Everybody's Working For The (Three Day) Weekend
Many of us are preparing to enjoy the upcoming three day holiday weekend. Yes, there's nothing quite like that Friday afternoon before the three day weekend, is there? Three Whole Days-such a bonus! What we do with that extra day is open to chance and circumstance, but chances are, it whatever we do will beat what we would otherwise be doing at "work", or whatever it is that we do.
I come to you today with an idea whose time has come. Certainly, it is not my idea, but I am prepared to be it's champion.
We need to have three day weekends EVERY weekend. My proposal is to shift to a Monday to Thursday work schedule. This could be ammended to a Tuesday to Friday work schedule, if necessary.
Why not? You're telling me that there's enough work to go around to fill all 40 of your hours? I don't buy that. I just don't. For some people, yes, the jobs are full-time. But for many, many more of us, technology has changed the nature of our work. There just isn't enough to do to fill the 40 hour void. I see it everyday. I LIVE it everyday. Chances are, many of you do, too. You know who you are.
Why do we even work 40 hours at all? It's the Puritan Work Ethic, you see. We are made to feel that we must suffer and work hard to enjoy the good things in life. Well, I'm here to tell you, that isn't necessarily true. We don't have to work hard for work's sake. We just don't. We have to work hard enough to live the way we want to live. Anything above that is the purview of the degenerate Type A's and the self-loathing, who are typically one and the same.
This is no longer a manufacturing country, friends. All of that is offshore now. We are a clerical workforce. And you know what? Technology has revolutionized the clerical world. What used to take days to type, correct, mimeograph, and then mail out now takes minutes, with the modern miracle of the computer and fax machine. Why do you think there are so many blogs these days? Why is fantasy sports such a megapull on the internet? Free Time, my friends. We have lots and lots of free time.
But that free time isn't spent with our families and friends, as it should be. We are not out seeing the country, or having pool parties, or camping in our beautiful state and national parks. No, instead we sit at our monitors, getting carpel tunnel syndrome and absorbing cancerous emissions, dreaming of the other places we could be. We watch the clock like cellmates in a post-modern prison, waiting for our sentences to expire. And what have we really accomplished in those extra eight hours per week? Anything that we couldn't have crammed into the first 32? In 80% of the cases, I highly doubt it.
Truth be told, we would all be much better off if we only worked 32 hours per week. Think of the reduced stress levels, and thus the savings on health care costs. Think of how the travel industry would explode. And now, instead of two day benders, it's three days. Everybody wins!
I believe that someone could successfully run for President with this as their sole platform. "I promise you nothing but a three day weekend, every weekend." That person is going to get votes.
Oh, sure, there will be cries from the business community. They will claim financial ruin, among other things. But are these not the same complaints we heard when organized labor lobbied for the 40 hour work week? Of course they are. And were we ruined? Certainly not. In fact, our per capita wealth exploded.
And there will be cries from the segments of our society who are afraid of leisure, afraid of what their minds and bodies will do when not constrained by the rules they have lived their lives by. Don't listen to them. Let them pursue their own path of work for work's sake. They'll gladly do any extra work that goes undone, because they need to work. You know these people; they are the ones who don't take all their vacation days, the ones who take their cell phones and computers along because things just won't work without their input. They are the ones who want nothing more to be said about them when they die than that they were a hard worker.
Most of us have nothing against hard work, when necessary. But I think it's high time we take a step back and ask ourselves just how hard we really are working, and how necessary our 40 hour toil really is. Is it to do the work? Or is it because that's just the way we've always done it?
I submit that our society could be getting a lot more bang for the buck out of those 8 hours than we are getting now. Think about that while you enjoy your three day weekend.
12:48:33 PM 
|
