As the slow march of time presses ever onward, it's not uncommon for change to occur—in fact, it's unavoidable. Small incremental shifts in policy and perception mount and build up into larger changes. Sometimes, you won't even realize how far things have gone until you take a look back at the winding road back to where things used to be. While these changes are usually for the better, sometimes things work their way into normalization that takes us back a step or two. We might not even realize that this is not how things have always been.
Like what you see? Follow our WhatsApp channel for more.
Take, for instance, the usual reference to a "9 to 5" job. This colloquialism is ubiquitous across the English-speaking world, usually denoting a stable full-time, usually the white-collared working-class role of a salaryman in which you start your job at 9 AM and are out the door by 5 PM, this all-inclusive time period including time to go out and get lunch and talk sports with Steve at the watercooler. These desirable "9 to 5" roles were highly sought after, sustainable roles that offered as much work/life balance as one could hope for.
Somewhere along the way, companies stopped offering paid lunch breaks, instead requiring workers to go off the clock for half an hour to an hour, effectively lengthening the time spent at work by that same amount of time. Suddenly, a "9 to 5" job was actually worked between the hours of 8-5 or 9-6, meaning workers either had to leave home earlier or stay at work later—at the cost of their own personal time. But still, inexplicably, we refer to these jobs as "our 9-5" even though in a lot of cases, despite being paid for those same hours, this is no longer the reality.
Members of this online community gathered to share other things that they feel are scams that have become normalized in the modern workplace.
Stay up to date by following us on Facebook!