For as long as I can remember Americans have complained about their too-lengthy, arduous work week, yet no one’s ever done anything about it.
Bellyaching about one’s job when others are unemployed produces nothing besides increased resentment. However, implementing reforms that will increase profits, productivity, and worker satisfaction is clearly a goal worth pursuing.
Everyone loves three-day weekends, but permanently altering America’s work week to four ten-hour days would, in all likelihood, make too many already-entitled people even lazier.
But how about permanently eliminating a particular weekday work day from existence?
The Gregorian calendar was created in 1582 by some remarkably astute individuals. They somehow calculated exactly how long it took Earth to revolve around the sun, how to synchronize months with seasons, and why adding an extra day every fourth year would prevent February heat waves and mid-August blizzards from plaguing the Northern Hemisphere by the time the 46th century rolled around.
But as brilliant as those mathematicians were, they weren’t able to think outside the confines of their late-16th century box. That’s why, nearly half a millennium later, the time has come to convert to the six-day week.
Adopting a calendar consisting of 60 weeks and five days wouldn’t cause the planet to spin off its axis. A day would still consist of 24 hours. Standard years would still contain 365 days, with every fourth one getting 366. All twelve months would retain their current complement of days. The end result would be more (but shorter) work weeks that would yield more productive and less-stressed citizens.
The new calendar would contain 120 Saturdays and Sundays (up from the current 104), but there’d be a decrease of less than a dozen work days annually, since there’d be no Monday holidays under the revitalized system of marking time. Christmas and New Year’s Day would be celebrated annually on December 25th and January 1st, respectively, but all the other national holidays would all be observed on Saturdays, which would already be a day off from work for most of the population.
Rejuvenated, more productive workers and their delighted employers wouldn’t be the only ones benefitting from this revamped system. Priests, pastors, imams and rabbis would all get an additional eight formal days of worship per year to inspire and/or add to their flocks.
But which day should get axed to streamline the calendar? Saturdays and Sunday are obvious keepers. Eliminating Fridays would force the closing of numerous TGI Friday’s restaurants, and another wave of unemployment is the last thing America needs. Everyone whines about Monday mornings, but eliminating the calendar’s least popular day would merely pass the title of most-detested 24-hour-block-of- time to Tuesday by default.
Returning to work Monday will always be difficult, but by Tuesday people have accepted that the weekend is over. On Thursday afternoon there’s light at the end of the tunnel, since Fridays have always been (and will always be) gateway to the weekend.
There’s only one logical candidate for downsizing. By lunchtime Wednesday working Americans know the week is half over, but when the lengthy afternoon concludes it seems like the next day should be Friday. Thursday’s conclusion signals to the logical mind that the work week should be over, but it inevitably never is. People trudge home, exhausted, only to learn they’re due back at work the next day. And it’s all because of Wednesday!
Let’s stop complaining about the length of the current work week and do something about it. It’s time to adopt the 60-week and five-day calendar, and to send Wednesdays the way of manual typewriters, rotary phones, fax machines, and dinosaurs.
Andy YoungReturn to main page
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