When I was working, the Friday after Labor Day was always one of my least favorites of the year. It was the first full Friday after ‘summer hours’ ended. Summer hours became a phenomenon back in the 1990s, and I always thought they were one of the best MegaCorp perks we ever got.
The design was simple – work an hour longer Monday thru Thursday – and take off early on Friday afternoon. Since we were salaried and worked way more than an hour longer every day already, Friday afternoons off were a pure benefit. No one ever noticed less work getting done.
I always made a point of telling my teams that everyone was expected to leave the office right at noon on summer hour Fridays. We couldn’t tolerate Type A brown-nosers ruining summer hours for everyone else by trying to show how hard they worked. “If you want to work, go home and work” I would tell them.
I even encouraged summer hours as ‘flextime’ on the businesses that didn’t have a formal HR policy to support them already. Afterall, the goal of a leader should be to have a team that is smart & productive, not just busy.
Hopefully it’s not too much of a ‘end of summer bummer’ for those of you that are working all day today. Soon, with your diligently amassed FIRE savings, you’ll be enjoying every day of the week off!
Happy Friday!
Image Credit: Pixabay
MrFireStation 
I like that picture. We never got that but just getting those few extra hours back every week is a big help to your personal life. Where I used to work, I usually tried to take off around Christmas if possible, but otherwise it wasnt always bad as there was low expectations to try and be busy and productive and also many of our customers that we supported would be off anyway. So it was more like come to work and mostly just take care of a few things and hang out all day.
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Yeah – The last week of the year after Christmas was always pretty chill. Employees debated whether it was better to take vacation or come to work on those ‘easy’ days.
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