I'm a civil servant who seems to have a rare work ethic (wouldn't at all be surprised if my average coworker wastes 3-4hr / week).
Your average coworker sounds extremely efficient then.
Lol no I think the bar is extremely low
I think your bar is way too high if you think 90% non-wasted hours is lacking a work ethic. That's an "A" grade in my book.
I agree. I had a job where I almost literally begged for more work. Multiple times. They were always about to restructure everyone's workload, or were going to take a look at things once they hired to fill a couple vacancies (and by the time that happened, someone else had inevitably quit), or some other excuse. I'd made it known that I was no where near capacity and clearly they didn't really care, so I stopped asking. There were weeks where I likely worked 20 hours at my full time job, and I wasn't alone (though I was one of the only ones--if not the only one--who drew attention to it and tried to get more work.
I think 3-4 hours per week of getting coffee and taking a long lunch and asking Bill about his grandkids when you meet at the copier and calling the DMV to make an appointment (and then taking a 2 hour lunch the following week to go to that DMV appointment) and popping online to pay your credit card bill, and etc. is probably on the low end of wasted time during a workweek. And the longer the workweek, the more time is likely wasted. If you are never home when the DMV is open, you can't make that call during your off time. I think that's part of what this 4 day workweek experiment showed.
And yes, my understanding was that this was not a 4/10 schedule. They actually cut 1/5 of the work time. For hourly employees, I'd don't know how they handled that, but based on what I've read about the experiment, I'd guess the increased pay by 1/5 so that pay was the same. That was kind of the point. Everyone is paid the same, to work less (or be at work fewer hours), as an experiment, and the experiment showed that productivity didn't decrease. Because people actually worked when they were at work, and they saved the DMV stuff for their off time. They didn't have as much time to waste, so they didn't waste it.