You know that feeling when Friday rolls around after a four day work week and you think: "Man that is just perfect timing. I was just beginning to get a little burnt out and them wham, weekend." But the honeymoon is soon over and you're right back to a five day week, which in relative retrospect, feels just a little bit worse than it usually does.
I really think that our nation should just mandate three day weekends from now on. Maybe we'd lose a day of productivity, but wouldn't we all be happier more productive people? And in fact, being a person who enjoys having random historical anecdotes on hand, I can even back this proposal up.
The weekend completely arbitrary, really. I mean, the weekend was simply created to include the holy days of rest (either Sunday or Saturday depending on the local religion). The two-day concept emerged briefly when pre-industrial European workers started taking the next day off as "Saint's Monday" just to recover from the drinking and partying (apparently they were partaking in more than a little of the communion wine). But during the French Revolution, a calendar was drawn up to include just one day of rest after a ten day work week. Only during the 20th century did some factory owners think to include a day off on Saturday to accommodate Jewish workers, and the official two day weekend didn't become a nationwide standard until the 1940's.
But what we didn't know was that we could go even further than that. Due to the post-war boom, Americans in the 1960's were producing twice as much as they were only a decade before. To maintain the same standard of living as they enjoyed in the 50's, they could afford to work a four hour day, or a two-and-a-half day week, or even a six month year and still come out even. Instead, American's took none of the gains in leisure (unlike many developed nations, who dropped their standard work hours and continue to work an average of 35 hours a week). As a nation of eager consumers, Americans decided to keep working and spending more. Having already equipped their homes with the fancy new gadgets and gizmos that were developed after the war, Americans next looked to buy bigger versions or more of the same - second cars, televisions and phones; double-wide fridges; hi-fi's with bigger speakers, etc. The cost of keeping up with repairs and maintenance of the home made the forty hour work week a necessity again. Increasingly, women went into the workforce to cover any additional damages to the family budget. But this meant investment in even more labor-saving devices that allowed women to have the time to go to work and pay for them. Talk about a vicious cycle.
If we could change it before, why can't we change it again. Let's be like the !Kung Bushmen in Africa who believe it is bad luck to work on consecutive days and therefore enjoy a two-and-a-half day work week. In fact, I think half the people in Southern California are following the !Kung example. When I leave my apartment every morning, I see crowds of people walking down my street with their surfboards heading to the beach and I wonder why I'm not following them. You know, right before I'm about to get on the I-8, there's a little exit off of Mission Boulevard that leads to Sunset Cliffs. One of these days I'd like to follow that exit. I like sunsets and cliffs a lot better than useless meetings where we sit around and re-evaluate the meaning of words like "collaboration" and "client-centered."
The only downfall is, I think we'd all want to get paid for that day off. It's why we demand paid sick days from our bosses, even though we technically shouldn't be getting paid to sit at home. The justification has always been that we count on a certain level of income in order to meet our needs given the current standard of living. So we'd all take a pretty big hit to our budgets if we had Fridays off from now on. Moreover, any day I'm not at work is a day I'm out spending money.
Maybe the question isn't whether or not I'd be willing to give up eight hours of income a week, but whether or not I'd be willing to work four ten-hour days in order than have my Friday or Monday off and still enjoy my current level of income. I mean, when you're getting up by an alarm clock, you're going to be tired whether or not you get up at 6 or 7. Say you work from 7am to 5pm. Is that so unreasonable? Or what if you worked five nine-hour days followed by four nine-hour days, giving you a day off every OTHER week. That's hardly even a change at all. And look at all the perks! Until it caught on universally, you'd have things like the post-office and DMV and grocery store all to yourself while the rest of the schmucks in your city were still sitting in their cubicles on a Friday afternoon. Not to mention, during your work week you'd be getting up early enough and going home just late enough to avoid rush hour. And I can't neglect to be entirely cliche and point out that driving in to work four days versus five would be a real benefit in these times of rising gas prices. Oh and managers, if you're arguing that you'd have to close up shop one extra day a week and lose out on your productivity, why not have half the staff take Monday off and half take Friday? If that meant you had to hire more people (but at no additional cost because everyone is working less), then maybe there'd be less unemployment and more wage-earning consumers to stimulate the economy. Can the three-day weekend be the answer to this recession?
Maybe not. But I'm convinced that this is the work-week for me. I don't care if my clients are only available from nine to three. There's lots to do in my job that doesn't involve directly working with my students. In the mornings I could spend time preparing for my sessions and when I'm done treating for the day, I could do my documentation and evaluate their performance right after the fact. Wouldn't that be better than rushing into a session with just another coloring sheet or dot-to-dot because I didn't have time to plan ahead, or writing an assessment report a month after I tested the student just because I finally have an hour of free time?
So here's to getting in two hours early, leaving two hours late, and spending my Fridays at the beach thinking about what a clever cat I am! Who's with me?
Many people these days are not tied to a 9-5 job or a rigidly defined work week. Those who are self-employed (like me) can work whenever they feel productive, and stop working at any time. The result, if you are self-motivated and wish to be as productive as possible, is that you settle into some kind of work pattern of your own design. Personally, I start working immediately after I wake up, brush my teeth, and get dressed. That's usually, but not always, somewhere around 7:30am. I take a few breaks during my "work day" including one longer break in late afternoon. That's where I have dinner, go to the club to work out, and so on. Before climbing back in bed, I always go back into my office and do a little more more work, usually for anywhere from one to three hours. A typical work day for me, therefore, might be 7:30am to 5:30pm with several breaks adding up to a couple of hours, then 8:30pm to 10:30pm with no breaks. That adds up to a ten hour work day. I follow this pattern maybe six days a week, resulting in a 60 hour work week. This makes me extremely productive! It's not burning me out because I really enjoy my work (most of the time). Working, for me, is as enjoyable as a day off or vacation for many people. When I did work a 9-5 job, years ago, I would have preferred shorter days to longer ones, and less work days per week. I totally understand why some companies can't stagger work days or shifts because they are most productive when everyone is working together as a team. Letting half the people stay home in any time period isn't an option for them, unless they hire a lot more people, which may not produce enough to cover the added expense. When you work also depends on when your business is open. If you work at a shop that's open from 10:00am to 6:00pm every day, it makes most sense for your work day to cover those hours. If you're open Monday through Saturday, you could take a day off, provided someone else is available to "man the store" on that day. Staggering employees now becomes a scheduling issue, juggling people around to make sure all hours are covered by an adequate staff. I guess my point is that not all jobs work the same way,