Why the hate?

This morning I was reading an article about the idea of reducing the work week from 45+ hours a week down to 30. The idea is it would be healthier for employees and allow for a more well balanced work/life experience.

This is all stuff that is fairly straight forward and has been proven in many many studies. Stress and work anxiety is a huge reason for health issues (including cancer), it is also responsible for incredibly stress between partners and family members, almost as much as money is a problem.

All of this seems pretty logical to me. Personally once we get our credit cards paid off when Jello graduates, this might be a great thing to do. We could easily live off 30 hours each and still have a savings.

What caught me off guard was the vitriol that the commenters went on about. How it was only for lazy people, how it would destroy business, etc. Not even addressing the fact that there are countries where this is the norm and it hasn’t destroyed them. I keep wondering why the anger and taking it personally? It just seems weird that people would be so vitriolic.

Do they feel it invalidates the whole idea of consumerism? Does it put to question our desire to chain ourselves to more than a quarter of a million dollars of debt for something we don’t actually own until we pay it off? I have rants about those as well, but honestly I won’t go into that here, they deserve their own posts.

Then again, I know I get push back from possible employers because I don’t want to work 55 hour weeks as a norm (or even 45 hours). I personally would rather get paid less and work a max of 40 hours a week (and honestly once Jello is out of school I would be down for 32).

Does this make me lazy? No I don’t think so, but it does make me different then most of the commenters evidently.