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The four-day work week has been hyped as the solution to the search for a flexible workplace. This is nothing more than hype. Truth be told, the four-day workweek is the antithesis of flexibility.

The demands for scheduling with employees change from employee to employee and, even with one individual, are subject to change depending on what else is happening in his or her life. The only thing that is static and unchanging in this definition of flexibility is the employee’s request to define their schedule for themselves and to change it as needed.

The four-day work week falls far short of this test for flexibility. Instead of being able to come and go on a schedule that is adaptable to their needs and the needs of their friends and families, employees are required to be in the workplace for at least 11 hours every day for the same four consecutive days each week. If your doctor’s office is closed on Friday, you’re plain out of luck. If you need to pick up your daughter after school, there’s not much hope that you could come into work early to make up the time—unless you want to arrive at 4 a.m. to ensure that you can leave by 3 that afternoon.

If the strict hours don’t bother you, consider the lack of flexibility during non-working time in a four-day work week. Employees who leave work by 5 p.m. five days a week are able to run an errand or two on the way to pick the kids up from day care. Once home, there is time to put something on the table for dinner and oversee homework time. Parents can leave work in time for the weeknight soccer game or recital—without having to take a half day of leave.

For the employee working four 10-hour days each week, these options become much more difficult to effectuate. In order to get the family up and out the door, drop the children off at school, commute to the office, and still make it to work on time, most people need between 90 and 180 minutes after waking. We’ll estimate it on the short side and say that an employee who is due to work by 7 a.m. has to get up no later than 5:30 a.m. Eleven hours later, at 6 p.m., the employee leaves work, picks up the children, and stops to put gasoline in the car. Assuming they make no other stops, they return home at 7 p.m. At the later hour, it’s exhausting to think about cooking, so a delivery order is called into the local pizza parlor.

Read the mail, change clothes, check the answering machine, and set the table and it’s already 8 p.m. Only two and a half hours before bedtime if you hope to get close to 8 hours’ sleep. By the time the pizza arrives, is gobbled down, and is cleaned up, the so-called “quality time” with the family is over and everyone heads to bed. There isn’t even time for “American Idol,” never mind a few moments to talk about the day’s events.

With this schedule, the four-day work week seems far from flexible. Instead, it seems to be all-consuming and, frankly, exhausting.