To think that more services could available outside of working hours?

[LadyGodiva4]

Whether it's doctor's appointments, customer service calls for any major companies you have to pay bills for, certain shops, the local council etc. everything seems to be only open during work hours in the week! Squeezing in life admin alongside a very busy full time job just feels like such a chore, especially if you have a chronic health problem like me!

With the rise of remote work and more flexibility, AIBU to think that we can as a society somehow recalibrate working hours so that everything's not only open at the same time?
I'm very willing to pay a premium for those who have to work on weekends, and totally agree that no changes should be made unfairly to anyone, but it does feel like there's a level of inconvenience unnecessarily baked into our lives?

AppallinglyReheated totally agree work life balance is so important! It's just challenging when you have an extremely full time job, where hours just constantly mismatch. I'm not suggesting any specific area of society should work more hours, but more that with flexible working we could move to a system that is more accommodating for everyone?

You've chosen to work in one of the most notoriously intense careers (corporate law). Everyone going into it knows they are chucking work life balance out of the window. You can't expect the rest of society to alter their hours at great expense.

There are plenty of branches of law or other careers where people have flexibility and a work life balance.

The more we normalised working flexibly at weekends, the more it will come to be seen as part of a standard working week and the concept of extra pay for this work would quickly go out if the window.

I work Saturdays, no extra pay for it
Get the time off in the week instead

I don’t work, so this isn’t an issue that normally troubles me but I want to get my eldest a debit card in the near future. To do this we both need to attend a prebooked appointment, however they only open 9.30-3pm Mon-Fri and 3 hours on a Saturday morning. Unsurprisingly the Saturday appointments were all taken for weeks on end. 🙄

The more flexibility you have in working hours, the more difficult everything else becomes.
Parents are often constrained by school hours/childcare availability, so finding a job that suits gets harder if more employers are operating late shifts and the like.
Leisure activities (musical groups, sports teams, etc) are usually in the evenings and at weekends, because most people are more available then. If lots of jobs involve some evening work, people then have to negotiate whether they can have the right evenings free, or give up their leisure activity if it doesn't fit.

I wonder whether it would be better to make it easier for people to get to appointments in working time. I think there is no entitlement to time off for a medical appointment, for instance.

Obviously individual employers can decide that having out-of-hours appointments gives them a competitive advantage. Presumably the fact that more haven't indicates that they're not convinced it pays off, because of the staffing issues.
Have you tried asking your employer whether they'd consider some of you working one evening a week in lieu of a morning or afternoon?

We have had massive change in my lifetime - remember when shops didn't open on Sundays? And John Lewis didn't open on Mondays, so their staff could have a two day weekend. One of our local retail parks is open until 8pm on at least some nights of the week. There's also much more that can be done online instead of going somewhere. Online meetings also mean it can be easier to arrange a meeting during the day - if your appointment is online for half an hour, it's easier to ask your employer for the time off.

Nothing to do with being bone idle but brain development, go have a read up on it.

well, it would be convenient for the users, but not really for the employees of the service provider. I think the better solution would be for all employers to be more flexible to allow people to access what they need within working hours.

@clare8allthepies - Barclays will do this over video call on a Saturday - that's how I got debit cards for my dc

OP - I agree, possibilities of 4 day weeks and flexible working could make things better for both workers and service users

Not everyone wants to work 9-5 Monday to Friday. Some could save on childcare if they could do different hours

In other words, the working hours of the services you use are the same as your working hours.

Why not change your working hours?

If there are valid reasons not to, the same will likely apply to the services you use.

I'm sure that there would be complaints about providing the pupils food, not to mention the changing of times for many clubs and sports teams.

And of course lets not for get that the parents would require child care for the mornings for their children.

unless you are going top advocate for parents to continue to match their work hours around the school hours.