Personally, I think some of the reality is that in a dual income household if both individuals work full time there's limited time to do life admin and some life admin can only be done during business hours. So in aggregate, many companies aren't getting 5 full days of work from their employees. Sure when you're in your twenties it's easy to give 6.5 days a week. But when you're two working parents with no help? Good luck getting 10 days of work consistently out of that family. I think parents in a 4 day work week probably have better focus because they know they have one day ring fenced for catching up on non-work things (when the weekend then becomes full time parenting)
It always amazes me that, for example, shops are open when everyone is at work.
In my town, the shopping high street closes at 5pm. So when I finished work, I'd be back in my town at 6pm, where everything is dead. The only way to do any shopping is to drive to a supermarket that’s open until 10pm or shop online.
It's like everything is catered to people who don't work.
One of the complaints I hear about Italy is the shops aren't open all day in smaller towns. But, they are open in the morning and in the evening. Exactly the time you want them to be open. Until you internalize this clock it can sometimes be annoying, but makes a lot of sense.
