Myth of the Short Week

Public holidays. Who doesn't love them? Well, aside from retail employees that don't get paid penalty rates (poor bastards).

From one point of view, a public holiday can be viewed almost as a public service. You get to take a day off from work without the need to make up excuses (lies, really) or feel the guilt of taking a sickie. It's even better when that public holiday falls on a Monday or a Friday; the genus of what is commonly referred to as "a long weekend".

When the public holiday approaches, an air of excitement permeates the atmosphere around the workplace in anticipation of the glorious day. The knowledge that a "short week" is fast approaching raises spirits and acts an a verbal lubricant, drawing forth a torrent of discussions regarding plans for the day off.

However, amid the sea of positive energy lurks a handful of people that seem somewhat out of place. They're not necessarily dreading the coming public holiday and the short week that it invariably brings. They may even be looking forward to the day off. However, they don't seem to share the same heighten level of excitement or enthusiasm for the approaching "short week". They know, as I do, about the myth of the "short week".

The myth of the "short week" is simply that a shorter working week is better than a standard working week. That, in the case of a long weekend, the short week consists of four standard working days and three days of fun and relaxation. Reality, at least from experience, tends to work a little differently.

In the case of a long weekend, in theory there are four standard work days and three days off for the weekend, as previously stated. However, in practice the four working days are by no means standard. It's almost as if the workload of a standard five day week has been crammed into the four days, bringing with it an elevated sense of urgency akin to what you might experience when you're informed at the last minute that the allotted time for a major project or task has been cut down to 80% of its original time frame. The public holiday, now acts as a buffer, an extra day in which recovery from the elevated workload and accompanying stress that tends to follow close behind may take place.

In the end, more often than not, the elevated workload over the shorter working week tends to negate the additional day gained as a day off.

Still excited about the approaching short week? Wait until to you have two short weeks, back to back, as was experienced most recently with the weeks on either side of Easter.

I think I might be coming down with some rare, unknown but short term virus. *cough* *cough*