What does an “average” work day look like for you?

[Youngandfree]

Just for fun, in AIBU for traffic;what does an average go like for you?
Mine goes something like;
6.50 get up get dressed and ready for work.(clothes set out previous night)
7.10 wake up DC and get breakfast/finish my make up.
7.30 get and help DC dressed, teeth brushed, hair brushed etc.
7.50/8.00 finish lunches if necessary/put all necessary bags and lunches in the car, and sort out washing machine on a timer.
8.10/8.15(latest) leave house
8.20/8.25 drop DC to school/Montessori
8.25 go to work
9.00-2.40 work (I’m a teacher so these are my contact/school hours)
2.40-3.00/3.10 sort out some planning/photocopying etc
3.00/3.10 leave work
3.30/3.40 collect DC
3.50/4.00 home
4.00-5.30/6.00 this is our free time so it varies depending on day or weather , take DD to swim lesson/gymnastics/etc or light the fire and stay home or go to the park/visit friend/family for an hour. And also make dinner
5.30/6.00 dinner time
6.00-6.30 DC play for half hour
6.30 bath/get ready for bed. Listen to DD read.
7.00-7.15 bedtime
7.15....get all bags and lunches (most of) ready for the next day, set out clothes and uniforms for the next day.

My DH Works away for weeks at a time so this is a day when he is away.

I know it's hard to go against a workplace culture, especially (for example) the comments about the American crazy boss who expects staff to be 24hr/available... But by checking/replying to emails"to get ahead" during commutes.. from 7.30-8am... and into commutes in the evenings... Way way beyond the 5pm contracted hours.. it helps to set the norm.

What was once discretionary, over-and-above, doing more, cutting lunch breaks.. just sets a precedent and expectations ever higher.

There is no way to get ahead like that. Colleagues, subordinates following the cue.

A race to the bottom, and everyone's already used up their "slack" when truly unexpected events pop up that requires a little more from employees. Everyone is already running at full capacity.

It's not the life I want my DC to have, but cutting back, stepping down, not working to your talent level, qualifications.. that's the only way out I'm hearing/seeing

These are really interesting,
I have different work patterns on different days. Today:
7am wake up, listen for kids getting up.
7.30am get up, get breakfast, make sure everyone else has had breakfast.
8.10 Kids and husband leave for school/work. I shower. Load up the slow cooker
8.30 take the dog on a walk
9.30 Get back for toast and tea
9.50 leave for work
10 - 3pm work - admin/reception office work.
3.10 pm. Home, wash up breakfast, relax.
4.15pm Have my dinner. Kids arrive home from school.
4.45pm Set off for second job.
5-9pm. Work. Husband and kids have tea together, he does washing up, ferrying kids about to clubs. He picks me up at 9pm
9pm Tuck kids in, watch some telly for an hour before bed.

Mondays aren't great, but not as bad as Wednesdays :-)

I find it thoroughly dispiriting how almost everyone, bar shift work, self employed etc, is locked into the old fashioned 9-5 (- or 8-6 which seems to be more prevalent).

It's just soul crushing to have to unnecessarily commute during fixed times when the roads and trains and buses are running near-empty just an hour or two either side.

There's also an air of a race to the bottom with who has the worst day, the most full-on, the busiest etc.

It's all pretty shit really.

@buzzbobbly I don’t really see any other option to that...most businesses are open/ work daylight hours?? 😢

I WFH 24hrs a week flexibly in a remote role rare but does exist.

No DC (yet) so normally:

6.45: get up (after snoozing my alarm!), morning wee, shower, brush teeth etc
7.00: get dressed, dry and brush hair, do very basic make up
7.25: leave house, walk to station
7.45: get train to central London, normally snooze
8.25: walk to office or get bus if pissing it down..!
8.40: get in office, grab a tea and check emails, chat with colleagues
9.00: boss gets in, I’m in a PA to a massively busy director so we catch up about his diary and any new dramas
9.15-12.30: work through morning actions from boss, emails, diary management, general fire fighting
12.30-1.15: lunch and a stroll if the weather allows
1.15-5.00: more emails, diary management, meetings. fire fighting – message DP about what we want for dinner, bicker about what we want for dinner
17.00: leave office, walk to station
17.25: get train home, snooze, scroll social media, whatsapp friends and family
18.10: get in, kick off shows, remove bra, get into comfier home-loungey clothes
18.15: watch bbc news, fuck about on phone, tidy up
19.00: alternate with DP for cooking each night
19.35: eat dinner
19.50-20.30: wash up, more tidying and household admin
20.30-22.00: spend time with DP, watch something on netflix
22.00-23.00: make lunch, pack bag and choose outfit for next day (saves sooo much time in the morning), moisturise, ‘wind down’ for bed
23.00-23.30: read book or MN in bed
23.30: Zzzzzzzzzz

I'm lucky in that my boss doesn't expect me to be available 24/7, but if we have a difficult period or an ongoing drama then I might check my emails in the evenings, or in the morning on the train so I know what I'm facing. Also if I've been off work for a few days I check my emails the night before so it's not such a shock first thing the next day!

I’m really struggling to understand where the fun is in knowing my daily itinerary...

However my days starts at 5.30am and depending on DC after school activities we won’t get home until after 9pm

They do at least 2 activities a day of various sports.

Work finishes on average between 5.30-6.30pm.

5am - get up and do some stretching (I have a bad back so this helps)
530-630am - go running
630-7am - shower and breakfast
7-745 - walk to work
8-430 - work
430 - 830 - go out after work (don't have kids).
Monday usually cinema
Tuesday I go bouldering
Wednesday usually see my mum
Thurs - see friends
Fri - whatever
830-930 shower and tea
930 - bed and fast asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow!

@Youngandfree Your day is like teaching used to be in the UK in the 1960s & 1970s, when I was at primary & grammar school

• a couple of relatives were teachers and they kept recommending it to me as a career, because of all the time off and short working hours 🤦🏻‍♀️

Fourtunately I did something else,
but it illustrates how you can't just pick the ideal career as a young person and assume it will stay ideal.

btw, I live in Germany now and the primary school teachers have even shorter hours than you !
So it looks like it's not just Ireland that has retained sanity for teachers.

I haven't got a typical day.apart from a few shifts where I have to be in I manage my own hours and don't have to be in for core times. I work full time hours over 4 days usually all though some weeks depending what's going on I may do 5 or 6 days.
I do 2 sleepovers a month.
My day varies so much because I work with teens. Sometimes I get a phone call from my manager about one of my cases if things have gone horribly wrong for a child so I can alter my diary and support if I can.
I go to CIN meetings , - sometimes they are concerned at the last minute which has an impact on the rest of the day. I also go to core group meeting,s, LAC reviews, child protection meetings etc. I plan session work with a young person or with the family. I do group work such as boys groups, confidence and stay strong work. We have days out, go swimming, go to the cinema. Some days I may spend the whole shift a a bedside at a hospital if a child has tried to kill themself

Then there's the paper work! Oh my goodness, there tons of it!

We have compulsory training to do. Some at conference centres and some on line.
We generally have loads of fun and do a lot of good stuff with the young people but there are times when we have been attacked, up all night doing police reports because some one has gone missing. We have a huge issue abround CSE, county lines and grooming and that can be distressing.
Sometimes we're on an emotional roller coaster. Last year one of the young people was killed in an attack and we were all devastated as the lad had turned his life around. A few hours after this a former young person turned up out of the blue to show us her new baby and to thank us for everything we had done for her a few years earlier.
The job can be demanding but we have a fabulous team that look out for each other and a manager who cares. We have a supervision once a month to off load but we always have the opportunity to debrief after anything significant

@Youngandfree I don’t really see any other option to that...most businesses are open/ work daylight hours?? 😢

That's the point. So many jobs can be done at 3am or 3pm, Monday or Sunday, Home or Hong Kong. Tying people to desks between fixed hours is no longer necessary when we have electronic communications that keep us connected wherever and whenever. All it does is restrict people.

The whole system needs upending and starting from now, not relying on how it used to have to be. I'm typing this from home, tomorrow I'll be in an office, in a few weeks I'll be in a different continent and time zone entirely. None of that will materially affect my work.

@buzzbobbly I can see what you mean but a lot of jobs don’t have the ability to that either I suppose so we cater for the majority I suppose 😢

The long working hours for teachers is totally just an English thing, not sure about Wales. But I'm a teacher in Scotland and also have similar hours. I get 2 1/2 hours planning time a week plus another hour for curriculum development. I arrive at work at 8.30 and never stay later than 4. Usually leave at 3.30. I honestly couldn't find enough stuff to do to fill the hours that English teachers state they work.

Seriously ghostdance?

Because I currently have almost 50 Y13 sitting A level History (Highers) and 60 Y11s sitting GCSEs (O levels).

Even if I had 3 hours a week 'planning' time this is not enough to mark this amount of essays. That's without all my other classes.

Can I ask what subject/years you teach - and how you manage to mark?

7.00am - turn off alarm I optimistically set at 1am after dicking around on the internet while drinking wine. Reset for more realistic time.
7.45am - turn off alarm. Shut eyes for one second before getting up.
8.13am - wake in a panic. Shout at kids to get ready while hurling toast at them.
8.26am - get dressed in nearest items. Iron collars with hair straighteners etc. Hope for best.
8.39am - tell kids we are leaving in ONE MINUTE. Felled by avalanche of permission slips, requests for swimming kit, enquiries about various unrelated and unimportant topics
8.47am - get in car
8.55am - park car with questionable legality. Hurl kids through gate. Hope for best.
9.05am - arrive at station to find there has been some sort of weather condition, so all trains cancelled/delayed.
9.12am - take running leap at train. Land in unwashed armpit. Spend 22 minutes enjoying various aromas.
9.24am - arrive at destination station.
9.29am - exit ticket barriers behind 19 people who elicit surprise at needing to locate their Oyster card
9.33am - 9.58am - board a bus, behind the same 19 people who stage a perfect reconstruction of the above.
c 10.15am - arrive at office. Realise my security pass has not made the journey with me. Glumly traipse to another building, to collect temp pass.
c 10.20am - see my old friend the security pass man. He's not angry, just disappointed.
c. 10.26am - arrive on floor. Try to find desk. Fail. End up sitting at shitty breakfast bar type hot desking space, on a stool, which I will spend the day inelegantly scaling and dismounting.
10.30am - 5pm - Arseholes
5.01pm - repeat commute in reverse. No one has learnt how to use an Oyster card/wash/respect my personal space in the interim
5.59pm - collect kids from after school clubs. Congratulate self on narrowly avoiding a fine.
6.01pm - return to car, to discover penalty charge notice. Of course.
6.15pm - return home. Lament lack of forward planning re supper. Get creative with questionable chorizo, wrinkled pepper and sad tomatoes to make pasta sauce. Make it edible by dumping £9 worth of Parmesan on it. All this accompanied by torrents of nonsense/riddling from progeny
7.00pm - open wine. Sit on bed. Stare into abyss. DH texts - he's going to the gym, so that's nice. Then texts me every 45 seconds 'between sets'. Explains a lot.
7.45pm - start attempting to bribe kids into bed with Netflix.
8.37pm - kids go to bed. Revert to sitting on bed, staring into abyss.
9.00pm - DH turns up, brandishing protein shake and peering into microwave ostentatiously. Indicate shitty pasta and refill wine glass.
9.10pm - get into bath. Sucked into YouTube rabbit hole.
9.42pm - find DH on sofa watching something old and involving espionage. Retreat to rabbit hole.
10pm - DH announces his desire for an early night with a meaningful look. The meaning is lost.
10pm-1am - dick about on internet. Set unrealistic alarm. Hope for best.

FIN.

I left out the work for comic effect.

@Amibeingnaive 🙌 there is so much about this that I love!! The bath and YouTube rabbit hole is one of my favorite places to be! And the wrinkly pepper and chorizo 😂😂YES YES YES!! Brilliant!!

@Biancadelrioisback so you work the same hours as your DH but you get up an hour and a half earlier to sort out lunches and your DS and then you prepare the dinner in the evening

7.45 get up, shower, do make up, get Ds2 breakfast. Make Ds2 snack and me a lunch.
8.20 Ds2 and I walk to school, then I walk to work.
9-3 work.
3.15 collect Ds2 and walk home.
Slob about and mn for an hour or so, do dinner.

@Youngandfree I mean, it's not always like that.

Some days I work from home and then it's mostly google image searches of Channing Tatum, whilst eating mini cheddars in bed. I'm the lynch-pin of that organisation.

[Disclaimer: I do occasionally do some work/a little light parenting when I absolutely cannot avoid it]

Up at 7.30.
Breakfast and packed lunch feed cat cuppa
Make up, teeth, lenses
Get bike out
8.00 dd leaves to walk to high school
8.25 i cycle to work, 2 miles away
8.40 park bike in secure area within work
900 start work. It's problem after problem after problem. But colleagues are great.
1500 leave work and cycle home
Arrive home 1520 dd arrives 1530
Snacks, drinks, dd tells me about her day.
We chill, then i start dinner.
I load dishwasher, we chill some more.
She's got a walking prob atm so our lovely walks are on the back burner for the foreseeable.
Evening we sit together chilling on our phones, we play online scrabble (she's good)!
Partner arrives home 6.30
Cuppa
Binge eat

She refuses to do clubs etc but I've said I'll support her if she changes her mind.

So nothing exciting here!

@blessyourcottonsocks yep, I'm a primary teacher. I mark on the go while the kids are working, allows me to give feedback as they work. I mark their writing once a week after school, takes me about an hour. Everything else is as they're doing it.

I would also agree the life of a teacher in Ireland is preferable to one in the UK. Several reasons, not just work/life balance. It pays better for one thing (looking at medians and averages). It is a profession that commands an awful lot of respect certainly compared to the UK. The entry requirements to the one teacher training college in Ireland are not far off those of medicine so the calibre of teachers tends to be quite high.

I’m not a teacher but my day goes something like this. 5 days per week.
DC wake me at 7
Snooze together until 720 ish.
7.20-8.20 make breakfast for DC and get myself and DC ready
8.20 leave house
8.30 drop DC at school
8.40 get tube to work
9.10 arrive at work
6pm leave work
6.30 ish arrive home (DH picks DC up from after school care at 6)
6.30-7.30 bedtime routine with DC
8pm supper
8-10 chill out/TV etc.
10pm ish bed

Obviously the above assumes I’m not travelling/at a work event/out with friends.

I have a pretty easy life.

I'm also a teacher and my manic day is as follows:

• 6am get up
• breakfast as a family at 7am. Kids must be ready at this point.
• 7.30 leave house to drop kids off at school club and childminder by 8.

8.30 - arrive in work Leave school anyway bet 3.30 and 5.30 Baby to bed between 6-7 Eldest to bed between 7 and 8.30

0630 - alarm goes off
0650 - in bath and make up/hair (please these people who can be showered and ready in 15 mins tell me your secret!)

0655 - make son's breakfast
0700 - put a load of washing in, make beds
0710 - have breakfast
0730 - watch tv
0730 - leave for work
0800 - start work - answer urgent messages - patients admitted overnight and consultant has to attend
0830 - answer urgent emails from management such as 'this patient needs operated on by blah - I explain for the umteenth time there are not enough hours in the day, there is nowhere to fit the patient in and my consultant doesn't care one iota (with more colourful language) about targets - he decides on clinical need.

0900 - 1200 - transcribe urgent dictation, apologise to numerous patients why they don't have an op date, take a load of abuse, apologise, advise them to contact PALS

1200 -1300 - Check my theatre list - ask my consultant what order he wants - beg him to add an extra which won't go down well with the theatre staff

1300 - 1700 - book operations, book appointments, prioritise results (yes, we mere admin can actually learn what results are urgent or not and don't think we're doctors)

1730 - home and chill and wondering why I'm paid so little to put up with such ignorant people who expect everything for nothing and everything when they don't give a dime to the NHS