Is there anything more absurd and unworkable than the four day work week?

This is what they are experimenting with in the United Kingdom.

I can’t see the workability of this.

What is the purpose of it?

What is the purpose of work?

Is the purpose of work to gain enough money so that you can sail, hunt and fish?

Is time off the natural state of man?

Or is there a greater purpose to work?

The true purpose of work is to add value to society and your life.

Man possesses in him a need to contribute and therefore make life meaningful.

Without that contribution, men become depressed and angry.

They feel useless.

Man needs to contribute meaningfully as surely as he needs to breathe.

Does the four day work week contribute to that?

Is going from five days a week to four days a week the same as going from six days a week to five days a week?

Or by doing so do we pass over to the other side of the curve where giving people more time off is counterproductive to their lives?

I will argue that we do.

Is work to you a necessary drudgery that you only do because you have to?

The four day work week with three days off approximates that mentality.

While it may seem to be a good idea initially, the four-day worker will soon come to view work as paying taxes.

It will soon come to pass that four day workers will become more angry when they have to work.

They will come to view work with contempt.

And it will show in the quality of their work.

If the four day work week comes to America, expect to see lower quality products and lower quality service.

People will come to work not because they want to be there, but because they have to be there.

They will begin to look at work as punishment.

They will also begin to feel more unhappy about themselves and their lot in life.

Expect to see suicides go up.

Expect to see depression go up.

Expect to see violence go up.

Expect to see child abuse go up.

Expect to see crime go up.

Expect to see drug abuse go up.

With a four day work week, expect to see a cheapening of life in society.

Then there is the workability of this in fields like healthcare.

How will the four day week work in pediatrics?

Children get sick every day of the week. People don’t stop getting sick because the government orders it.

They need to see the doctor.

Are we going to tell them to lost get lost on Friday, Saturday and Sunday?

Is the doctor going to sit there and handle numerous calls on Friday while his staff is sitting around the swimming pool drinking a beer?

Or is the doctor going to hand off this responsibility to the emergency room on these extended weekend days?

If so, then, continuity of care is lost.

You essentially then need two teams to handle a patients care.

Now, of course, the doctor already needs support from the emergency room and various night clinics, but you want that support to be ancillary, not a full-time alternative to what you normally are supposed to be doing during the week.

If the doctor is only there, four times a week, patients will soon begin to question why they even need to come to the regular doctor in the first place.

We already have that problem to a certain degree already.

If patients start viewing the emergency room, and night clinics as the true source of healthcare, then vital tracking of growth and vaccines will be lost.

Too many cooks spoil the broth.

For healthcare to be optimal you need one person to be in charge.

That will be lost in healthcare with the four day work week.

How about the field of law?

Judges already have enough cases in their dockets. They’re overloaded. How will a four day work week benefit them?

Okay, how about Amazon? We all use Amazon.

Is Amazon going to hire more workers so that they can work fewer hours? If so, what kind of chaos will that add to the workplace? What kind of added workload will that present to their human resources department? Isn’t it better to have fewer workers who know their job than multiple workers who may not know their job?

The same argument can be used for just about any type of business.

Throw in a labor shortage, and what you have is an absurd and unworkable society.

Sincerely,

Archer Crosley

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