Compressed hours - should I consider this job?

[Opossum99]

I've interviewed twice for a position roughly 35 minutes away. They want to see me again next week and are making all the right noises that they will offer me the job. The job would be a promotion though salary would be about the same. The concern I have is that the working hours are 7.45 to 5.00 Monday to Thursday and 7.45 to 12.45 on Friday. I'm assuming an hour for lunch. The job will probably require some overtime and is likely to be quite high pressure at times. I have 2DCs - one is 3 and at nursery and the other only 9 months. Taking this job would mean I see them evenings for about 2 hours and Friday afternoons. I'm currently on ML but am due back FT next year. Has anyone experience of working these kind of hours and does the shorter day make up for the longer hours? Is it preferable to doing a normal 9 to 5, 5 days a week?

I work very similar hours (though 30 mins for lunch and so start work at 8:15, and finish at 12:45 on Friday) and have a similar length commute, and I have a 10 year old. BTW my whole office does these hours. The previous job I did was evenly spread over 5 days.

I find Mon-Thursday to be very long days, it took me 2 months to really get into the swing of things. Fridays are great, yes, but I often resent 'only spending 4.5 hours' for over an hour's commute. On Fridays, I tend to catch up with paper work and plan the next weeks work, rather than doing 'real' work if you see what I mean.

Pluses are - I can organise things for Friday afternoons, such as hair, dental and other appointments while DD is still in school. Or just have some me time. Oh, and I pick DD up from school on Friday afternoons.

Minuses are - not long enough for lunch really, and work are not very flexible about this. My leave allocation is in days and half days, and not hours, so that if I take Friday off on leave, I have to use a whole day! DD has to go into before and after school care and DH does all the school runs except Friday afternoon.

I've been doing this for 9 months now. I really like not working Friday afternoons, but the rest of the week is very tiring, and the biggest issue of all is that I'm not getting as much 1-1 time with DD as DH does and its affecting our relationship (as in mine and DD's).

Thanks sagemist for your detailed response. When you say the while office does this, do you mean they all have half an hour for lunch or that they all work 7.45 to 5 but you negotiated a shorter lunch hour to start a bit later? The recruiter suggested that if I'm offered the job that I negotiate leaving half an hour earlier for a shorter lunch hour. Did you have this option?
Overall would you prefer this set up or a conventional 9 to 5?

I work the office's hours, as do most of the employees, except part timers.

If fact I think the whole company works hours like this.

Sorry meant to add a bit about my preference.

Just to confuse things, my preference would be flexi time!

Choosing between compressed or non-compressed? Honestly, I don't know. I hate how tired I am on Thursday evenings, but I love my Friday afternoons. When I worked ordinary hours, I hated having to take leave to do anything significant on an afternoon.

We get the option to do this as a company over the summer and most people take it up. Tbh, 8.15 -5.00 doesn't feel long to me and I much prefer getting the whole afternoon with DS when we can plan something fun together, or do necessary stuff that I'd difficult to fit into working week.

If I had the option to do this all the time I would take it, personally.

Thank you both for your responses. Sounds like this type of arrangement can be beneficial. I guess I shall just have to see whether I'm offered the job now!