[furyg3]

For sure, that's certainly one of the things that he misses. The midnight pizza deliveryman has a 'bullshit' job where he does nearly nothing because the 1 hour of real work over an 8 hour period is worth it to his boss. Most professional/service work has a large component of this type of availability.

But yet we still try to maximize for 40. If we automate the pointless bits, we don't scale back Bob's hours to 20 and pay him the same. We expect 40 again (never happened in the first place) or reduce his 'hours' (read: pay) to 20.

Maximizing for 40 is arbitrary for many jobs.

[bryanlarsen]

My google-fu is failing me, but I believe there's a study out there that postulates that the most efficient utilization rate for a secretary is about 40% -- in other words, they should be idle about 60% of the time.

The thesis is that the primary purpose of a secretary is to be available to do work. When the boss wants something done, an idle secretary can do it immediately whereas a busy secretary has to finish what they're doing before moving on to the next task.

Obviously the study contains a bunch of simplifying assumptions, but the general principle applies to many service jobs.

[ArkyBeagle]

Strange; Ethernet segments/collision domains start to have collisions at 40%. It's 1/e again, isn't it?

<cue Theremin music>

[lucasmoellers]

The two delivery driver jobs that I had both paid per delivery. I was not paid to wait around. I would expect that if a delivery driver was paid per hour, that they would be given other tasks if deliveries were slow.

[r00fus]

I've done a couple of food delivery jobs prior to college - as a pizza delivery driver, I was paid to be available (I made boxes, did light cleaning and tried to look busy while I was waiting for a delivery) and got consistent ($4) tips per delivery (not to mention all the pizza my midnight b-ball crowd could eat).

When delivering food for a small Chinese restaurant I was paid per delivery but there was a set run (usu. 4-6pm) and I got to expense miles, etc. No sitting around.