The Friday Factor
It has been a long week. It is almost always a long week. It is a simple fact of life that human being must break up their time on this earth into manageable bites of time. Decades for a career path, years for a marriage, months for a school term, weeks for a task, etc., etc. My favorite GEICO ad is the hump day ad. Someone has decided that the week needs to be further defined in segments.
We all know that Monday’s suck. We gird our loins and set forth on the week in anticipation of Monday. No one is upset by Monday. It is a fact of life and must be faced. I think of W.C. Fields and his infamous quote that there comes a time in every man’s life when he must seize the bull by the tail and face the situation. Monday is like that.
Tuesday is benign. It may be the only day left when work actually gets done. There is simply nothing that gets in the way of the productivity of Tuesday. We are in our stride and we are not yet tired or weary. We chug along and simply get to it. Nothing gets in the way of Tuesday. If you need a day to always imply productivity, Tuesday is your day. Thank God for Tuesday.
Wednesday is now hump day. We all get over the hump on Wednesday. The week is simply so painful to get through that we need a hump day to know that we can get through the week. We all know that if we are doing something that we despise and can’t wait to end, we all break it down. The most important moment is the half-way point when we can be buoyed by the reality that we are past the midpoint and on the way home. Wednesday is our relief day. Hump day!
Thursday has become the early partying day for the weekend. I’m not sure when this all started, but the big date night is now Thursday. We are in celebration that Friday is the next day and that the work week is over. If we can get through Thursday, we can get through the week. Expectations for hard work on Friday are quite low. One can slide through the week if one can get through Thursday. Thursday may be the hump day of the Wednesday – Friday continuum. There we go again, breaking it down to make it all more bearable.
Let’s skip to the weekend. Saturday is catch-up day. It is leisure day. It is free-form day. We do chores on Saturday, but we do them in our jeans. We all have different chores and maybe they relate to work or maybe they relate to our kids or other life obligations. No one dislikes Saturday.
Sunday is supposed to be our day of rest and reflection. Whether you go to church or just lay low and gather your resources for the week ahead, it is intended to be a restful day. Imagine ending a vacation by coming home on a Saturday or a Sunday. I always prefer coming home Saturday so that I can use Sunday to regroup. If I come home Sunday, I feel somehow jammed up and asked to start the week on a short hop. That’s no way to live. We all need the rest and relaxation of a Sunday in our lives, even if we are coming off of a rest and relaxation break. Sunday is holy and needs to be kept as such.
Back to Friday. Nothing speaks more to the human condition than Friday. We thank God its Friday. That sort of says it all. We all want to be done with the week, don’t we? But ask yourself, are we better off for crossing off the days of our lives on the calendar? Is that any way to live? What the hell is so wrong with the work week that we must thank our deity for getting us to Friday? What exactly is so good about Friday? I for one find it far less than productive. Other than being able to dress down for some reason, Friday’s are fraught with long lunches and early departures. Can we ever say to a colleague that they cannot leave early on Friday to get on with their weekend plans? That may be the harshest of work ethics with which to interfere.
I have an idea. Let’s reorganize the calendar (the starting day was always a matter of convention). If we said that Friday was the start of the week, would that make it all feel better? I think it might. We would wake up on Friday with a sense of being refreshed. We only have a day to get through before having two days off, so Friday should be a very productive day in that context. We can all muscle through a big day. Then we could be more productive on Saturday and Sunday would be a less weighty rest day, perhaps even one where we could get a jump on the rest of the week. Now Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday could be really productive. No more nasty Monday and hump day gets lost in the confusion. Thursday is suddenly in its proper place of celebration of a week well-spent. Think about it, I think it could work.