I have not found one. If I come in at 9, leave at 18, or 18:30, if I come in at 8, same. So I come in at 9.
But in general here it's a 9 hour day with an hour break for lunch, that makes the 8 hour workday.
this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
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So this gets back to why I point to the 70's as sorta being the height of things. Both the song and the movie 9 to 5 was based around how poor shlubs had to work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, with barely enough to get by on including you know going out every week. Anyway I am unsure if anyone does it now but I know as recently as the 90's if you worked for certain old school businesses like banking you could actually have a job that was 9 to 5 and you got a lunch that was compensated. Get this. It was often an hour. So you worked 7 hours a day and got paid for 8.
I work 7.5 hours and get paid for it all, even my half hour lunch.
I work a 9-5 office job in the USA but it’s seasonal and there are people who work different hours so that the office can stay open til 7
Yes, I do.
Officially I’m 9-5 with an hour for lunch.
In the Netherlands: blue collar mostly 7:30 - 16:00, white collar half an hour or an hour later.
junior software developer in Europe, my work hours are 9-5, with an hour for lunch. In reality I work a bit shorter hours because the daily's at 10, and nobody really cares how many breaks I take as long as I get the work done
No. Companies have stolen 2 extra hours from us. They used to include a paid lunch hour in those 8 hours. Now, it's not only 8-5, but we don't get paid for the lunch hour.
I work 7:30 - 15:30. I hate waking up so early but it is nice to have time to run errands.
I work from 8:30 to 16:00 with a half-hour lunch break, so 7 work hours per day.
It's paid as a full-time job.
If I collect too much over-time, I get a stern talking-to from my supervisor, who could otherwise get in trouble with the works council and the owners (cause they'd get in trouble with the union and the law). So I make sure to go home on time.
I have 42 days of paid time off I HAVE to take, plus unlimited sick days.
I could have made 50% more by chosing a different employer, and 3-4x as much in the US.
But why the hell would I? I'm able to save up 1/3 of my take-home pay as it is, and that's after pension and healthcare are accounted for.
Wait wait, what type of country treats its citizens like humans?
I live in Germany, but that's not normal here, either. I deliberately chose an employer with a strong union and high worker solidarity and was lucky enough to switch jobs when my skills were in high demand.
One of the jobs I had was 9am to 5pm for about a year. For me, that was practically heaven because prior to that it had been 9am to 6pm for a few years, and the shorter hours didn't come with a pay cut.
It got weird later because I took on a rotating shift pattern and more responsibility, but some of the day shifts were still 9 till 5.
Then I jumped ship to a different company that had 9am to 6pm again, but that turned out to be preferable to the hell of not being able to sleep properly.
Usually 8am to 5 30 or 6pm for me.
We are supposed to record 9 hours of work on our timesheet daily. Sometimes there isnt enough work but then you just do goals or organize shit or read some how to's. I hate those days. I like being busy.
It is long days though. A 6 hour day would be fantastic but I'd get nothing done. Today, I spent 4 hours opening a program on several different remote PCs because it kept crashing.
These gals do.
That's all it took to get the song in my head lol
From what I've heard 9-5 was a thing before employees were given a mandatory 1 hour lunch break which was counted as non-work time. So basically the work schedule was shifted to account for break time no longer being counted as part of the work day.
Of course I've never looked into it, so there's a good chance it's not that :p
You mean, before employers stole our paid lunch breaks and gaslit everyone into forgetting about them.
Yeah that :3
This is correct, lots of places that were 9 to 5 would give people a lunch half hour or a lunch hour that would technically be on the clock. When lunch hours became mandatory employers went well fuck that and made it so you didn’t get paid for your lunch. Most people don’t realize off the top of their heads but 8 to 5 is actually nine hours.
It would be interesting to see a filter of responses by country.
In my experience:
- Architecture / Eng / Construction Industry (Canada):
- 8-5, summer hours, loosely enforced.
- Software Industry (Europe):
- 9-5, several extra weeks of vacation, loosely enforced
- Software Industry (America):
- 9-6, moderately enforced
- Software Industry (Canada):
- 9-5, summer hours, loosely enforced
Technically no, in actuality, yes. I can start and finish as long as my hours are my contracted hours, but I have a daily meeting at 9 so I start my day with that meeting everyday. And then if I work normally, I finish at 5
I believe in wresting back any amount of control/time we can from the system.
So my job has me coming in at 8:30-9:30am and leaving at 3:30pm every day, thanks to training my boss and working the system.
And honestly I am switching to a hybrid WFH job because even this is too much office time.
They don't give me a window, so I am letting myself get recruited elsewhere.
I currently work 8:00 to 16:00 and no one has complained about my working hours yet. But, I'm a software dev working remote with coworkers in several different timezones, so the exact time I start and end my day really doesn't matter.
At a previous job I worked 9:00 - 15:00 for several months when I was depressed and no one complained about that either. 🤷
Yes, I work 9 to 5
All but one of my jobs (excluding hourly jobs as a teen) have been 9-5, the one that wasn’t was 9-6 with the justification that we had a 1 hour lunch in the middle… but like… I’ve taken a 1 hour lunch at every job… so I have no idea why that company was such a stickler for that. Basically no one did shit after like 4pm anyways
1 hour lunch means you are expected to leave the office (or at least not work). Some countries get really strict about a one hour lunch break where you don't do any work and so it is carefully enforced there.
Way back when I had fixed working hours, it was usually 0800 to 1600
Strict working hours are important for jobs like assembly line work where if you are not at your station nobody else can do any work. Often they do build enough slack in that they expect you can take a couple bites here and there between doing your work. Though this isn't the most sanitary so it isn't common anymore.
For anyone doing work that doesn't depend on others being at their station at the same time a strict shift doesn't make sense, and there are not many assembly lines left like that (the assembly lines I have seen lately are much shorter and your team of 10 needs to work the same shift but your team can choose lunch time, and if you get the team's work done faster everyone can even get an extended lunch.
All of my jobs have been 9-5, lunch included. I think the key is whether you’re paid hourly or by salary. I’ve almost exclusively worked at tech startups as a salaried employee.
US Midwest 9-5 jobs are normal even when not really sensical for all businesses. Very much a control and “you sit here cause I pay you to.” I worked a place that expected 8:30am - 5:30pm with an hour lunch break. Salaried work. I worked hourly at a distribution center that was 8:30 - 5:00pm with half hour lunch.
Yes. I do. Dealership mechanic. 9-5
Factory jobs are 6-14 and 14-22 (and 22-6 if there's a rush), and office jobs usually 7-15, including a 30-min break. Then there's the service sector, depending on when the shop opens...
I have worked 9 to 5 in every office job I've had (salaried). Including lunch.
I could come in an hour late and skip lunch break to make it 9-to-5.
I work 7-4 with an hour at lunch.
I don't know anyone that has it that strict.
On shift work it is standard to get 6:00 - 14:00, 14:00 - 22:00 and 22:00 - 6:00. And most people I know that have office work usually have some flexible arrangement like you have to work 8h and have to be here for meetings 9:00 - 13:00, so some people arrive at 9 and leave at 5 or you can arrive at 6 and leave at 2...
Other jobs like teachers, doctors... have just completely different schedules each day.
There are still some of those that I'm familiar with, mostly entry-level white collar professional jobs like "receptionist" or "desktop IT".
Beyond that, the 9-5 is dead, though. A lot of the rest of American white-collar jobs are 24x7 where you're expected to respond to slack or email within a few minutes all day, and probably also be in the office 8-10 hours per day. And working-class jobs have all moved to unscheduled part time nonsense where they'll give you 29.5 hours a week (to avoid having to give you benefits), but won't tell you which 29.5 hours until the last possible moment.
Don't I wish ..I'm there 8AM TO 5 fucking PM
When I started my current job it was a proper 9-5 with a half hour paid lunch.
They've now switched us to an hour unpaid lunch, but everyone basically just ignores it.
And in both cases many of those hours are downtime.
I've spent 20 something years ostensibly working 9 - 5. But most of those years I've also on call for server downtime, and crunch-time is sometimes a thing.
Nobody wants that, but it still beats working 09:00 - 21:00
Technically. I work 8-17, but there is a 1h lunch break.
Usually the mandated lunch break is 30min so 8-16:30 would be the norm here.
Where do you live? In Germany it's common to work only 8 hours on a work day. I've had jobs in software development where you had flexible enough times that you could choose to work 9-17:00, though flexible times isn't quite what "9 to 5 job" implies.
That would be illegal though, above 6 hours of work you are required to take a 30 minutes break.
True, it's usually 7,5h work days if you're not doing overtime or part time.