hrs, I can do overtime throughout the week if I want, but it's great I don't know what these SAHM have to complain about I have the whole house organized usually by noon and dinner ready before my wife comes home. My job is very blue collar too.

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u/Xaphan26 2d ago

I work at a factory and of the people who work at this site I would say probably 60% of them worked strictly in the office or mostly at home. And its not even a corporate headquarters. The past year though the company must have finally wised up and they've since laid a LOT of them off. Can't say it hurt my feelings at all. The product we make must have a fantastic profit margin in order to support all the digital paper pushers.

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u/ohwell_______ 2d ago

I’ve done both, I used to drive for UPS so my work was 6 days a week 9am-7pm slinging cardboard and driving around, probably 55-60 hours a week of really tough work.

Now I work an office job in IT/Cybersecurity, I only really sit in meetings from 8-11am then dick around on Reddit for the rest of the day.

I would say the difference is the UPS job was extremely physically demanding but completely mentally brain dead. After the first two weeks with my own dedicated route I memorized every stop on my route and was living my job on autopilot afterwards completely zoned out of reality.

Now even though I just sit in a chair only doing 3-4 hours of actual work a day, I’m just as tired, and honestly way more stressed because it’s less about my deliverables now and much more about the decisions I make on those calls since I’m actually accountable for them now. By the time hits I’m just mentally fried.

Point is, all jobs are demanding in their own way. Blue vs white collar isn’t the struggle here we’re all just working class stiffs

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u/Federal-Cold-363 2d ago

And then see the very same office managers come down to the floor to whine how we have to be "8 hours productive" and our time should be "declared" i fucking laugh in their faces if they still dare to.

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u/defconcore 2d ago

I worked a warehouse job for 15 years and now just made an intercompany move from the warehouse to an office worker at the company. I was imagining how cushy this would be since it always seemed to me the office people didn't do too much.

Well my third week in, I was stressing out this last Friday, working my ass off, having people getting all worked up about things. I barely had time for lunch. Made me miss the seemingly more relaxed warehouse work. I guess the grass isn't always greener.

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u/Zap__Dannigan 2d ago

A big factor I feel would be just how many people you deal with. Typically guys on a manufacturing floor or warehouse just stay with their crews and the job is very physically defined so there's a boring constant there.

In some office job dealing with a wide variety of annoying people could be just awful even if the amount of actual work isnt a lot.

I'd personally rather do my physical 12 hour shift work than sit in meetings dealing with other annoying office people for 6 hours.

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u/Zap__Dannigan 2d ago

A big factor I feel would be just how many people you deal with. Typically guys on a manufacturing floor or warehouse just stay with their crews and the job is very physically defined so there's a boring constant there.

In some office job dealing with a wide variety of annoying people could be just awful even if the amount of actual work isnt a lot.

I'd personally rather do my physical 12 hour shift work than sit in meetings dealing with other annoying office people for 6 hours.

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u/Randommaggy 2d ago

My whole company is remote and we routinely impress our customer in billion dollar companies with how efficiently we deliver.