actually, 8 hours *isn't* normal for people who work 8 hours a day. they have lunch breaks. they often don't work every single minute of that time, often having breaks for meetings or goofing off on the job. there was a study that measured actual work in the typical 8 hour workday / 40 hour workweek, and they found something like only two and a half hours of actual work got done, the rest of the day, even for *salaried employees* was wasted on distractions, breaks, periods where they did nothing and stretched or went to the bathroom or drank coffee, travel time, walking between rooms, time spent socializing with other co-workers, time spent staring off blankly into space, etc.
This is totally so true
. You can even probably divide that in half if the worker totally hates their job. I would also add that the work environment you're in...if you're there with a bunch of chatterbox co-workers or worker bees can affect your daily performance also. I do find that on days when i'm around the chatterboxes, i get absolutely nothing done.
I believe that the workers are legally entitled to a break. Not sure in america land, but in my country they are.
This is actually a good question, i'm not sure if workers in the US are legally entitled to a break or not - though it is just common "thing to have" in order to maintain worker sanity. Which is probably why there is so little actually accomplished within that 8 hour workday. I do know based on US laws that its not mandatory to have vacation or "time-off" hours in the US. This is defined by the company they work for.
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