The problem with the idea of 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep and 8 hours of recreation as a structure for a day is that it simply can’t work that way. If I’m expected to be at work at 9, then my work day must begin at 7. Allowing myself a rushed experience to wake up and get to work. And I live close to work. So either my recreation or my sleep needs to take a hit, but for some people it could be more. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week as a basis for full time work is honestly unreasonable at that point. Because it isn’t actually 40 hours a week, it’s 50 hours a week lost to a job, of which 10 is unpaid.
some of my coworkers have 2h of transit to get to work, which takes 4-5h off their free time. working full time is a bad idea and shouldve never been a thing
This is, it’s worth noting, by design.
It’s perfectly well known that people can only really “work” (in that they can only consistently and effectively perform tasks and create products) 3-6 hours a day, for 1 hour to 2 hours at a time. Generally speaking, the broad consensus among actual researchers is to aim for about 4 hours a day.
The rest of these work hours, and the associated sunken time necessary to get to and from these work hours, serves one purpose:
It exhausts people.
People who don’t have leisure time are stressed. People who are stressed need conveniences. People who need conveniences will pay for them.
People who are stressed also don’t have the energy to fight for their rights, having expended all that energy in just staying alive.
And let’s not forget that maintaining a clean home and providing food for yourself takes over 20 hours a week (appx 20 hours in-house, and varying hours spent running outside errands) if you are completely abled.
I also once saw an article that said that fucking peasants had more vacation time than people today. Considering the barriers to entry to get past the minimum wage trap today, this is the reason why this generation is the most depressed ever.
I’m willing to bet it was this article, which is good, though slightly misleading, as it doesn’t adequately address day shifts and labor demands.
That’s what people will complain about as being misleading when you present it to them. After all, during summer, workers did 16 hour shifts.
Comparing a us worker who works 5 days a week and gets 5 weeks of vacation (the sort of middle class experience we all dream of), there are about 130 “days off” for them.
Assuming a more typical lower class work schedule, with two part time jobs that over lap such that you only have one day a week off, that would be about 52 days off (already less than half, ouch).
For a “medieval” work day, the duration would vary based on sunrise and sunset times, changing annually from 16 hours to 6 and back to 16 each summer.
However, these shifts were broken into regular, long breaks, considered critical for the health and ability of the workers. Generally, there were three meals, two snacks, and a long afternoon nap every work day. Work itself happened for 2-3 hours before the next break. This is a condition that I guarantee you everyone who has ever worked a 12-and-12 wishes were the case today. Or even a 9-5.
Of the calendar year, there were 180 or more holidays scattered, with the largest being the 12 days of Christmas, and whatever that week before Easter is called. There were multiple holidays a month, and every Sunday was always a rest day, no matter what.
In addition, the highly seasonal nature of European living meant you had a lot of down time for long, long periods in winter, even if you kept livestock.
Additionally, the European style of farming, which required fallow fields every few years, created a cultural sense that long rest periods are necessary for the growth of the farmers just as much as for the growth of the farm.
So, basically, although life was worse in almost every way, especially medically and socially, in terms of labor the middle ages have us beat pretty soundly. Even the longest shifts were split into sets of 2-3 hours each, with long breaks between. Half-ish of the year was spent doing no work at all.
You couldn’t pay me enough to go live in that time period, but there are definitely some labor practices we need to bring back into vogue.
What a neat post, I really appreciate the additional information! I had no idea, I just always heard that peasants were treated about as good as slaves so that is pretty surprising. It does make me wonder though, if the majority of the common folk were illiterate, what did they even do during the downtime between the farming seasons?
Music, sex, storytelling, drinking a shitload of crap beer, football/soccer, other sports, gambling, hunting, generally outdoorsy shit, ice skating was pretty common, church, festivals (most of these off-days were holidays after all), fighting, watching other people fight (jousting, boxing, duelling, etc), travel and pilgrimage… there’s a lot of things people do and did that don’t involve reading or industry.
Also, given how extremely physical a lot of the labour was at the time, I imagine there was significantly more sleeping and recuperating from physical strain than you might expect, too, though I can’t say I’ve ever seen any kind of source on that.
You know late stage capitalism has fucked up when ppl are envious of feudalistic labour practices
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