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- Опубликовано: 29 янв 2025
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Sources:
Juliet B. Schor, "The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure" | tinyurl.com/3cr...
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David Rooney, "About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks" | tinyurl.com/mvc...
E. P. Thompson, "Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism" | www.jstor.org/...
James E. Thorold Rogers, "Six Centuries of Work and Wages: The History of English Labour" | socialsciences...
George Woodcock, "The Tyranny of the Clock," Published in "War Commentary - For Anarchism" in March, 1944 | tinyurl.com/y3t...
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GDP per capita in England, 1740 to 1840, via Our World in Data | ourworldindata...
Nominal wages, consumer prices, and real wages in the UK, United Kingdom, 1750 to 1840, via Our World in Data | ourworldindata...
Music:
"Past," by Nctrnm
"Heliograph," by Chris Zabriskie
"Hallon," by Christian Bjoerklund
Getting off of work and watching this hits different
💪
One of the most impressive feats in the US is mega corps convincing people to worship capitalism as if it's somehow intrinsic to our country, that unions are bad for them and that they should fanboy for it while the giant companies dont pay tax , use PACS to influence law and policy, its almost dystopian levels of BS
Obviously the USSR was way more cruel and brutal, they weren't Communist just totalitarianism but there's definitely better methods that don't absolutely gut and demolish lower and middle classes while CEOs make billions for doing nothing
(^3 weeks ago^) I'm watching the premier now, my life is a lie...
i used to be a baker where i would clock in around 9pm, and by sunrise i could spend my morning watching stuff like this. i love working a lot of hours, and i spend my off time working at home.
Don't watch this before work. debating should I call in.
I'm convinced going to work would be un-natural today.
I implored my boss to reduce my daily labour time to 6 hours. He was apprehensive at first, but conceded after taking my pocket watch. I was overjoyed!
Watch out!
😂😂😂
no capitalist can resist a good clock
Lol pocket watches are soooo last century, smart watches are in
It’s fine guys, he has a phone.
I was working contract out of town making really good money. I remember when I told them I was going to take a month off for my wedding. They shamed me, they acted shocked and judged me. I took my new wife to Italy and we had the best time ever. That’s what I remember! F those people! You got one life. Live it!
Good on you!
Where’s that?
I work 90hrs a week and I ❤ it!
Amazing! Well done! One love
Italy is amazing!
Boss makes a dollar,
I make a dime,
That's why I watch Historia Civilis
On company time
Literally doing this right now.
Doing this right now lmao
@@mayamayhemmusic
Boss makes a dollar
I don't make shit
That's why we march
In a crowd of raised fists
@@mayamayhemmusic that escalated quickly lol
@DavidJamesHenry boss makes three dollars
I make close to zero
I'm starting to think
That Lenin's my hero
The recounting of a western medieval agricultural days work is very similar to what my grandparents in Bulgaria were doing 60-80 years ago. You wake up with the 🐓 roosters call(sunrise) have breakfast. Go to the field work untill 11-12. Large lunch and naptime. Work resumed around 15:00-16:00 work until the sky starts turning pinkish go home.
Yeah just like my grandparents (northeast portugal) they did not attend school, did not know how to read and write, they worked all theis lives on village agriculture, never travelled outside portugal. They were a self sufficient masters, working with nature and at nature's pace and schedule.
When I was an intern working in the maintenance department of a chemical factory, I was always told by the old foremen that you can only expect to reasonably get 4-6 hours out of someone during a day’s work. Seems like those old hands knew what they were talking about
This has been my experience in any kind of environment where you're expecting manual labor out of people. Once you hit 6 hours you see a drastic slowdown in how fast everyone works.
Dangerous work, better not to risk tired workers since they'd be prone to mistakes
@@commisaryarreck3974 Risk is outweighed by the amount of work put in and capital accumulated. 100% efficient work or not it's still labour
Same is for developers / coders in IT industry ..
@@danicic87throw different timezones teams in there and you have a nightmare.
Here in Romania, if you hire day laborers, you are still required to provide food and alcohol on top of the pay. Not feeding your workers is seen as uncivilized and will have people avoid working for you.
I worked with a Romanian puppet troupe at a world puppet festival and it was the first time I'd met Romanians and I loved their spirit and outlook on things. When they went home they gave me some of that wonderful Romanian chocolate infused with brandy.
Time to move to Romania
I don't know about the booze, but the rest of it sounds good to me.
Forgot to say that isn't everywhere and depends big on the company, when I worked at media galaxy my meal time was 15 minutes and at Neversea i had food provided and a hours time of eating
Food is one thing but alcohol on the job?
Which drunk commissar made that a law?
When my father lead a contruction departmen in Germany he always provided free food and beer to all the employees and workers. Nevertheless his department was always the most productive and always in the green. He still received complaints from leading manager because of ''high hospitality costs"...
In the cooperative that i work, a fucking cooperative, they want that you work 10 to 12 hours everyday and just want to pay 9 hours of work.
@col0no315 that's quite common in the trades even here in Germany, they demand you to work extra without paying extra hours
@@C0lon0 That's outrageous! But given it's a cooperative (businesses owned and managed by the people who work there) employees like you should be able to vote against that whether immediately or eventually. Or is it a 'Cooperative-in-name-only' thing?
No, they are consriderably small companies and when workers complain about extra hours they won't be paid for, they just replace them with illegal immigrants and refugees who work for nothing@@TheVoiceOfReason93
In the Yeungling factory in Pottsville is a bar in the factory that was for employees. It was open until the government shut that idea down, but that was in the 70s iirc. They still have the bar tho, you see it on the tour.
In tech, its heavily understood most people can only do good valuable thinking for 4 hrs a day tops. Sadly it took 2020 for remote work IN TECH to become commonplace. Tech still has a problem of unnecessary middle management, a holdover from when the focus was on managing people, not managing projects.
What do u mean? I did understand from u that the main management's attention lack on people, and not projects. Is that so?
@LorddualDesigner What clarification do you need?
lacks*
@@Terszel what's the best for both the worker and the management? Focus on managing people or on managing projects?
@@LorddualDesigner Focus should be project management, at least in tech.
I work in agriculture in southern France. Unless we are avoiding the heat at the height of summer, we arrive at 7:30, have a café and patisserie with everyone, complimented from the boss, start at 8, short coffee break at 10, then for 12 midday, we go home and have lunch with our families and have a sieste (nap), before restarting at 2pm and finishing up the day's jobs for 5pm. If you finish early, you leave early. It sounds too good to be true because it sadly is. While a rich harvest means lots of work, a ruined harvest from bad weather can mean that your peachy 3 month contract can be swindled down to only 10 hours a week, making the poverty line look pretty. So any time you earn a decent amount of money, it all goes to saving, quite literally, for a rainy day!
Beautiful perspective, thanks for sharing that
@armygodward4427
Je viens du Québec et étant donné mon jeune âge, j'ai toujours fait des besognes manuelle ou du service à la clientèle pour gagner ma vie.
L'an dernier j'ai fait du wwoofing en France (travailler pour gîte et couvert dans des fermes)
Je ne pensais pas que la vie pouvait être si belle et simple. Durant deux mois, au rythme de la nature, et ponctué du son de la cloche du village, nois travaillions 6h maximum dans une chaleur a crever, mais avec de si belles conditions de travail tel que vous l'avez décrite. Je pense a chaque jour a ce soleil jaune et ce ciel si bleu Français. Magnifique pays et bon peuple de mes aïeux. Force à vous! Salutations du Québec. ❤
And you’re still striking daily! 😉
This is why the French complaining about their retirement age going up by 2 years is laughable.
I work 12 to 14 hours per day for 14 days straight. I then do FA because I can but many of them cannot. They have to work elsewhere doing back bending jobs.
Althewhilst, having this to age 69 (and by the time many get there it will be well into the 70s).
@@METALFREAK03 instead of shitting on people for wanting to better their own lives at the very marginal expense of the ruling class, you should realize you’re also being taken advantage of
Before: "Wow, new HC video, wonder what interesting thing about Rome I learn today"
After: "I must destroy every clock I stumble upon"
Sundials and digital clocks have entered the chatroom.
"Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil."
The clock was never your enemy. The capitalist is.
the clock is not the problem :)
@@AntibiotikaAG My family was KILLED by evil clocks. :(
Its not clock but the capitalists
You see, we’re not ALWAYS thinking about Rome…
Some of us are though….
Because we have to think about work! And it sucks!!!
Sometimes we think about the plight of the proletariat!
@@Nae_Ayy✊🏽 😉
im thinking that Rome sucked
Ive never hated a blue square so much in my life
THAT!!!! did you copy that from somewhere? Genius!
Wasn't cato blue? i hate that guy.
Ok, that was simple, but probably the funniest thing I've heard all day.🤣🤣
@@Colon-D...and brutus
i love the blue square
To throw a personal story out there:
I once worked in a factory that used a 24 hour operation 4 shift system where a crew would work 12 hours then hand off to the next crew who would work the next 12. You would work 4 days in a row, then get the next 4 off.
By some modern labor miracle the factory owners for the most part allowed the workers to self organize, and the result of that was pretty strikingly similar to what you describe here, we would generally work for about 2 hours, then break for 1 with the exception of the few hours right before and after handoff just to get everything in order. On average we only spent about 8 of those 12 hours working. Despite it being a pretty physically demanding job in a less than pleasant environment (production floor was ~100 degrees all day) it rarely ever felt like much stress built up since a reasonably significant break was generally not far away.
and as a side note, this didn't at all make people lazy, when things got tough we ourselves canceled breaks and would go pedal to the metal for the full 12 hours without any interaction with management.
I've also done work for small construction contractors where the owner of the business was actually working along side us, and there we also tended towards this same general pace.
Turns out when work is organized by the people actually doing it effort is scaled to necessity
I've heard similar stories about this from various industries and from all age groups. The only places that don't seem to understand that a healthy production line with happy workers tends to be from groups self regulating their work flow. And very often some new hot shot enters a workplace with an established and functional work system like you mentioned. See's the "laziness" and decides to fix it. Within a month the first increase in sick leaves comes in. Within the first 6 months the first quitters hand over the papers. Within a year the workplace is in shambles. And the hot shot of course blames the lazy worker and not seeing how their actions messed it all up.
Bosses are not as necessary as they say they are.
Management then moves the goal post.
Until workers value healthy work environments in exchange of lower pay and a lot of DIY at home, psychopaths and sociopaths will keep manipulating workers. It's a capitalist system. The workers should value their labor properly and look for alternatives to keep their employers competing for their labor.
Cronyism is not capitalism. Instead of giving government a hand in the economy, it should be kept out of it.
Most people in America don't work factories. It's less than 10 percent of the population. Most people in America work an office job, many of them are working from home while sitting in a comfy chair.
@@ReverendNillerz Depends on the "office" job. Not many people even after COVID WFH, most are back to their office. Also while some job are physically draining, office jobs are mentally draining.
The Factory I work in used to have 6 people per large line, and 4 per small line. That was 15 years ago, now there is 2 people per small line, and 3 people per large line. Yet we are expected to do double the work. Working used to be painless, relaxed and enjoyable. Now it is incredibly painful; if you do the job right you’ll experience pains in your chest, hands, and feet. If you don’t do it the right way it’s your spine instead of your chest.
Unionize and make them dial back their goals so they aren't physically destroying you
@@sakelaine2953More than half of the workforce are Immigrants working for a recruitment agency.
In the factory I used to work at they had one of the machines set aside for punishment. Most machines barely managed pace with 4 people, but this one was only staffed with two. A day on that machine felt like hell.
Write down what causes the pain, what movements you would change, and ideas on how to make the process better. Talk to your supervisor or whenever you see one of the dudes walking around with collared shirts about your suggestions. Any factory manager worth its salt will listen to people working on the line that have ideas for improvement. If they don’t, go somewhere that does. You don’t deserve to be in a place that doesn’t listen.
@@williamschwan207 having actually worked in a factory the first thing you learn is that the managers and supervisors are NOT your friends. If you complain about something you are asking to be punished. What you are suggesting is a great way to get shafted. And they are like this universally. There is no “somewhere that isn’t like that”
The church also had a pretty big role in the organized labor, which is pretty fascinating to me. Religious obligations are one of the best excuses for breaks. "Sorry I can't work today or else I go to hell", "sorry I can't work right now, I am on a 2 week celebration of Jesus being born", "sorry I have to take two months off to walk to Jerusalem, which my priest prescribed for my soul", "sorry I have to take 5 breaks a day to pray, non negotiable". The church was not all pro labor but normally acted like a bit of a mediator between the workers and the secular authorities and it is surprising how pro labor they were in that mediation imo.
I learned from my grandmother that many of my ancestors were farm workers in a village in Bedfordshire, and were forced to leave due to enclosure of farmland. Two of my great-great grandparents and their children moved to Hendon in London. The details of their lives are murky, but my grandmother still has the death certificate of my great-great grandfather, which says he died aged thirty-six, from "exhaustion" and "malnutrition".
Jesus Christ
good ol' industrial revolution
"People left the farmlands for the factories bc it was objectively better"
The real reason people left the farmlands:
@@hsjshdhsjshsh958Yeah that’s why Unions get such a bad wrap in the press. They benefit the workers and not the elite that have the money and influence over mainstream media which influences the narrative of “unions = communism” and “communism = evil dictatorships”
The wonderful normalcy where worker expends more calories working than he or she gets paid.
Can't help but notice that while a lot of video essays can get bloated, one of the things that got me to sit down and watch this intently was that it was in a nice, easily digestible 30 minute chunk.
Definitely by design and something to praise HC for.
Seriously. RUclips videos are overly long a lot of the time. The 15 to 20 minute video while I eat is like a lost art form.
@@ZahraJoy theres few channels that can actually do it, CGP grey, historia civilis and Lemino are the best because they favor quality and efficiency in their videos instead of quantity.
Dan Olson 👀
@@lukasausenthe topics are a little more varied, but if you wanna give it a chance Jacob Geller has some great medium length video essays too, the video on the fear of depths is the one i would probably start with
Me in college: 4-6 hours class days, 4.5 months of total vacation, mostly free weekends, big lunch break. That was paired by 3 hours of train rides every weekday that gave me time to read or listen to music. That was the life.
Me in highschool: 6 Hours Class study, 4 hours Home study. Hell.
@nothanks9503 It was good indeed. I hope you situation resolves itself. Good Luck.
I had 8 hour school day 2 hour homework and 2.5 hour buss ride each way in which i could listen to other people scream or bump into me. During weekend i enjoyed work to support my studies.
Depends on your degree and schedule, could have loads of homework and no time to do it.
@@alejandroz1198why bother with home-study? Worhless investment of time unless you are falling behind or misses something due to sick-leave
The placement of the ticking sounds is brilliant. I could tell they were some sort of ominous foreshadowing from the start, but not being able to pinpoint their full profundity until the end gave me chills once I did.
I've worked a corporate job that was soul-sucking, working 12hr days, 6 days a week on salary. After that I went to a company that didn't track hours at all, working 30hrs/week most of the time with unlimited vacation (I generally took ~6-7 weeks a year) and it is shocking how much of a difference it made to my mental health and overall quality of life. The interesting part is that I was far more productive in the latter role despite working probably half the hours.
You hear these kinds of stories commonly in my industry yet somehow most companies are still closer to the slave-driving model than one where they treat their employees well so they can perform their best. It's way more stick than carrot out there.
It's simple.
A good leader and manager can figure out how to get the most out of people in the long term.
Fools and idiots look at their workers as a candle to burn out as quickly as possible to extract everything out of them. These people are the worst because they think by listening to 'common knowledge' this would be the best route.
I worked with a variety of companies in many different roles, along with several business to business roles. Without a doubt the leaders who were happiest, most capable and did the best weren't interested in working anyone to the bone.
The idea that working harder gets you more out of it is a lie, and it always has been. You have to work to the level that needed, not in excess.
@@alecshockowitz8385 one problem is that working someone harder pays off in the short term while treating employees well and working to motivate them pays off in the long term
Especially when it comes to mental labor, forcing someone to work extra hours when they are exhausted and their brain isn't working at full capacity is just a waste of everyone's time.
Workers should be encouraged to work more efficiently, as opposed to more often. This doesn't necessarily mean working less overall per-se, but instead allowing for things like nap time for a worker to regain their stamina or mental clarity.
I feel like part of it is managers needing to justify their existence
@@mrECisME i'm a plumber, everyone gets weeks paid vacation here in Sweden. I can also accumulate vacation days and take even longer or more vacations throughout a year.
The best job I ever had was making sandwiches as fast as possible from 8 am to 12 noon. I’d go shopping, do some errands, go home for lunch and the rest of the day was mine. I made the huge mistake of working my way up to management.
Never go full salary exempt.
You also contributed to society around 1/10th a typical laborer.
@@jonnyd9351 Exactly
and thats a good thing @@jonnyd9351 did you watch the video?
@@jonnyd9351 yes, it's great
Some insight from more modern history: In the late 1990s, the government of France reduced the working week from 40 to 35 hours. The government of the time did this not for everyone's wellbeing or out of the goodness of their hearts, but because France at the time had really high unemployment. It was thought that by reducing the workweek by ~12%, employers would be forced to hire about 12% more workers, solving the unemployment crisis. Simple, right?
Instead what happened surprised everyone. Labour productivity immediately skyrocketed across the economy, meaning workers were doing the same amount of work in 5 less hours a week. Employment rates and labour market participation barely budged, in general extra jobs weren't created. People didn't generally seek out extra jobs with their extra time either. Instead, workers collectively simply took the extra 5 hours off a week and worked harder during the rest of the week to compensate.
It is worth mentioning that the 35h week doesn't mean French people only work for that amount of time, the average full-time worker does about 38h a week.
Extra hours above 35 are just paid extra (+25%, then +50% if you're doing more than 43h), the so-called "heures supplémentaires". The shift to the 35h work week mostly made most people a bit wealthier, the goal being that people would spend that money and curb the slowing economic growth.
Hey, I'm sorry to be that guy (but I'm genuinely interested in knowing more about this) ;
source ?
@@Nettara117Any links that would be posted in the comments get shadow b@nned by RUclips for spam
@@Nettara117 Hey! If you're not that guy, why then do you ask it with so much white-space? Anyway, Wikipedia mostly confirms OP their story and lists multiple sources that you may be interested in.
@@Nettara117
You can find a fairly short summary on CAIRN : "Les 35 heures : le bilan" by Denis Clerc.
The INSEE has the very exhaustive : "La réduction du temps de travail 1997-2003 : dynamique de construction des lois « Aubry » et premières évaluations" in Économie et Statistique n° 376-377 - 2004.
Both are available for free.
IFDR (in French, didn't read); It's complicated, while the reform somewhat reached its short term goals, it also had unforeseen consequences, mainly in the public sector.
The assumption was that employers would (1) hire more people, (2) keep things the same but those in post would earn more. But in some cases, workers were expected to do 40 hours worth of work in just 35, leading to increased stress for the same pay.
In the end, it's always hard to tell whether economic tendencies can be pinned to a single law being passed, and while the 35h workweek comes up again and again in political discourse, it's more as a symbol than as an effective piece of legislation.
People used to work for living now they're living for work.
I feel like a history on peasant revolts might make an interesting follow up.
100% yes.
agreed
need my fix of narodnism
This
+
Yesterday I just looked at your channel and thought, "I miss Historia Civilis, I hope he returns soon"
LITERALLY SAME
Same here too. Was incredibly bored and checked RUclips channels for anything new and wondered if I missed something here. Glad to see this pop up on the feed a day later.
On his website he has a progress tracker
Same
On average he uploads every 3 months look at his website
As someone who grew up spending a lot of weekends working in the woods with family, just to provide firewood to an old house, I find myself recognizing the medieval work pattern on those days - bursts of work when you have the energy, with a lot of breaks, snacking, meals and smoking (if you were my dad and uncles) in between.
Yeah, I´m a volunteer in Guerrero (southern, rural mexico) and was recognizing the same thing
Im sure once tobacco was on the scene any serfs who had access to tobacco also incorporated smoking into their breaks!
@@santiagogarza8121that’s probably the natural result of rural labor
It was far more back breaking labor than snacks and breaks.
@@mrbillsix That is true, however (and I realize you aren't explicitly disagreeing with this) modern work is so much more efficient than medieval work that society could easily afford to work less than we do now.
Something that really adds to the enjoyability of your videos is that you take actual pauses in your video. It's nice that you don't pursue a frenetic pace and that you can afford to take a few moments to allow the viewer to reflect on the content so far to lo-fi beats such as at 6:53. I've always appreciated these little lacunae.
The most tragic part is that most of that work is unnecessary. Planned obsolescence and consumerism mean that vast majority of stuff produced is thrown away. We are killing ourselves for nothing but some billionaire's obsession with ticking up his high score.
This is the stupidest fucking comment I’ve ever read
Fr. We know and understand that addressing the climate crisis and the degrowth which that entails is what is necessary right now yet what do those at the reigns do? We must fight for ourselves, friends, families, neighbors, communities, and environment
@@GruntKFsince you are not a scientist, image of the climate change is not real. If you even consider the idea, it becomes the elite removing freedoms from the general population. Regardless of all climate change measures, they are still taking private jets, buying multiple cars and houses, the only rules climate change matter for is you! Only your life will be restricted, while the elite have even more, they already got 99% of the money and now they want 99% of the stuff. Or if it's real absolutely nothing meaningful is being done for it, pedestrians can still shut down entire intersections with a button lol, please realize you are being lied too
@@ihatesnickersTSD oh boy where to even begin. Have you studied hurricane Otis? I don't need to be a scientist to identify that warmer oceans mean more severe storms that are unlike any we've had before. I don't need to be a scientist to understand the rich have turned our communities into sacrifice zones just so they can continue to amass wealth. Besides the "elite" would be seeking to remove our freedoms regardless because that's how they operate. Please study some more. Dialectical and historical materialism are neat frameworks to help understand the relationship between classes
@@GruntKF you literally have to be a scientist, you don't have any graphs, charts, or data. You googling stuff to find information to suit your bias IS NOT SCIENTIFIC. You are NOT a scientist, so you have NO IDEA what is happening, the only thing you have is rhetoric fed to you from media organizations.
Fun fact: until like 50 years ago, rural and construction workers were also treated just like the middle ages in rural Portugal. My grandparents aldo did nap time after lunch. Our national dish was a stew made for workers to provide them with strength.
I rarely go a day without a nap. Feels right to me
Do you have the receipe for that stew my Portuguese brother?
@@ZerokillerOppel1 Sure! It's quite simple: Cabbage, potatoes, carrots, pork meat (or what you have available) and some chorizos. Add water and boom, there you go.
You can also make variations of the dish by adding other kinds of meat, beans and pasta.
Edit: grammar
Labour went from "this is how much work I need doing, please get it done" to "this is how much time I'm getting out of you, do as much work as possible." Which just intrinsically incentivizes employers to squeeze as much work as possible out of employees at an unsustainable rate.
Producing more and more unneeded stuff, and drowning the world in consumerism. While hundreds of millions don't have what they need for living.
In the middle ages, there wasn't much competition (re: not much to buy). But in industrial times, it's really easy to enter into all kinds of businesses, because people want all kinds of things. So there's also competition against how much productivity a business can do - so may as well squeeze the employee for work.
Seems like a flawed concept, but productivity has expanded massively. However, the share of that output has not expanded correspondingly.
Also it's missed in this video how much time and "work" it took for people in the "working class" to just survive. Everything took more time and was harder to do than in the modern age. Just heating your home or preparing food took so much effort compared to now, nearly everyone had a small amount of livestock, no refrigerators no supermarkets.
I'm not saying our "free time" hasn't been exploited, but it's not as simple as " they worked less in the past. It just more like they worked less for other people. Also this doesn't factor in the obligatory work for the church or a lord.
To be fair the second one is how labour under capitalism always worked - Karl Marx wrote about it extensively in volume 1 of Capital.
We spend our lives spinning around on a rock spinning around the sun, which spins around the galactic core. Until inevitably we die. Why spend that time toiling away being miserable?
No cus this is what im thinking
Wtf, i’ve always felt 4-6 hours felt wayy better and my mind much more active and clear, but the dread of that 7th to 8 hour and the long drive home, you’re right, 4-6 is perfect work day.
I hate commutes. even 30min to get to work means 10hours a week of driving. I left a higher paying job to work close to home and it was worth it
@@tinyturtle189830m commute would be 5 hours of driving, right?
@@tinyturtle1898imagine driving 3 hours a day and working 8 to 10 hour shifts for months on end (it’s not fun)
6 hours should be the absolute maximum for a work day. Workers are usually only productive for that amount of time anyways. Anything more is just diminishing returns.
@@proggz39get into audio books. it will change that time into something interesting and you will learn so much new stuff and angles on stuff
That intro was so unsettling for me. I just wrapped up a long “fast” day at work and was listening to this video on my drive home. Being hyper aware of time passing just makes me super anxious. It’s really emblematic of how the institutions and inventions that we make have profound psychological effects. Excellent creative choice on your part!
Thank you for the lovely content as always. Excited for whenever the next video drops-don’t forget to take your slow days, cheers!
I know this comment is from a year ago, but you are the first person I have seen who talks about being hyper-aware of time passing.
Just wanted to commiserate as I can usually put it out of my mind when I am in the “flow” of engaging work, but if a boss disrupts my focus or I am put on a task that is repetitive, boring, and takes an extremely long time, I can feel the minutes grinding away at my sanity.
Doesn’t help that I have ADHD, so my mind will automatically ruminate on dark thoughts and memories if I can’t find something to keep it occupied. Something to do with the Default Mode Network not properly suspending activity.
I really fking hate production jobs and I don't ever want to go back to one. I feel like those textile factory workers.
Only in their time people actually needed the clothes. In our time I'm probably making something that will be a landfill in some poor souther hemisphere country in 6 months.
Or when I worked insurance help move imaginary numbers into imaginary positions so that it would help the company deny services the customer was paying for so that the execs and shareholders could boost their net worth.
I work maintenance in a state park now. And while I hate my new bosses because they have this dumb sweat factory mentality I really love the work. It's not punch out as much work as possible in 8 hours and then do it the next day and the next day and the next day it's take care of individual tasks to sustain the park for the enjoyment of the public. Some days are slow, some days are hard and fast. I am not a robot.
Which is why I'm about to quit. Bosses trying to have me do robot labor in a job that, by its nature, is going to have ebb and flow.
I worked as a quality assurance scientist for a few months, 8 hr work day 30 min lunch and two 15 min breaks. We had a mandatory 1hr of overtime everyday and mandatory half day of overtime on Saturday. This was during the winter so I'd go in before the sun came up and left as the sun was going down there was barely any windows. Being fired from that job was the best thing that ever happened to me.
It's sickening to know just how overworked people in QA/labs are.
Bruh that's exactly my school time and the worst part is I am still in there
You got mandatory overtime? Can I have your job?
It’s eerie to me the degree to which is exactly mirrors my experience working for that one Danish-owned industrial company in the American midwest. 9-hour days mandatory, Spartan break schedule, invasive monitoring of how much you used the bathroom, and volun-told to come in on Saturdays for more overtime.
As in ironworker we worked 7 days a week 12 hours a day for a month at a time...then we'd get a week off
Thank you for your work, this is very valuable information, greatly appreciated.
I’ve been helping my dad build a house in the mountains. we work at a comfortable pace, our schedule lines up almost perfectly with your description of the Stone Age and medieval work day. It feels lazy compared to my regular job, but without realizing it we simply adopted the schedule humans evolved to live by.
I've been working at construction site w/ my dad for a short while. Turns out, I really enjoy working in construction, since it's a nice exercise filled with comradery and surprising amount of creativity.
But work hours were INSANE. 11 hours per day, 7 days a week for a month with 1 week breaks in-between.
Human body is not built to handle this kind of load. No wonder dads whole body hurts when he lies down.
That's probably why he essentially forced me to get higher education. Even if I absolutely despise coding (he prefered something well paid)
Don't let anyone convince you that you're lazy ! You're doing a hell of a job. Fuck this modern system ... I hate it so much. Everything must be sacrificed on the altar of productivity.. Fuck that. We're human beings not machines... And who cares about all this productivity anyway. Life is ment to be enjoyed. This is easily obtainable if we would just change our system...
As a mason laborer, i slammed in three 12 hour days in a row working on a house in the hills. 10 working, hour lunch. Thirty minute drive there and another thirty coming back.
@@jedispartan55you trying to move down to 8 hrs
I also think it has a lot to do with working in an office vs manual labour where you're also limited by your body
Straight out of high school I got a minimum wage job at a factory. I was lucky I got the day shift. Can't imagine night shift. Day/night both operated 12 hr shifts and work weeks were structured work 3 days, then 2 days off. Work 2 days, then 3 days off. Weekends basically didn't exist, which to my surprise I didn't hate too much. Until a thing called "mandatory overtime" came along. When my boss first told me about it I laughed and thought he was joking. That made him hate me for sure! Mandatory Overtime means: work 3 days, work 2 days, then work 3 days again. No 2 day break. I was so naive back then but thankfully somehow I managed to get myself fired. Best decision ever made. I have very graphic and violent words to say to the people that support or made that system up. MANDATORY. OVERTIME. Yeah boss whatever it is mandatory for you to go eff yourself.
May i ask in What country that happened?
USA, baby @@Serioussux
Insane, where did this happen?
Small town in MO. To clarify this was 8 years ago and I was a naive fool straight out of HS and just wanted a job. There's a chance they warned me about Man. O.T. prior and I was probably too dumb to care/listen.. but I swear the first time I heard about the O.T. was midway through a day shift a few days into my new job. I think there was a rule where you didn't "HAVE" to do it, but if you skipped enough Man. O.T. slots then they would deduct your pay or something like that. Still B.S. IMO @@sheeps4485
@@Serioussuxits common in the US when you have health benefits. companies would rather spend less so they dont have to pay for as many workers to have those benefits. theyd rather pay mandatory overtime, time and a half because its cheaper. it also drives overturn and some companies deny the benefit packages to the new employees until theyve put in like a year or have been through some sort of probation period or something like that with the company.
Here in Brazil there are some jobs where people are paid daily. It’s common that one of your colleagues just stops coming for a week or two and upon their return, they are taunted with _“ahhh your money has run out, no money! Back to work”._ This claim is rarely denied but rather met with sheepish looks of concealed embarrassment.
This is exactly the same here in Sicily.
Dude, just very low-end jobs have these characteristics (they're literally called "under work"). The thing is, inside the Brazilian society, the number of jobs that now give nothing to the workers (talking about stability, at least) are increasing abruptly due to one of the worst incompetence/corruption-induced crisis that happened at the last government, one of the worst in many categories, but the very worst speaking about job security, employment and work ethics.
Tl;dr: Yes, there are such jobs, but it's not a cultural thing, but a crisis induced pattern.
@@Rand0mGypsy - ok dude lol
I live in Brazil and I have never heard of this (daily payments)
@@guilhermehx7159 - you learn something new every day. Happy to help you in your education 😉
I'm from brazil, and a college teacher of mine went to getnher phd in finland. She told every class of how amazed she was at how much less work they did there. She said that they also werenamazed at how much she was willing to work, saying that she did in 6 months what they took 1 and half year to do. This was such a powerful thing to hear because this teacher is not some workaholic maniac, but she works a pretty average amount for college teachers. Yet our universities are in a state of disrepair, lacking funding, infrastructure and even respect, many times. While another country where they had ample time for rest and personal time, tjey have it better in basically every metric you can imagine. This solidified that it's not about how much people work that matters, but he whole societal structure around work that allows it to matter while at the same time allowing people to have decent lives.
When you mentioned 3.5 months of vacation time it sounded crazy, but then I realized that's almost exactly what students and professors get
I can guarantee you professors don't get that. When they aren't teaching they have to be researching/writing or teaching summer courses or teaching at other schools, etc. Only the most senior professors have the possibility of that much time off. Everyone else has to continually justify their existence at the school.
@@ShummaAwilum That entirely depends on the university/country. I'm colleagues with a few professors from mine and they definitely don't need to continuously justify their existence. Saying their summer is entirely free may be an overstatement, but those 3 months are definitely not very intensive.
Though many professors and students have jobs over the summer too
Depending on the education system, students may end up working more hours per day than actual workers due to time spent studying, working on homework, or just working on unfinished classwork, so that reduces the total amount of leisure time gained from having longer vacation times.
Marking. Curriculum planning. Events. Believe me, teachers do not get it that easy.
I think it’s very interesting that the academic/university calendar still looks quite similar to medieval work schedules. A Christmas, spring, and summer break; inconsistent work patterns with classes only some days of the week and cramming for finals; generally lax rules on attendance and punctuality; being friends with your peers and forming identity through work relationships; the list goes on. And we wonder why so many people find college/university to be some of the best years of their life…
Sports, clubs, independent study, pep rallies, no wonder modern academia is demonized by the working class and the managerial class. It behaves as the complete opposite of what is expected in modern capitalism.
It's even better in kindergarten
Very interesting indeed! A shame that in the last decades "productivity" has been a facade to end with this. Today, there is a increase in mental health problems and fraud in academic research that it is proof of this process occuring also in academia. No place is safe anymore
It's all based on farmers schedule.
That's a very smart Statement and I like it. Never thought of this before.
I like that the video is roughly 30 minutes long… a very natural length indeed
This was truly eye opening :)
A proper reminder of how important keeping and evaluating history is, to prevent us humans from falling for the same (or modernized versions of) tricks the more psychopathic of us come up with.
The biggest history lesson I’d had before this was learning how the Spanish wiped out a culture (their traditions and religions and incooperate them into Christian rituals in the process of converting the aztec civilization to Christianity), the entire Aztec culture and rituals and whatnot in the space of a few generations…. Which showed just how fragile knowledge could be if it wasn’t safeguarded. And without knowledge we would be much more vulnerable to letting atrocities repeat itself.
I remember during quarantine, when i was working my customer service job from home in my apartment (mostly just answering emails), I'd always get a lot of work done every other day and not pay it much attention on other days. It just kind of felt better having more to do, then less to do, then more to do, then less to do, etc. Those couple months were definitely the best I'd ever felt working that job
FAST SLOW type beat
The best parts of quarantine disappeared in a snap and we're back to the "nose to the grindstone" bullsh!t work paradigm.
After watching this essay, I think I know why they want Americans working back in the office rather than at home (even though it's better for the environment, saves precious oil, saves wear and tear on infrastructure, is a big hit with their workers , . I mean it's just a guess.
Man I like my boss. One of those guys who says here's what I need done today. Start whenever, break whenever, end whenever. As long as I get it done and the customer's happy. On an awesome day can start at 7 and be done by 11
what is your job bro
Yeah ,it sounds too good to be real @@aroundten
@@aroundten Swimming pool service and repair. Once you get the hang of it you can do a pool in under 20 minutes.
If your boss wasn’t good to you, you could just start your own business. You have a lot more bargaining power with your boss than most people due to your industry. My job has similarities to yours
@@Someone_s_nick2 It isn't. Most white collar jobs are exactly like this. The moment you break from blue collar delusion, you realize that almost all labor is total bullshit.
I just started this video and want you to know I've enjoyed your channel since I found it. I show as many people as I can whenever I find out they haven't heard of you.
Can you send me $2?
@@danielating1316lame ass comment bro
@braytongoodall2169 plus the way he made it seemed like a capitalist problem. Soviet Russia had a similar problem too.
@@danielating1316 I'd more say this video makes it clear this mode of work developed in the same pace and context as capitalism developed. By the time Soviet Russia came around, it was already clearly established in the culture.
@@folkehultgardh9102 that may be true but don't forget that Soviet Russia attempted to make it worse. They even at some point abolished Sundays as a day of rest because Stalin thought the workers were not productive enough. Soviet Russia practically forced it workers to work 7 days a week, capitalism has rarely been that harsh.
Where I'm working right now we start working at 9:00 and leave at 18:00, with 1 hour for lunch.
But if we take a 15 minute break in the morning and another one in the afternoon, we have to stay until 18:30...
The worst part is that I only have around 4 hours of real work every day, I still have to stay there, sitting and waiting.
“The ancients thought their machines would set them free, but what they really did was allow other men with machines to enslave them.” - Dune by Frank Herbert.
Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind
I am so concerned about AI and automation in today's capitalist world. Hell, even space exploration just sounds like an opportunity to create horrible slave colonies
@@ssach7Bigger Gulag
Goddammit Frank! Why did he have to be so devastatingly on point with SO MANY problems in our modern society?
@@bilkishchowdhury8318 Why build Gulag when space one big Gulag comrade?
Holy cow. I remember getting called to the principal's office in middle school. My offense: I was skipping lunches because the lunch lines were so long, I'd hardly have any time to eat. I was told to my face that socializing during lunch was wasting time and I just had to eat. I never thought too much about it until now.
The advanced version of this is “you should have gone to the bathroom during break” which oddly has been said to me both at school AND at (former) job.
Just wait until you find out that a straight A student is not someone who is smart, but someone who is really good at doing what they're told even if they don't like it.
@@sirrebelpaulc3439
Yeah, too many people on honor roll were objectively less intelligent than many of the rest of us.
I was a solid B+ student, but I probably retained more than those kids and had more fun while doing it. Not like my plan was to be a chemist, engineer, or doctor anyway.
It’s a rare treat when anthropology becomes the primary method of analysis featured in a Historia Civilis video.
This video is an essential watch, and we must reclaim our time.
I'm always surprised about the level of production quality that can be achieved in videos in which people are depicted as squares!
we're all squares
Yeah, look at them medieval chickens, such level of details
It's hip to be square. Don't knock it.
I work in a global pharma company and I swear to god this is the reason that keeps me in this company. I could go somewhere make two times the amount I am currently making but the work life balance is just amazing I come at 9 and leave at 3 with a hour of break in between. as long as you have done your job nobody bats an eye.
OK since this comment got a lot of questions I have to give some context. First I live in Europe. Germany to be exact. I studied pharmacy which took 5 years in Turkey then I have done my PhD in Germany. I did COVID research mostly because of the Pandemic (my thesis was about nanopharmaceuticals but because of COVID I worked on the formulation side of the Pfizer/BIONTECH vaccine.) Now I work in the clinical trials department where I look at the medical insights and my team decides to whether the company should conduct clinical trials about the insight and also where it should be done. I earn about 90K dollars a year. I am also an albino with 60 percent vision loss.
Consider that we even call it "work/life balance" instead of just "life"
what company? im interested in a career in that industry
Damn, what company. I am trying to have that.
Good for you, really. I wish I had a job like that. But remember that global pharma company makes outrageous profits most likely, so they finally feel like letting some people have some balance in their lives. If they were a thin margin business like retail, you would have one 15 minute break for that six hour shift and you would be required to stay the entire time every day, with maybe 1 week of vacation. It's just terrible out there.
@acmhfmggru "they took money to do tasks for the community" so its a community goal to get woken up at 4am every day against their will? Who in that community besides that business owner wanted to have a community alarm clock go off when it's still dark out every day? That's a really weird way to describe what the churches did in that particular case
8 hours a day today was already bad but its insane now. young people are expected to work at the very least 9.5 hours here, with one day weekends, for minimum wage that is shit. rents are skyrocketing and work hours are beyond abusive. Its unsustainable right now.
Still better than serfdom and starvation, did I mention the child mortality rates?
@@Wewetasure but those are quite unrelated issues
@@Denkmaldrubernacht no they are not. Working 8 hours a day is better than the bubonic plague, facing the death of a son or daughter, suffering domestic violence, starvation, being unable to move and etc
@@Weweta yeah obviously but I don't see how one effects the other
@@Denkmaldrubernacht the video kinda implies this, it’s just doomposting and bs. As much as I agree with his final point the entire argument here is completely desonest
I used to show up about half an hour early for work because it was a long drive and I would take my time making my coffee and reading a book until my shift started. Boss told me that if I showed up early I had to start working early, so I showed up between 10 minutes and half an hour late for the remaining year and a half I worked there. Not my fault, there was traffic
It's bosses like this that I never will understand. Be thankful that your workers are showing up on time consistently. Absolute chancers, they are
@@BreadAccountantif you have time to lean, you got time to clean! Lol
I’m a union electrician, we get 1 or 2 half hour breaks per day depending on the length of the workday plus an hour lunch. We chill and talk pretty much at will, we take a week off with zero notice to go hunting or fishing, you might take a couple months off in between jobs just because you can and you feel like it. We’re all just peasants at heart!
Where ?
this is why I don't do business with union companies. lazy fucks.
you deserve it for all the labor you put in and it's the least they could offer when your labor generates the wealth that lines their pockets while you take home dimes in comparison, god i wish i could get a half an hour break but we get two ten minutes and a half an hour lunch, or an hour if you're lucky/have a medical condition that requires preparation before eating like diabetes. I also only get two paid actual vacations per year, and they give you shit if you take any time off or use your earned sick leave to cover days you missed. My job is definitely incomparable in difficulty to yours though, I've only been a retail worker for five years and I never had to fight for my union status so I shouldn't be complaining.
What local? I’m from 26
@@CaeserZak I’m in Richmond VA but it’s like this in most IBEW locals in the US
Watching this video after work today hits different. I work on wind turbines and today we couldn’t climb because of lightning. We worked around the shop and looking back I noticed that we were naturally working hard for about 30 minutes then relaxing and goofing off for 30 minutes. Our manager took us out for a nice long lunch and at the end of the day we had a good hard 30 minute sprint cleaning and organizing the shop before sitting around and chatting the last 30 minutes of the day. Definitely the best day on the job so far. Typically we have an 8.5 hour day with about 5 hour up tower of hard fast work, an hour or so of prep and and clean up and another hour and a half of of hanging around the shop chatting and doing paperwork. Sometimes we have long days with way more time up tower fixing issues to get the tower running. It’s hard work but still the best job I’ve ever had. Great pay and benefits, great environment, lots of time off and satisfying work.
@@sparklesparklesparkle6318
>complaining about things you can't hear
Lol
I worked a steel production job, 12hr shifts, that werent consistent. Always tired, always bored, and the job just sucked. The other workers were bluffed into thinking this was the greatest job in the world, promised a healthy work/lifestyle balance. Nope. You were always tired, stressed, and seemingly never able to enjoy your downtime. I lasted 6 months and got out, immediately went on a road trip and it was awesome. Ive never looked back
How can you be always bored and always stressed at the same time?
@@HontounoShiramizu
Steel production is a very dangerous job from what I know. You could, as an example, be showered with molten metal if something goes wrong. That constant possibility of painful death is gonna be stressful.
@@HontounoShiramizuIt's repetitive work but requires a high level of care and attention. There can also be wait times where you're literally standing for the next job ( like machining a piece of metal, not employment) but you have to be very quick and also make sure the machine doesn't take your arm off.
I literally wipe the oil of around 600 steel ingots a day, all day, everyday.
@@HontounoShiramizu go do the job and find out pleb
Rich Capitalists are all about culture until it's about people resting.
“The life given us, by nature is short; but the memory of a well-spent life is eternal.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Like I Said before you know, I'm the one that can see John Cena. Yeah, I'm the one that knows Victoria's Secret. I'm the one that knows what the dog is doing. You know, I'm that guy. I'm him. I'm him. When I go into a gym... treadmills do push ups. That's how it is bro, I'm that guy."
--- KSI the 1st of the chicken-eaters.
@@Vienic2That quote sounds extremely narcissistic, and if you actually think about it, it’s a nonsensical rant.
yeah i know, its something that KSI said for some reason lol@@Cannedbeef
Smart guy, that green square
Thank you for that!
The constant ticking in the backgroud really HITS when you get to the portion about clocks. Amazing work.
Historia Civilis is never late. Nor is he early. He uploads precisely when he means to.
He embodies philosophy of "getting work done, when it needs to be done"
this just makes me convinced mankind would rather perish than make sense
I've had people ask me why I only work 6 hours a day and have had some even insinuate that I'm lazy, and it wasn't until this video that I realised how we've all been collectively gaslighted into believing that 8 hour work days are natural and if you don't work for 8 hours a day then there's something wrong with you. When I worked 8 hours a day I was tired and miserable, I don't believe the money I'd get from 2 extra hours a day is worth my health and happiness.
But the normal 8hr workday IS the same as working 4-6hrs. Lunch break is 1-2 hrs plus all the random 10 minute breaks we take in between (I take one every 1.5 hrs to go stretch my legs). I also presume that farmhands had a lot more commuting time compared than us.
@@purlp9483we don’t all live in Spain or Greece where we get a 1-2 hour lunch break lmfao
@@rtredz Exactly, I get a 30 minute one. Wait...
wait,@@purlp9483 you get 1-2 hour lunch breaks?
I get a 30 unpaid lunch break, which means my job is not 9-5, it's 9-5:30
Hear hear!
To be fair, most workers in my office work about 4-6 hours a day of productive labour. The rest is spent in pointless meetings, pretend work and procrastination.
yea, so they should be at home enjoying their leisure rather than work where its still very limited by the clock
@@userjay4 I agree. I just think it's interesting
@@userjay4 for office work its fine, but not all jobs are created equally, for example a road work, the guys work about 3-5 hours of active labor, and the rest is resting or waiting for more materials to work on their stuff, so basically yeah they work in short bursts, but have to stay since its not affordable to drive 45 minutes back home for a 5 minutes rest, also in europe and USA manual labor is VASTLY well paid compared to the rest of the world, my family comes from brazil and a plumber there cant make living wage while in canada they pay you A LOT like in brazil being a plumber would be the same as earning like 5 dolars an hour, its not like you guys from developed countries can have such leisured lives without someone somewhere having to do the dirt work for penies on the dolar, like yeah you can work 4-6 hours but when you want to buy that iphone or that samsumg, a person in a near slave situation will have to build it for you since you wont have money to buy it if it was properly made with decency and etc, just my 2 cents being from a first world country is easy when your biggest problem is working 8 hours a day, while where im from 10-12 hour work is the norm, cant imagine what people in asia are going trough considering their situation is absurdly worse than in brasil, more power to you i guess if i could id work 4 hours a day too.
you still lose your time tho
That's worse
As someone who works from home 100% for the last year and a half this is basically what my schedule has morphed into. It was odd at first having punched a clock for the previous ten years, but I’m able to get my work completed working roughly 6 hours a day and I’m exponentially more happy having the extra time in my day. Work life balance is now the top thing I’ll look for in jobs going forward
Same here! How HC described the rhythm of work is how pretty much my work sched became since I started working from home.
And I get a lot of work done while being less stressed
Same boat here.
Same here! I barely work 6 hours now in an 8 hour work day working at home. It doesn’t effect the quality of my work, and yet I get done faster and get paid for the same work I’d be drawing out counting the minutes in an office. Modern Management is just a scam employed by business owners to squeeze as much productivity out of workers.
He is wrong about the origin of the two day weekend. It came about because of the Sabbath and Sunday was for church. Also Christians believed the Sabbath was Sunday.
This is why I try to spend at least 30 minutes in the restroom over the course of an 8 hour shift
I work 12 hours as a night shift nurse. We're allotted a single 30 minute break. I don't officially take my break to eat. I eat, fraternize, and watch RUclips at the nurses station through the night, all against company policy. I then use my my 30 minute break to exercise in the hospital gym. 😎
What do you feel about the conservative dudes who bashed medical workers during the height of COVID for posting tiktok dances?
@@jerrystusrapworkshop5483 Nurse Tik Tok dances are cringe af but even after everything I just said I still don't think nurses make enough for the work they do (especially nursing home staff}
Yeah, my sister does a similar shift in London.
She does 4 nights in a row 3 times a month. Pretty sweet. 18 days off most months 😂
@@jerrystusrapworkshop5483what a weird, leading question
@@SkyGlitchGalaxy yeah I'm doing 3 night 12s in a row every week until I switch jobs, retire, or die.
I live in the city, Work is always insanely stressful, but when I went to live in the farm for a short while my work was exactly like medieval times with lots of breaks and food.
Learning that people used to get several half hour to hour long breaks for eating while meanwhile trying to eat my dinner on my 15 minute break is certainly an experience
Wait until you learn about how managers and the higher ups are allowed to have 1-2 hour lunch breaks after sitting in a heated/AC office all day while the peasants, I mean slaves, I mean indentured servants, I mean middle class break their backs for a fraction of their pay.
American?
One of the absolute glories of working from home was that I could just type "back" into slack to appear to return from my 15 minute dinner break while in reality I just kept eating and then started working again when I was done
Nowadays though I do gig work, which is like, absolutely everything wrong with capitalist work with not a single perk.
Dinner that you paid for
@@boiboiboi1419 Yep, although I'll clarify that this was just a regular break, our actual lunch breaks are 45 minutes. I just had to eat during that little in between break since it was late you know
Thanks
I just quit my job. 10 hour shifts and the kind of gig that makes you sit to pee because otherwise you just don't get to sit. Watching this after that is whiplash.
i quit a job back in the summer, 13 hour shifts. did it for 2 years but could'nt do it anymore
Fascinating. I work a remote job where my time is not accounted for so long as I complete all my weekly tasks, and this is remarkably similar to the schedule ive ended up practicing
Same. I used to work exactly like that for years and now have to get used to an 8 hour work day and it's surprisingly hard. Up until this video I thought I was the weird one.
Same here. Technically had to work enough hours but in practise, no one checked as long as I did my work. I made a point (is that English? Been awake since yesterday, can't think straight) of always getting one more thing done than anyone else (we had lists, so it was easy to monitor). When I got good sleep in and managed to stay focussed, I'd finish my weekly quota in 20h. I'm fairly certain a lot of jobs are like that.
@@joseaguilar3323 yeah when I went from restaurant work to my silly nerd job I was blown away at how pretty much every office job could be reduced to like 50% or less hours if you removed the fluff and bs lol
It's just as productive and half as time consuming. This is why I wonder why businesses keep trying to drag everyone back to the offices, especially for low sec jobs.
@@hereniho Right? Henry Ford supported the two day weekend because it would give workers more leisure time to buy shit. He could see the logic in that and he was legit insane. Bosses today are worse than insane
My dad was an agricultural worker on the family farm in rural South India during the 1970-80’s, where the only evidence of the Industrial Revolution were the imported tractors. After watching this video, I asked him how is work day was back then, and what he told me was precisely like how you described pre-Industrial workdays (including the siestas and meals under a nearby tree 😴 🌳 , but minus the Sunday’s being off because no church)
He is now an international supply chain and manufacturing manager at a Fortune 500 company whose clientele include TSMC, Intel, and Samsung. We are significantly wealthier than compared to his younger days, but he is significantly more overworked and underpaid, now basically living paycheck-to-paycheck despite our high quality of life. He basically went through the last 300 years of human technological and social development described in this video in half a lifetime.
I know an Indian man who lived around the same time period, and his experience is similar to that. Thanks for sharing, that's quite interesting.
Yet... your father chose to leave the family farm and sticked to the corporate job. 🙄
@@quetzalcubei’m sure it was entirely his choice, not motivated by any other factors than “i want to be more miserable”. do u hear urself lmfao
@@quetzalcube … yeah, he was promised a better life, and now he lives paycheck-to-paycheck with no way out due to the fact that he is underpaid and overworked. He isn’t “sticking” to his job, he’s *stuck* to it
If it's so bad now and it was so good then, why doesn't he go back? Why did he switch in the first place? Maybe it has to do with the fact that not working doesn't allow you to buy the stuff that other people have made through their work. In the video he says medieval peasants didn't save money because there was nothing to buy with it. He paints it as a good thing, but to me it sounds miserable.
Honestly 4 day work week, seems like it makes the most sense to me, it creates 20% more jobs and gives people 50% more time off (roughly)
In my imaginary Historia Civilis lore he was 5 minutes late for work and got yelled at by his manager, so to spite the manager he made this video.
I like this theory. Seems like science.
Yeh this video is really funny when you consider the fact that HC makes well over 6 figs every year from Patreon alone. I'm sure he's involved in the video production process, but that could be hired out work. He literally only needs to supply the voice at this point.
So this is a man who, either sets his own schedule or sets the schedule of others, complaining about work.
@@TheGoldenFluzzleBuffhow did you reach this figure?
@@TheGoldenFluzzleBuffbruh you don’t know any of that plus why do you take any opportunity to invalidate the message of the video when you don’t consider what someone does as “work.” No wonder this exploitation continues
@@TheGoldenFluzzleBuff Well you see, caring about other peoples struggles, even when you don’t experience them, is called empathy. It’s odd how common a rebuttal it is to taunt people for having empathy…
I just quit my factory job today, and God does this feel relevant to my life.
Same here, got laid off. Oddly the stars are aligned.
Don't worry soon all the factory jobs Will go to China or Vietnam
@@tanatswamaenda6724Chinese labour is getting more expensive with no singe of slowing down.
Chinese people might not respect one another but that puts them ahead of US citizen who don't even respect them selfs
@@levako05d Good for you. Dont let workaholic no lifers take you for granted. Know your worth man. A lot of people have this weird Stockholm syndrome about work places. They dont leave for another when they get treated shit. They think they are not worth. or afraid to.
That's a progamer move
This is why kids are made to sit and do busy work in school to break them mentally and prepare them for factory work
Not just factory work anymore. We are conditioned from a young age to accept these things in all work
yeah poor kids, forced to stimulate their brains with practical knowledge? What do kids do in their free time? When I was younger, I simply played video games whenever I could and then wondered why the f I was bored all the time. At school, I was forced to stimulate my brain, at least. You can choose whatever you want to do with your life after high school.
Farmers in agrarian societies literally have children specifically to have farmhands. It is a better system now lol
@@erf2324 School is valuable and provides a lot of information and the mental training we need to learn. However, much of the curriculum for children in less sophisticated (non-advanced) classes is nothing but busy work that fails to actually teach anything at all, and is usually conducted by apathetic or misanthropic educators who don't really wish to do anything at all.
@@erf2324 School is much more a place of propaganda than learning these days. Learning should not be a chore, you should be allowed to live your life even as a child, it's nonsense to say "At least it's productive" cause it's not most of the time. A child needs to be calm in order to learn, the modern school system just destroys you mentally.
My grandpa was a farmer here in northwest Germany until his 20s (1953 to be precise) like his ancestors. From October until February, the farmland turned into a huge puddle of mud and apart from looking after the cattle, there wasn't much work. Slaughtering took place in winter and there were a few more days of "stress", with the women doing most of the work. When the money ran out, he went to work in a factory on a daily basis, and when he had enough money, he enjoyed his free time again. Work peaks were for planting and during harvest time, up to 17 hours were worked in the field for a few days. When his brother inherited the farm, my grandpa left the farm and went to work in production and suddenly he had a 50+ hour week and initially 10 days vacation per year. He even worked after 10 hours of physical labor for another 2-3 hours in a plant nursery in the summertime, because money was sparse. My grandpa told me that he found it extremely exhausting at first, but later the situation eased up .And let's be honest: who nowadays works productively for 8 hours a day? For me it's more like 4-6.
I absolutely adore your content please never stop making these! :)
also chipping in a personal experience from my last year:
As a male Swiss citizen, I had the duty to serve in compulsory military service right after highschool and went on to complete boot camp and 3-4 weeks of repetition courses p.a. during the consecutive years. Getting fed up with these military repetition courses interrupting my studies and young adult working life every year, I decided to execute my right to switch to civil service. I found a civil service spot on a farm near Zurich and went on to do two months of agricultural aid there. I had just come out of 3 years doing project management in a hypergrowth startup in Berlin and the change to this purely physical labour was severe - and pure bliss.
The work day started with a communal breakfast at 7am, moving on to everyday tasks around the stables (cleaning, feeding, leading the cattle out to the fields) and with the first coffee break of 30min at 9/9:30am. Then, more intensive labour until 12:00 followed by a freshly cooked lunch meal. After lunch, we all had another 30-60min off for a napping/relaxing until we had to be back at work around 2:00pm. The workday ended around 5pm with exception if we had a big harvest day or we had to get something done before the weather turned bad the next day or so. If this was the case there was another 30min-break around 4:30pm.
So the workday was structured pretty much the same as explained in the video. When I asked the farmer in charge why this was the case, he told me: "It's pretty simple. If you do this kind of physical labour for 8h straight, even with a lunch break in between I guarantee you won't last a week without fatigue or injury."
Bottom line: I've never felt so wholesome and fulfilled at the end of the these working days, falling into bed physically strained in the best of ways, sleeping like a baby. Working outdoors under the sun and with animals every day just added more joy to it all.
Comes to show that there are still workplaces where they get it and workdays are structured in a similar way as they were in medieval Europe. And I guarantee you, they lead to a more balanced and fulfilled life.
I am back in Berlin now working for startup lol
"I am back in Berlin now working for startup lol"
hahaha! if only you could make the big bucks on the farm! thanks for your lovely write up. it was a great read. best of luck to you.
I'm not reading all that but I'm glad for you or sorry for your loss.
This reminds me of Charles Dickens and a Christmas Story. In literature class we had a huge discussion break out about whether or not Scrooge was a villain before his redemption. Ultimately in this discussion I fell on the side of Scrooge Sympathizers in that the story is supposed to represent a reminder to all people that life is precious, which is rediscovered after Scrooge's redemption. That unlike most modern presentations he was not just being a jerk or mean or rude, but trapped in the times where success was measured in the soullessness that is productivity. You can even see from Scrooge's life that he was successful, but what did it mean? He didn't spend leisure or any time that wasn't dedicated to work, he hounded his underling, Bob Cratchit, to exemplify this. In Scrooge's lense of perspective, this is what makes success, but to most people we recognize the inhumanity of his interpretations. That's in essence the moral of the story, to be good to your fellow man, to not down trodden them with labor, to love community and family. The goal of Dickens' classic wasn't just to celebrate a holiday, but to be a kind of Morality story against productivity and the oppression of industrialization and pure capitalism.
Personally, I think one of the best presentations of Scrooge is done by George C. Scott, in a 1984 production. His demeanor is not rude, disrespectful, nor spiteful save for a couple key occasions. He presents his point of view matter of factly and even though it's cold, it is a sort of Maxim that he follows shaped by his life experience. It is flawed and that is the point the pure capitalist all production mentality is flawed.
Should mention that Bob Cratchit made 15 shillings a week.
Adjusted for inflation, that's $13.50/hr for a 40 hour work week.
he might not be a beligerent, abusive asshole of a boss but he still maintains a healthy contempt for all things that don't contribute to some ideal of success he strives to follow. The problem is that these qualities are much more accepted today than they were of Dicken's time.
@@roblach- Not to mention he was supporting his family on that income. Which means wages haven't increased to meet expenditure demands for over 150 years...perhaps this could be the problem?
Only to correct you, Comrade, at 32:40: We do not lack the ambition to change things, we lack organisation to do so.
The capitalist class is well organised (both because they're fewer and know the importance of proper coordination of will) and that's why they managed to change things even when the majority didn't. What we workers must do it organise ourselves, be that through unions, media (such as yourself), student councils, etc.
Workers of the world, ORGANISE yourselves. That's how we'll take over! By uniting under the same flag and pushing our will forward!
I always learnt in history class how horrible working conditions were for chimney sweep, factory workers, coal miners, prostitutes, etc. It made you feel comfortable with what we have today. They never tought us what it was like before the clock.
Bro threw prostitutes in there lmao your liberalism is showing
I'm sitting in a house with running water and a comfortable temperature all year round. There are convenience stores where I can get essentially any snack I want any time of the day or night, and when I go there it'll be in a motor vehicle. Or maybe I'll just get a pizza delivered while I binge-watch "Farscape". Either way, I need not fear smallpox, and my underwear is not made out of burlap.
Comparing today to pre-industrial times really is apples to oranges. Except, to the pre-industrial types, apples would be unavailable until the autumn, and oranges would be completely unheard-of. Our current system is an unenviable hellscape in a lot of ways, but it's also made things better in countless ways.
@@kingbeauregardtrue true very cool
Conditions are still pretty rough for miners and prostitutes. Mining has gotten safer and prostitution has become mostly obsolete via pornography, thank goodness.
@@kingbeauregard Think about how working hours relates to production and maintenance of those things as a whole. Is it a binary divide between more work and less work?
This hits. Man, this hits and hurts on a deep, spiritual level. Love from Korea, the most overworked country on the planet.
North Korea have it worse. Be very grateful you live in South Korea.
Get out from the rat race buddy
I never thought I'd see a youtuber who originally made videos on the Roman Empire make a video that's essentially saying "workers, u have nothing to lose but only having 30% of the year free from work"
Incredibly based
I see a lot of people mention that they have 4-6 hours of actual work in a day but still have to sit for 8-9 hours. I face the same issue.
But it used to be easier at my last job where they had huge balconies terrace. We were on the clock but would sit outside and have a chat when free.
Now i work in a closed office with only one entry door, not enough room to even walk without running into someone. And was hell to get adjusted.
I started studying to switch career and bring in downloaded videos and course material on my phone.
But at the end its still a drag and just looking at the clock to leave.
Congrats everyone! After all these years, we clawed back... *checks notes* our ability to wear watches at work.
Who even owns a watch in 2023? And many places ban personal cell phones (the modern timekeeping tool of choice for most) on the work floor.
We've clawed back nothing.
@deletereddit1102Thank you for teaching me what CalArts means. Every single cartoon and indy video game has this kind of disgusting effeminate art style and I wasn't sure what it was.
@deletereddit1102 -
@deletereddit1102found the capitalist
@deletereddit1102ok incel
At my last job the management min-maxed the absolute shit out of every moment workers spent there. An alarm to signal the starts and end of work time, and break times. The amount of products we were expected to produce in a day was worked out mathematically and precisely down to the second. A whole team of staff were there specifically to keep the production staff supplied with materials, so they wouldn't have to stop producing to resupply themselves. Idle conversation between workers was frowned on as it would prevent us from meeting those targets. Hell I was once told off for getting ready to leave two minutes before the end-of-day alarm. I was exhausted the whole time and felt like the whole culture was incredibly dehumanising.
I lost that job the other week. Despite my best efforts - as I really did need that job - I made too many mistakes that needed to be repaired in-house, and was deemed to be too costly to keep as a result.
Capitalism doesn't see workers as people.
No fucking shit you made mistakes in that environment. Turns out that human beings are not lemons, and so you get more juice out of us if you squeeze less.
Sucks that shit like this isn’t even uncommon
Automatic resupply of materials sounds very efficient. It's actually really annoying when I have to look for a tool at work, or I run out of supplies and am forced to be a third wheel at some other job. I prefer consistency, but my job just isn't that way.
Capitalism doesn't see workers as anything. It only really sees the product and the owner.
If you didn't know this was work under a capitalist system, you would expect conditions like that in some sort of Stalinist dystopia.
I'm surprised you didn't reference the roman poem "hacked up days" raving against sun dials. It's one of my favorites
Never heard of it. Title sounds good though.
The gods confound the man who first found out
How to distinguish hours! Confound him too
Who in this place set up a sundial
To cut and hack my days so wretchedly
Into small portions! When I was a boy,
My belly was my sundial: one more sure,
Truer, and more exact than any of them.
This dial told me when it was time
To go to dinner, when I had anything to eat;
But nowadays, why even when I have,
I can’t fall-to unless the sun gives leave.
The town’s so full of these confounded dials,
The greatest part of its inhabitants,
Shrunk up with hunger, creep along the streets.
@@codekillerz5392Thanks for posting this. I was just wondering whether anything like the modern phenomenon had happened before.
Opening this video too that quote while currently at work doing nothing because everyone else is off on Christmas break but I didn't have enough pto to go on break... I will be in tomorrow for another 8 hours of doing absolutely nothing.
I live on a farm with my parents in eastern poland, everytime we need construction workers for like building new garage or fixing barn roof or digging new well we also buy them crate of beer and my mother invites them for dinner. Well fed and happy workers work way faster and don't leave any "mistakes" because they don't feel like they are slaves in gulag
Also decent people are more likely to work better if they are treated better. Though that decency probably doesn’t exist in like 80 percent of the humankind.
I’ll be honest, if I got the chance to fuck over someone for a career advantage (or just money) I will take it. Life is tough.
@@aca347 Great job. You just admitted that you're a shit person and have zero quality in character. Life is tough, sure...get a fucking helmet.
I watched a documentary about late 90’s China when industrialization was on hyper-speed. The factory managers complained they would find new hires, fresh from the farm, asleep somewhere in the middle of the day. They fired A LOT of people at first. The euphemism on the paper work “went back to the farm.”
I’ve seen the same thing in Victorian ledgers, “10 workers inebriated; went back to the farm”
the irony of watching most of this on my lunch break and then immediately going to the clock app to set a timer for a 12 minute nap before heading back in to finish out the work day
Surreal dude, strength to you
This right here, I just got a job with an hour break in the middle of the day and it was a complete shock to me that that was even possible in my area
Sometimes i need to watch this and regain something like sanity.
As a nurse, we generally work 3x12hr shifts each week. Being able to bunch 3 days of hard hard work then take 4 days off to rest and go places is among the best work life balances I've had. Now i wish we could get safe patient ratios and better coverage for lunches and breaks, but that's another story.
I considered nursing school just for the shifts lol. I decided against it because that's a horrible reason to be a nurse, but the schedule sounds amazing.
eh, its a job like any other, you dont need a special reason to do it @@elimcfly350
I don't know how medical staff can handle working... I hear that some doctors are forced to work more then 24 h/r a shift sometimes!?!
The 3x12 sounds great, but the heaps of nurses who say they don't have time to stop to pee, eat or drink during their entire shift is dystopian...
that always seemed like the best full-time schedule to have
If I were to receive a penny every time Historia Civilis says "20th century Canadian socialist George Woodcock", I'd have 3 pennies. Which isn't much, but it's weird this has happened 3 times
I can tell you're not Canadian.
We got rid of our pennies.
Absurdly based and Woodcock pilled
still far behind 'right hand man labienus'
Anarchist*
Honestly it's a little suspicious when someone cites one specific author/source so much but it's Historia Civilis so I give him a pass
Never hated a blue capitalist square this much.
Amazing video, Im sharing it everywhere
Yeah this shit ignited my latent rage at capitalism. I’m pretty much always have an anti-capitalist rant bubbling away, just under the surface…
@@menriquez89we need the free market. It is a good alternative to war.
@@jeremiahduran7238 What is the free market? Every society in the history of the world had a market. What you want is not a free market, it's capitalism and we don't need that pile of shit.
@@jeremiahduran7238 I'm confused. In what way do you think the free market stops war or presents an alternative to war?
@annoyingcommentator1582 The only reason people live under medieval conditions when they don't work much is because of the capitalist. The capitalist is the one stopping people from working less and still living awesome lives.
watching this during a 48 hour shift hits different