To consider compressed hours?

[TabithaTwitchEye]

I'm about to start a new job, and am considering asking to work 8-6 4 days a week, with a day off.

DD will just have turned 3 when I start this job, and otherwise would be in nursery full time.

I will have a 45 min commute to each way (train-horror allowing).

What do you think, am I BU/ naive to consider this? Or might it be okay??

[Littlef00t]

I'm really divided myself. If baby's bedtime was 7:30 or later, at least you'd get a bit of time with baby each day, but I don't think I'd sacrifice bedtime 4 nights a week for one day when I'm shattered from the longer days.

[LordPeterWimsey]

I did this for years and it was brilliant. DD (5 now, but a baby when I had the job with compressed hours) goes to bed quite late so I always saw her at both ends of the day. I work in an industry where there's a fair bit of presentee-ism, so actually compressed hours was a way of clawing some time back.

[Fourfourtwo]

Can you shift the day slightly so you do 7.30-5.30 which means you should still get home for bedtime? I work in the nhs too and on my second maternity leave currently but when I went back after my first I did 8-5.30 and then took some leave every week to make up my hours. I got a full day off every week and was still home for bath and bedtime on my work days.

When I go back this time I'm going to see if I can start earlier so I don't need to use my leave (had a lot last time from my mat leave accrual so it wasn't too bad to use some each week). I really liked working the long days, felt I had the time to get everything done and was able to leave on time. Plus the office was quieter and I was more productive at the beginning and end of the day.

[blueshoes]

Is the nursery saving really significant for just that one day? My dcs' nursery charging structure made it cheaper to go full time than 4 days because they wanted to encourage ft.

[EmeraldKitten]

I've worked compressed shifts for years - 8,30-6.30, 4 days a week (35 hours, which is FT in my job).

For me it's much better, especially before they start school. If I worked 9-5, 5 days a week, I'd get home at 5.30 and get the grumpy 1.5 hours before bed. Now, I get home at 6.30 and get the grumpy half an hour before bed. But I get a whole extra day every week.

You can do anything in that day...even now mine are in school, the extra day in the week in all school holidays is amazing. And when they're in school, I have a day to get stuff done, so I generally do all the cleaning/shopping etc then which makes the weekend a lot nicer.