Do you have Summer Fridays? Of course you don't. If you did, you wouldn't be reading this, because Six Flags roller coasters are not WiFi enabled and cell phone technology has not advanced to a place where you can scroll your news feed under water, in say, the Rockaways but probably more the Hamptons.
But guess what, privileged ones. Summer Fridays are over. Hope you're out there, really enjoying that midday Riesling and a Norah Ephron paperback, 'cause it's the last one you're gonna have for a long, loooong time.
In just a few short months, it's going to be winter. Winter is the season we need Summer Fridays most badly. Are you pumped for another round of 4 p.m. darkness and the horrible knowledge that each trip outside, no matter how brief, requires roughly the preparation of a moon landing? Aw man, did you accidentally drop your left mitten somewhere? Hope you didn't need your left hand, because you've got about three minutes of exposure before it turns black and falls off.
But this isn't about our distaste for winter. It's about how grateful we are that Summer Fridays don't really exist around Gothamist HQ, because you can't miss what you don't have. Next week, life is going to be exactly 20 percent worse for some of you, but to the rest of us, it will be 100 percent the same. (Sorry, former Gothamist staffers.)
But this isn't about the haves and the have-nots. What matters is that we band together to convert Summer Fridays to Year Round Fridays, which will lead to a more balanced nation and save some of us from the effects of SBJRD—Seasonal Bitterly Jealous Rage Disorder.
Researchers have studied the effects of a more flexible schedule, and the results have been positive. The Science of Us blog points to the fact that most other developed countries work significantly fewer hours than we do in the U.S., and they're mostly fineish!
According to that same report, the U.S. is one of the most productive nations on the planet, second only to Luxembourg — but Americans work almost 20 percent more hours than individuals in Luxembourg. We’re working longer days, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re achieving more. In fact, the data in the OECD report consistently show that more hours worked do not necessarily correlate with an increase in productivity, giving us reason to think that a little bit of scaling back might not lower our output.
The 40 hour work week is just a holdover from industrial times, when one's physical presence in their workplace (factory) was directly correlated to productivity. Lacking the opportunity to dawdle on Instagram over at the assembly line, the policy of remaining at work longer made sense, but people also lived in fetid sadness hovels and ate rat bones for dinner (citation needed), so things were not better then.
Lastly, people with more flexible work schedules tend to be happier and more productive. There. That's the last thing I'll say on this issue. Managers, you have nine months to consider this argument before next June. Do the right thing. But it's 3:55 p.m. now. To those of you still trapped in your windowless cubicle: Hang in there. In about one hour, the Great Seasonal Inequity will finally be over, and we can go back to focusing on whining about the perennial ways in which life is totally unfair.
