For like 12 years I’ve worked in the service industry. That means sporadic hours and shifts that can happen whenever. About a year ago though I got a 9:00 to 5:00 job and it has been absolute hell trying to live my life as I have. How do normal people do this? All the business hours of places that you need to go, the bank, the doctors, the post office. Office they’re closed by the time you get off of work. I have to actually call off of work just to get anything done. There’s no way the majority of people are living like this, right?
This is part of the reason 9-5 used to be paid well enough to be salary instead of hourly. When you’re salary and have decent rapport with your boss taking off for these things is just a heads up I’ll be in late or I’m leaving early. No worry about using time off, PTO, etc. As wages have stagnated/been suppressed over the decades now positions that should be salary are instead hourly and as you and anyone working them can note it doesn’t work well.
Fixing that requires a societal/cultural upheaval which has been rumbling for at least a couple decades but things seem to be going backwards right now despite unions getting stronger in the past few years than they had in decades.