To think 'I'm not a nine to five person' is a slightly pretentious thing to say.

[Vintagejazz]

No one is a nine to five person. Yes, some people are more structured than others and can conform better to that regime, - while others will always be running in the door late, forgetting to fill in time sheets and overtime claims and work better with a deadline looming than to a paced schedule.

But there's just something a bit pretentious and 'ooh look how different I am' about someone airily stating 'oh I'm not a nine to five person. I couldn't possibly work at an office job'.
Yes you could if it was the only way to pay the bills. You mightn't be very good at it but you'd bloody do your best if your mortgage and groceries were depending on it.

Sorry, just heard a student, who looked in her early twenties, on the bus coming out with this remark in a very sneery dismissive manner and it riled me

I did once say to a dentist "urgh so you just look in peoples mouths all day?". I was a child.
get me and my glamorous data analyst job. At the time clearly I was going to be the next madonna.

Agree summer technically I dont work 9 to 5, I work quite flexibly and am lucky to do so. But it's still a "boring corporate office job" (other than to me, it's my dream job)

I believe some people are 9-5 types who suit and enjoy that work pattern, whereas others have a different natural rhythm. If you can make an alternative rhythm work then I don't see the problem with stating "not a 9-5er".

Oh YA SO NBU. My friend comes out with this sometimes, in a 'I'm far too creative and talented and special to work in a boring old office, with other boring old office dullards' kind of way, which is a little insulting as I'm one of those dullards

Hotfuzz, i'm an ex-bobby, am currently civvy staff but waiting for a start date to rejoin.

I work in an office role. I HATE it. The politics, the bitching, the cliques, sitting at the same desk every day, seeing the same people, sitting with people that make me want to strangle them.

Stepping over bits of body was preferable and i will unfurl a flag on my last day.

I was always like this. I left uni and worked in a restaurant My mother freaked out but I was earning double any of my friends and had lots of time off. In this time I did lots of 'free' work in the one thing I was interested in interiors and now I do that for a living and am not 9-5 in this either I work about 4 months a year. SOme people just aren't suited to it Its not pretentious as some people really are and love the structure and routine

I could never work in an office, is a pretty daft thing to say. I presume the people who trot this out assume everyone in an office spends all day filing and photocopying and calling each other Miss Jones and Mr Uppity-Smyth and putting on their bowler hats to go out for lunch.

There are LOADS of jobs where you spend at least part of your time in an office - from design, to finance, to creative writing, to data analysis, to legal work to...........

Am I wrong in thinking that most people actually do not work in a 9 to 5 office type job?
I don't think anybody I know does. But that might say something about me and the people I know, as well.

I am not a 9-5 person in the sense that my natural working rythmn doesn't fall into that pattern. If left to my own devices I'd work 6am-12noon with maybe another spurt late afternoon.

However, I used to work shifts and loathed it as I was out of synch with the rest of humanity so 9-5 is by far my preferred choice.

Yes I agree that saying anything sneerily is rude, but it doesn't make all people who use said phrase sneery.
That's all really.
Nothing to see here. Move along :)
PS good luck careeristbitch. Wait till you're kept on late at a rainy cold scene, you'll be wanting that office job again then ;)
Actually, scratch that, this winter I had to sit outside a murder scene in rain and cold, overnight, for 5 hours. I'd still rather do that than work in an office! I had a bag of sweeties and could fart whenever I wanted lol

I think I'm probably a 9-11 type person. I tend to get bored after that and want to go home.
Unfortunately my boss doesn't understand about me not being 9-5

I'm not a 9-5 person. I like flexible hours.

However, like anyone if it's a choice between a bigger paycheck and a smaller paycheck, I will go for more money.

"I'm not a 9-5 person" is in the same category as "I'm a free spirit" and "I've nothing in common with school gate mums"

Very rarely said by anyone who isn't a bit of a git. I know someone who talks about "mundanes". Now ^thats" only said by people who are a lot of a git.

I agee Hakluyt If it's said casually between friends when discussing career options or why you didn't really get on well at your last job or something it's probably okay.

But when it's said as a kind of 'statement' about yourself it really is 'trying to hard to prove you're different.'

Like people who wear daft totally OTT clothes to prove they're 'creative', while truly creative people don't feel the need to rub people's noses in it. They let their work speak for itself.

to be fair I have not heard anyone say 'I am not a 9 to 5 person' since I was a teenager or maybe early 20s so maybe it goes with that kind of territory

"I had a bag of sweeties and could fart whenever I wanted lol"

You've just ruined any respect I had for our boys and girls in blue :o and I eat sweets and fart when I want to. I just wear a bowler hat when I'm doing it.

There is absolutely nothing pretentious about stating that you are not a 9 - 5 person.

I am the worst sort of 9 - 5 person. I can't do it.

I'm a shift worker. I work 12 hour days and 12 hour nights, still do my full time hours, sometimes more.

Now if she said it in a tone that implied that by not doing 9 - 5, she would opt out of alternative ways of earning a living then yes, YANBU. But 9 - 5 is not the only way to make ends meet and earn a living.

I have never had a 9 to 5 job. Who only works 35 hours a week in a full time job?

I have worked 9 - 5.30 and 8.30 to 5, but usually more in both cases. I now work part time and really enjoy the structured days I have at work (8.30 to 5) as it compliments the relatively unstructured days I have at home.

I'm not an office person. But I did it to pay the bills. I hated it.

I love working in the office, but I love my job and really like the people I work with.

My experience of people who say this or variants of it aren't usually referring to the literal hours of 9.00am to 5.00pm. They're talking about any job where you have set hours at someone else's behest, and their comment is usually meant to be taken as "I'm such a free spirit, I have to make my rules".

I must be dull and conformist then

I might say that. But I would mean: I'm too fucking lazy to get out of bed, washed and dressed in time to be somewhere that required all of things by 9am.

I've never had a 9-5 job. Right now it sounds appealing.

Stealth I'm normally stuck in a car with someone so farting is out of the question, although some boys still do - yuck!
Grockle I hate the drudgery of 9-5 hours, the commute, the same walls, the same people. But I still get showered, dressed and to work on time for 6am or 7am...
Select I never thought of it that way (ie working set hours dictated by others), I realise now why I lot of people object to the phrase. I don't work 9-5 but I definitely do as I'm told, when necessary and under pain of disciplinary :)