We have a completely unorthodox schedule.
Our primary work week runs from Wednesday thru Sunday. This is because a couple of our guys either have a significant commute into town or have a significant other who also works on the weekend. The commute on weekends is considerably shorter during prime time working hours.
Many, if not most, businesses are staffed on a 24/7 schedule. You can go grocery shopping pretty much any day of the week, or go to a movie, or play golf, have your house & health protected etc. For some reason the construction industry is primarily staffed on banker's hours.
The first thing I noticed about this was how peaceful my life became. I did not have to cover the shop on weekdays and be available for customers on the weekends too. For the most part now lots of people can't find me on Monday or Tuesday and don't look for me on Saturday or Sunday. It's like having a three day weekday.
Start & Stop times depend entirely on what works best for the individual. Each person is generally predictable within a half-hour or so. This evolved on a fairly organic basis. If someone is going to be more than 15 minutes later than their normal time they tend to text me.
Text, by the way, is an incredible way to communicate. The kids that work for me don't always hear their phone and never check email. Text, however, is like crack cocaine. Every text is like Christmas and I am always assured of a speedy response if we use text to communicate.
Our lunch & coffee breaks are completely random. This was the only part I designed. I've only had three jobs in cabinet shops during my entire career. All of them were fairly brief. My first one lasted just two weeks. The middle one lasted about five months and the final one maybe two months. There were easy to understand reasons for this.
I came from self-employment into my first job. I can remember exactly my very first break. A loud buzzer went off and it seemed like everybody dropped what they were doing and went outside for a smoke. I was almost done with sanding a cabinet and kept working. The foreman came over, tapped me on the shoulder & said "NOW". It took me exactly one day to become a clock watcher. I could glance at the shop clock and say to myself: "Yep. Gonna want a cigarette in ten minutes". The truth o the matter was I was going to want another cigarette in ten minutes".
The only way you could be a good spot to stop at precisely 4:30 is to not start anything after 4pm. That schedule, of course, require starting to taper off around 3:30. None of this has any relationship with the natural rhythm of work. It's not how you would pace yourself if you were working for yourself in your own shop.
A couple of times over the years I had guys work for me who came from more structured environments. They would make the delivery driver wait until they were done with break before helping to unload a truck. We were always having scheduling issues on bottleneck equipment. People were always asking "How long are you going to be on that saw?" That never happens anymore and we never run out of work because of log jams on the saw.
I should note that I have a very young crew. 23-26-27-28 & 32. These people all have an excellent work ethic and are very productive. Not a single barnacle in the group.