You're thinking small-time, like an hourly worker. Good office jobs are generally salaried positions and the idea of clocking in and out is... not a thing. Some days you work more, some less, whatever needs to be done. The idea of 9-5 is just a general time frame. And no one gives a shit when you lunch or break. In a real profession the yardstick is, are you getting it done or not?

I'll catch grief for saying that, so I'll preempt by saying, if your job isn't like that, you likely have a shit job.

Different jobs are different

Sorry for rambling

Your math ain't mathing.

The stereotypical "9 to 5" is an 8 hour shift with a paid hour "lunch break". This includes two 10-15 minute breaks, which are also paid. You come to work at 9, do work, take breaks, take lunch, and then leave at 5. That's 8 hours.

My job is 8 to 430. I come in at 8, work till 12, then I have a half hour unpaid lunch. The unpaid lunch means I cannot be required to stay on site, which can happen with a paid lunch. Then from 1230 to 430 I work until I go home. There are two 10 minute paid breaks in there. I work 8 hours total in an 8.5 hour work day.

Everything changed. You're not crazy. If you watch movies made before the 2000s about office culture, including the movie 9 to 5, you can see that the hours included a lunch break. Which was paid.

Yes, those of the older generation had it easier in every way.

I am 51. When I started working my job was 9-5 with a one hour lunch an unofficial 30 minute coffee break and about four unofficial ten minute smoke breaks.

My job is 9 to 5 including one hour lunch time when I started, it at least that's what the HR person and my boss told me when I started. Early this year I saw my position "obligations" or whatever is called and it says that I work 9 to 6 so 🤷 I hope they never enforce it

did [...] included

Nope. It's 'did include' .

Yes. And if you interview for an 8 to 5 job, you tell them that it sounds like a crock of shit and you don't want the job.

So sick of that shit. Fuck any employer who pulls this shit.

It has definitely changed, I don't know when, but it's been like this for at least the last decade.

Though, in my experience (NB: I'm a software engineer, which is a notoriously lax field.) only what the piece of paper says has changed. Hell, most of my employee handbooks have claimed that "full time" is 50 hours a week. They get away with it because I'm classified as a "computer employee" (lol) and make more than $35k/year (super lol) which means my employment is exempted from minimum wage and overtime pay laws.

Nobody that I know actually works that consistently. Most people I know don't even do 40. I do 9-5 (or 8:30-4:30 usually), I take breaks when I need them and nobody has ever complained to me about the amount I'm working.

My only guess for why it's this way is that having that be the official working time means it's easier to fire anyone for no reason because they're not working their "contractually obligated" amount of time.

All my jobs have either been 9-5 or 9:30-5:30 with an hour lunch included. TBH I've never tracked my pay by the hour, just the day.

I work in a salaried office job in the US, and in 2 decades of working at different companies I've always worked 9 to 5 AND taken an hour lunch. Of course, I've also had plenty of pressure to work outside of those hours when needed. Which escalated to 50-60 hour weeks with night and weekend work at the worst (I left that job shortly after).But I've never done 9 to 6 as official hours.