I'd laugh, but this just seems like it would actually happen.

"So we went back to five days, and now productivity is down to effectively three days, what went wrong?"

Executives, everywhere.

The problem is the workplaces don't want that. if you're happier and have more energy, it also makes you more uppity and harder to control. You might even find options for other work!

If it means keeping you tired and broken, that's worth the cost of a little productivity.

while we know this post is fake, this is the logic capitalists use. it is the logic they hide, the lede they bury, when they report on how efficient ai will make us.

This is genuinely how MBAs think

I used to work at a university whose education department sank hundreds of thousands of dollars into a study to find ideal lecture length to maximize retention.

Memory's a little fuzzy... it was short. Like a half hour?

Anyway the punchline I definitely do remember is that they got the results of the study then changed absolutely nothing

Lol yeah it's the exact same [facetious] logic as expecting increasing the working day from 10 ~> 20 hours to lead to increased productivity.

It's almost like ample and adequate rest need to be baked into scheduling?

It's also that so much work is pointless and doesn't serve a proper purpose for humanity. Things like ads, a lot of office jobs where people sit in endless meetings, and so on.

I think humanity has realized it's wasting our lives but we can't think of another system that will work.

Maybe universal income but the downside of that is that it comes with AI and transhumanism, which will remove what is human about humans.

Capitalism in a nutshell. Treat your employees like expendable assets and squeeze every last drop out of them

This is why cruelty is the point, because they prioritize it even above profit.

It's Taco Bell logic. You love our chicken nuggets and caramel empanadas? We sold out in 3 days? Well they're discontinued so fuck you. Ok guys, sales are down and we can't figure out why, we need ideas.

Crack that whip!

I guess at this point, with the million plus recently laid off, humanity is just lucky we ate able to leave freely and not progressed into biofuel to fun data centers slop factories.

I have worked in the mining industry for over 20 years. Before Covid happened my monthly schedule was set up so that we were given seven days off every month. At the end of 2021 management decided to change it so that we worked 5 days and 4 off with them saying that this was a “safer”and more beneficial to employees, since the schedule change there have been more people quitting and more people getting hurt on the job I myself along with others have voiced our opinion to go back to the original schedule and management looks down upon us as if we said a dirty word.

Productivity isn't a straight line, which is where most businesses fail in their thinking. Yeah I can do five days of work in four days, with the right incentives. I can also do it in five with no incentives.