[penllawen]

(This is a cross-post from Reddit, hopefully that's OK for stuff I wrote myself?)

It's quite well-established in SR canon that most people are wageslaves [1], and most wageslaves work brutal hours: 60+ hours per week is the norm. It's also well-established in canon that there's just as many time-consuming fripperies and luxuries in Shadowrun as we have today: trideo, sports, VR games, and so on. Not to mention a very large side order of consumer-driven capitalism; shopping for just the right look takes time, chummer, as does going to just the right nighclub or restaurant to show it off. So the question that's bothering me is who has time for all that consumption? Who's making the money go around in this hypercapitalist dystopia? If you took my current work week and ladelled 20+ more hours on top, I'd have no free time at all.

Well, I'm thinking maybe it's not that bad for folks in 2080.

Firstly: some 2015 US data [2] showed people spend 1.5 hours (men) to 2.25 hours (women) per day on domestic chores -- cooking, cleaning, laundry, yardwork, etc. Let's call that 2 hours per day on average, so that's 14 hours per week. If Sixth World mechanisation (small domestic drones, autokitchens, simple foodstuffs like soypaste) could cut that down by 75% then that's approximately 10 hours per week saved.

Secondly: commuting. Commute times in the current-day US vary a lot by city [3] but 30-60 minutes (one way) is a good average. It's canon that Shadowrun has at least a bit more effective mass transit than we do today, even though population density hasn't changed much due to mass die-offs. It's also canon that GridGuide and autopiloted vehicles has made road transit significantly faster and more efficient, plus you can surf the 'trix while your car drives you places. So let's say 50% reduction overall; the average wageslave in 2080, compared to today, is spending 2.5 hours per week less time on commuting.

Thirdly (this is the big one): sleep regulators. Per SR5e, a sleep regulator costs 12k¥, has an availability of 6, and long-term reduces your need for sleep to three hours per night. That's a life-changingly colossal saving of 35 hours per week at a price that's only just more than a Nissan Jackrabbit. In my opinion, most everyone is either going to have one or be desperately saving for the deposit on credit to get one; they're surely gonna be the second most common augmentation after datajacks.

So to recap: even while working an extra 20+ hours at the local megacorp hellhole office, it's quite credible that a normal wageslave in Shadowrun still has 20-30 extra hours of leisure time, compared to one working a 40 hour week today. Plenty of time to watch Karl Kombatmage, take in the latest Seattle Screamers match, play the latest games, windowshop for Sony's novahot new commlinks, and get blasted on BTLs.

[1] Seattle Sourcebook says "52% Corporate-Affiliated", which I'm reading as "has a corp SIN." Add in people with national SINs doing lower-level corp work and it's an easy majority.
[2] https://www.bls.gov/tus/charts/household.htm
[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/study-states-with-the-longest-and-shortest-commutes.html

[Michael Chandra]

Including my commute I'm away from home approx 60 hours a week, with a 5-day workweek, so don't see how someone living in corp housing near their work would have a hard time. Add the domestic drones on topic, which we know from fluff can already be available in cheap quality at a waveslave's lifestyle, and the occasional use of long haul, and I don't think they even need the sleep regulators. 10h/day with a 6-day workweek, commute still means less time away from home than me.

[penllawen]

My reading of the Shadowrun canon is 60 hours visibly in the office is a bare minimum in a corp job, though.

[Wakshaani]

My reading of the Shadowrun canon is 60 hours visibly in the office is a bare minimum in a corp job, though.

Oh yeah. Pretty much everyone in the corporate ratrace comes in for a halfday on Saturday (unpaid, of course), with the go-getters pulling a full 12 hour day.

There's also a small subset of wannabe execs who slip in on Sunday for some work.

This is why a ton of entertainment is virtual, since you can get home from work, fall in bed, then get fun piped into you, while weekends the nightlife is PACKED with people desperate to get some fun in before going back to the grind.

[Michael Chandra]

Long live Long Haul. Work 20h/day for 5 days straight, then collapse for at most 2 full days. If you wake sooner than that, you can go out. On average you still got an entire day to have fun.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

996 wasn't a buzzword back in the 80's when Shadowrun was born... but if it was I'm sure it'd have been written into canon.  That term certainly captures the wageslaving spirit.

[Wakshaani]

996 wasn't a buzzword back in the 80's when Shadowrun was born... but if it was I'm sure it'd have been written into canon.  That term certainly captures the wageslaving spirit.

Ayup. That, plus the general existence of Karoshi is a reminder of how things work. (Insert late-stage capitalism here. Or Gilded Age commentary.)

That's the 72 hour workweek mentioned as normal in the corporate world, while a simple 50 hour week (10 hours a day, five days a week) qualifies as "Banker's Hours".

Dystopian future or Star Trek-like commentary on modern problems? You decide!

[Ghost Rigger]

Pretty thorough analysis OP, but there's one thing you overlooked: marketing. Normal people don't conceal their purchases the way Shadowrunners do, and as such the corps are able to analyze their tastes, shopping habits, medical history and whatnot. With all that data, the algorithms will know what the customer needs or wants before they do, and offer the product whenever the slightest need or want arises with an AR advertisement, then conveniently and quickly delivers it with a drone. While this does save the wageslave time on shopping and purchasing decisions, it also means that nearly every waking moment not spent working is spent voraciously consuming product.

[0B]

I wonder if, depending on position/corp, the workweek would be closer to 35-40 hours, simply because research shows that longer hours lead to diminishing returns, or even be counterproductive in some environments. Software development is the big one that comes to mind, but even in factory or other "simple" jobs, long hours can hurt productivity. Obviously, corps could ignore the negative effects of long hours on the human body, but they would be paying attention to overall productivity. Unless they're only as smart as modern corps and go for the 80+ hour workweek anyways. 

If sleep regulators have an effect on productivity, not just sleep, then all that is out the window.

I think corps would have very strict control over their employees' downtime as well- mandatory sleep hours, fitness programs, dietary constraints, etc. It's not hard to make those things seem voluntary, either, via advertisements and peer pressure. The new "fad" food product is being pushed by a corp not only for normal profit, but because low potassium levels in workers are lowering productivity, for example. Or perhaps a corp says that it's "embracing health and fitness" by allowing employees to use one of their work hours to go to the gym (Naturally, work hours have already been allocated to account for the "free" hour). All you have to do for sleep hours is adjust open/close times of arcology shops, and throttle the arcology grid when you want a particular peon to be sleeping.

[Reaver]

I wonder if, depending on position/corp, the workweek would be closer to 35-40 hours, simply because research shows that longer hours lead to diminishing returns, or even be counterproductive in some environments. Software development is the big one that comes to mind, but even in factory or other "simple" jobs, long hours can hurt productivity. Obviously, corps could ignore the negative effects of long hours on the human body, but they would be paying attention to overall productivity. Unless they're only as smart as modern corps and go for the 80+ hour workweek anyways. 

If sleep regulators have an effect on productivity, not just sleep, then all that is out the window.

I think corps would have very strict control over their employees' downtime as well- mandatory sleep hours, fitness programs, dietary constraints, etc. It's not hard to make those things seem voluntary, either, via advertisements and peer pressure. The new "fad" food product is being pushed by a corp not only for normal profit, but because low potassium levels in workers are lowering productivity, for example. Or perhaps a corp says that it's "embracing health and fitness" by allowing employees to use one of their work hours to go to the gym (Naturally, work hours have already been allocated to account for the "free" hour). All you have to do for sleep hours is adjust open/close times of arcology shops, and throttle the arcology grid when you want a particular peon to be sleeping.

I can show you study after study for the Construction Industry that says the incident rate increases astronomically for every hour after 6 worked in the field...

Yet 10hr days for 14 to 49 days in a row are the norm... with a push for 12hr days 20 to 60 days in a row by the "guys in charge".....

If money can be made...it WILL be made. With blood sweat and tears...

[Wakshaani]

There's a long, long, LONG history of the guys on top assuming that they're the smartest guys in the room and dismissing the advice of experts.

"Experts? Bah! What do they know! I started with nothing, put in my 12 hour days for a decade, and now I run the place! Those ivory-tower intellectuals don't know what it's like to do *real* work! They just didn't man up!"

Oh confirmation bias, you're such an ongoing problem!