surviva hit the nail on the head. Sure, like Monty (as well as surviva himself) pointed out, there are a lot of jobs where being there is a necessity, but even so a lot of these jobs could stand to be more flexible. For example, teachers obviously have to be in class to teach the students... but (using Chicago Public Schools as an example) they are required to clock in and clock out at very strict times. This is absolutely absurd. It ends up rewarding people who are willing to play the system instead of people who are actually good at their jobs. Furthermore, every teacher takes their work home with them, yet they are not compensated for these hours that go beyond the 40 hour work week. How is this fair? And if you are not one of the people abusing the system, how inspired are you going to be to do work hard and do a good job?
Essentially we have built a system which encourages the reproduction of the "juke the system" mentality, instead of the spread of the "natural police" mentality (go watch the wire if you aren't familiar with these phrases.) What we seem to end up with in most cases is lower productivity as well as lower collective happiness. Not only does this system seem to show itself to be counterproductive, but it has the added negative of making everyone fucking miserable.
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