I’m sure plenty of people have thought about this, but I wonder why, when manufacturing etc has adopted innovative shift patterns, office based working persists with a 9-5 culture and struggles to adopt flexible working on a wholesale basis.
Manufacturing, by definition produces something, be it chainrings, televisions, cars etc. – often beneficial to have the machines running 24/7 with crazy shifts, you’re just lumping out units of stuff (no offence to anyone in manufacturing).
In an office environment you’re often needing to talk to/coordinate with other people so a more standard set of hours is beneficial. It’s starting to get crazy at our place – ‘A’ doesn’t work Mondays, ‘B’ doesn’t do Wed afternoons or Friday mornings, half rock in at 10, the other half leave at four, plus half the staff are on India working hours – actually arranging a meeting for more than a couple of people starts getting tricky.