The Eight Hour Fallacy

All last week I road my bike 40 minutes (9 miles) each way just to get to work. Just in order to work. And even though I loved the biking (that’s my mind speaking, not my thigh muscles), and even though I appreciated the fact that it didn’t cost me money in getting there (unless one wants to take it to the extreme of counting the food to fuel my body in order to ride that far), it did cost me time. And in doing so, it reminded me of the fallacy of the eight hour work day.

By uttering “eight hour work day” one only means the time you are paid for (ie: the amount of time you are required not to fall asleep and are required to look busy). But most full-time jobs give you an unpaid half hour for lunch that must be accounted for during the work day. With the average one-way commute (and that right there is just poor, or lazy, linguistics) nationally being just over 26 minutes [1]—which, doubled to account for the round trip, is 52 minutes or more than 5/6ths (83%) of an hour—between just getting to work and eating lunch one has accounted for nearly 9½ hours of their day. Further figuring that one will probably take the time to shower and groom themselves beforehand, one is probably looking at at least thirty minutes (or somewhere in the neighborhood of two and a half hours for females as near as I would guess) more dedicated to the work day itself, the total is now approaching ten hours. If one makes a lunch to take to work as I do, or has to wash their clothes for the next day, there’s even more time lost to a work day total now nearing even closer to a ten and a half, or maybe even an eleven, hour work day.

And if you’re anything resembling a normal human being (and Life help you for it), you’re probably tired out by the time you finally make it home and feel the need to unwind with a drink, a nap, or some television. If you only take an hour to do these activities there are now nearly twelve hours—half the day—lost to the day all in relation to the supposedly necessary act of work.

Add on the more than likely seven hours you’re going to sleep to make sure you’re not sleeping on the clock and we are now more than 3/4ths the day through while spending time only dedicated to the act of work.

This isn’t even to mention the money one spends on just getting to work. If, in a rough calculation, one spent on average $.48/mile in getting to work ($.48/mile being the national reimbursement rate [2]) for the average 32 miles one commutes (16 miles each way, [1]), one would spend $15.36 a day, round trip, just in getting to and from work. Over the course of the week that comes to $76.80. If one made $10 an hour—middle ground to the minimum wage and higher paying jobs on the other end of the spectrum—this would mean that 7.68 hours (nearly an entire day of work every week) were spent working just to be able to get to work. Thus, immediately, no matter what one might lack or possess otherwise in the way of bills to pay, one’s paycheck would be worth only slightly more than 32 hours of work.

I wouldn’t so much mind—well, maybe not—the eight hour work day if it was only an eight hour work day. But instead the eight hour day is nothing more than a terrible fallacy. If one were paid for all the hours and money spent in preparation for and in getting to work in an average day, over the course of an average week one would be paid for 67 hours.

But in being paid only 40 hours pay for 67 hours work, one begins to see the deal the check writers are getting in the so-called eight hour work day. And too maybe makes my preference to work less a little more reasonable.

Eight hour work day? We should only wish it was.


[1] http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Traffic/story?id=485098
[2] http://www.gsa.gov/Portal/gsa/ep/contentView.do?contentId=9646&contentType=GSA_BASIC