9-5

This is another random observation, but doesn't anybody work the 9-5 shift anymore?

It strikes me that this was the common work shift I always heard about growing up, they even had a movie and a song about it, but now it seems like barely anyone works this shift anymore.

Maybe it's just that I work at a government facility and all these people have free reign to work whatever shift they'd like (must be nice), as long as they come in sometime between 6am and 930am. But if that's the case, why doesn't anyone choose 9-5 anymore? People say they like to get in early so they can have the afternoon free, which I can understand. That's not for me, but I can understand it. I'd trade more morning sleep for being off at 230pm anyday of the week, but it seems like I am in the minority nowdays on that. I'd rather go to bed around 11, wake up at 7 or 730 and be into work by 9. That early morning, still dark out, birds chirping stuff to me is....well, for the birds. There's just something not right to me about being awake for your day when it's still dark out. And I know there's people who work graveyard shifts, etc., but I'm talking more about your average worker bee.

To get off work at 2pm on a Tuesday afternoon? Who cares? May as well be at work in my opinion. Fridays are different.

Maybe people also like to beat the traffic. But still, didn't people want to beat the traffic 20 years ago? Or is this 'more people seemed to work 9-5 shifts a long time ago' all in my head?

It's different if you work at a place that requires shift work, like myself. Restaurants, gyms, shopping centers, etc. open and close at a certain time, so you have all kinds of different shifts-6-2,8-4, 3-11,2-10, etc.

But I'm talking about the office workers. Nowdays there's all this flex time and choosing of shifts. That's another thing, since when did employees start being allowed to choose their shift? It seems to me that years ago, employees were told their shift.

I bring this up only because yesterday at work I was cleaning up cones after a 5K race on a two lane road that surrounds my work buildings. I was riding on the back of a pickup truck, hopping on and off to grab the cones that had marked the earlier race. It was about 3pm. We had to stop a ridiculous amount of times to let cars go around us. People leaving work? 3pm? I said to the guy driving the truck, "What ever happened to 9-5?"

Are they a thing of the past, or is the past I am thinking of all in my head? Do more people work 6-2 shifts these days than they did 20 years ago? Did 9-5 used to be the staple and now it's not?

Sorry for the perhaps boring and arbitrary blog, but I figure, what would a blog be without the occasional dose of boring and arbitrary?