Shift Work, for everyone. Everyone hires two counterparts to work their late and midnight shifts to give your job a 7/24 coverage. Just think, every company would be open 7/24 and we could employ three times more people than we could do now, with three times the work completed and three time the revenue. For example, your typical office workers now work 9-5. If you hired on two more shifts of office workers, who could work 5-1 and 1-9, then you could provide coverage for every role! Work could go on non-stop around the clock globally. Projects could be passed on to your next shift counterpart and completed by the time you got back. Whole cultures could be created who worked on different shifts: The Days, The Lates, and The Nights. Switching shifts could be unheard of. Families could all work on the same shift. Rebellious children could switch shifts to get away from their parents, yet live in the same house.
its not slavery. people would work as a Day, Late or Night by choice. If shift work works for manfacturing, why cant it work for office jobs? Even today I get calls from shops who have global offices allowing them to work around the clock, why not locally everywhere for every job. Just think 7/24 banks, 7/24 post offices, 7/24 DMV, 7/24 everything. Nothing ever closes.-- thinkfuture, Jun 05 2001 city that never sleeps http://www.halfbake...at_20never_20sleepsnondescript [LoriZ, Jun 05 2001, last modified Oct 04 2004] Where will employers get the money to hire three times as many employees?-- PotatoStew, Jun 05 2001 From the tripled revenue [thinkfuture] mentions. (Of course there would be three times fewer companies that do this, which is good, because otherwise they'd run out of employees to hire.)-- jutta, Jun 05 2001 Night shift work can be psychologically difficult. I believe there is some evidence suggesting that many humans function most happily when their active hours correspond *in the main* to daylight hours. But as local economies globalize there will be a natural tendency to need workers at night--phone conferences involving managers in Chicago and Calcutta mean that some of the parties involved won't be keeping banker's hours that day.-- Dog Ed, Jun 05 2001 I guess I'm skeptical that 3x the workers equals 3x the revenue for a lot of businesses. Manufacturing maybe, but they probably already do something pretty close to this. Other businesses... eh, not so much. Plus, night shift usually makes more money for the same job, don't they? You'd have to do away with that practice.-- PotatoStew, Jun 05 2001 I want night-shift as a lifeguard at the beach.-- benfrost, Jun 05 2001 It's a fallacy to suppose that working three times as long produces three times the revenue. You may well produce three times the product, but unless three times as many are bought, you're not gaining anything. The 24-hour shift system was introduced in factories to prevent the boilers cooling down.-- angel, Jun 05 2001 I don't want to buy anything that's been made at 4am.-- redpony, Jun 05 2001 Not to mention the huge increase in consumption of natural resources this would generate and the non-stop traffic going past your window day and night. -- DrBob, Jun 05 2001 angel, DrBob, the answer to your concerns is jutta's suggestion that the number of companies decreases, so overall production remains the same. This is all mooted, though, by the fact that most things that are made, are made 24/7 already. redpony, you'd be amazed how many things you've already bought that were made at 4 a.m.-- beauxeault, Jun 05 2001 [beauxeault]: Yeah, that's my point. If overall production remains the same, you need the same number of producers, so unemployment is *not* solved.-- angel, Jun 05 2001 Working three times as much could means 3x salaries, 3x sales, 3x productivity. Service firms providing 7/24 would outproduce the 9-5e'rs. I dont see why we can't do 3x sales.....-- thinkfuture, Jun 05 2001 Thinkfuture: Perhaps if everything cost 1/3 what it does now...-- snarfyguy, Jun 05 2001 If I'm going to buy a TV, I'm not going to buy one at noon, another at 8 pm, and then another at 4 am. 3x the work will not increase demand three-fold (or even at all, for most goods, really), and if it increases production, then the price will go so low as to eliminate profit. Someone needs an economics course.
FISHBONE.-- globaltourniquet, Jun 05 2001 Perhaps [thinkfuture] read Philip K. Dick's fascinating tale, "The Sliced-Crosswise Only-On-Tuesday World" in which to solve the population problem folks were frozen six days of the week and lived their lives on only one day of the week. His or her comments seem derivative of this, and he or she attempted to half-bake the concept.... eh?
(or am I getting my sci-fi Philip's mixed up? Jose Farmer? K. Dick? Which Philip was it?)-- globaltourniquet, Jun 05 2001 Must be Farmer.-- snarfyguy, Jun 05 2001 Indeed. Farmer it was. Then subsequently made by him into a full-length trilogy called Dayworld (didn't know that until now -- only read the short story in High School...)-- globaltourniquet, Jun 05 2001 If your not on the same shift that the BIG boss is, you tend to get overlooked for promotions, due to the fact that he doesn't know who the hell you are ! So everyone wants to be on the same shift and the whole shift idea falls apart.-- KindlyRat, Jun 06 2001 thanks thinkfuture. The first time a salesman phones me at 3am in the morning to sell me double glazing i'll think of you.-- Little_Crow, Jun 06 2001 thanks global I'll have to find that book. Never read it. For kindlyrat, there will be three big bosses, one for each shift. and little crow - I guess that would have to be illegal. Maybe phone systems could detect if you banned calls from other shifters.-- thinkfuture, Jun 07 2001 Someone sleeping at any given time of the day. When can I turn my music up? Do we start to segregate housing areas - dayers and nighties?-- sodateq, Jun 07 2001 random, halfbakery