Holiday week

English: fireworks seen across the at Washington, D.C., USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This year, the Fourth of July falls on a Wednesday.

Here in the US, that means that the national Independence Day holiday is smack in the middle of the week.

And what that means is that no one is really working this entire week.

Don’t misunderstand, I have been in the office. In fact, I am one of only a few employees who are in the office this week.

But the phones haven’t been ringing very much, and the emails have been quite sparse. I have received just a few faxes.

Apparently, almost every other person in this country is out of the office all week. And the rest are out for a long weekend, either at the beginning or the end of the week.

 Logo for the United States TV series “The Office”. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There is not much work getting done in this country this week.

Plus, we are in the middle of a horrible heat wave. The heat indices have been at, over or near 100 F nearly every day for a week, with no relief in sight for several more days. Power has been out in many areas for long periods of time. Perhaps the only folks really working hard this week are the power repair folks.

Merle and I traveled to Nebraska this past weekend. We took Friday off of work to drive down and returned on Sunday.  We worked on Monday and Tuesday. Now we have Wednesday off for the holiday. Then there will be two more days of work, with a two-day weekend following that.

As a result of the schedule we’ve had the past several days, I’ve realized I like it.

This schedule is perfect. Off three days, work two days, one day off, work two days, two days off. I could get used to that.

In fact, I am proposing a total revision of the standard American workweek:

Two days work, then two days off for everyone. There would be a work group A and a work group B. When group A is off, group B will work, rotating their schedules. The teachers working in group A will have students whose families are part of group A, and vice versa. Families and friends could coordinate whether they want to be part of group A or group B, to allow everyone to have similar schedules for time off. Both groups would have holidays off, and each could schedule a vacation time.

This would allow all of us to have more family time, less work, and there may be more jobs available…..through job sharing. An A worker would share the job with a B worker. Additionally, we would end up with seven days of work being done rather than the five days (or four if you take into account those who skip out early on Fridays, and come in late on Mondays) we have under the current plan.

Certainly there are glitches to work out. My idea is new and may take time to become popular. But over time, I think it could work.

Yes, a short work week can make you very creative!

Happy Independence Day!

Enjoy your midweek day/week/long weekend off.

 

 

**Note: Even though I have written this proposal in jest (well, mostly), I did a little google search and found that there are some serious proposals for decreasing the length of the workweek.

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