Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Thursday Should Be The New Friday

I like to travel a lot. I travel with Easter Rising (my band, for those of you that don't know) at least once every couple of months, and I truly enjoy the opportunities that I have to travel around the country and visit my copious amount of best friends. Over the past 2 Summers, it's not out of the ordinary to hear the phrase "Oh Lucas, glad you decided to work 40 hours this week!" on Friday mornings in my office. While others take a week or two off at a time to spend time on the beach or engage in similar endeavors, I've decided that spending my vacation days in one shot is pointless. They are much better served on long weekends driving ridiculous distances to hang out with people for a day before you have to drive back home and prepare for the upcoming work week.

Every week I decide to take a long weekend, the rest of the office knows. It normally starts with a subtle mention of my upcoming travels, and ends with my email signature proclaiming that "Thursday is the new Friday!". This inevitably incites workplace rioting in protest of the ridiculous amount of vacation time I take. You see, I'm very valuable - a "Go-To-Guy", if you will.

Brian sent me this link wondering if I was ghostwriting for Scientific American. The answer is no, I am not a ghostwriter, but even if I was I wouldn't tell any of you. We wouldn't want Lynne Peeples losing any credit for her authorship of the article. Regardless, Lynne writes what I've been thinking and pushing for at my job to happen. In these tough economic times, companies need to become more flexible in order to weather the storm more effectively. They need to manage their employees better and in addition to managing the bottom line, find creative ways to boost morale & productivity (I'm spewing what I read from every business blog or Microsoft commercial right back in your face).

Well, I don't expect that any company I work for will ever have a 4 day work week (unless I own it!). I don't think that's such a bad thing. While companies can save on their overhead expenses by shutting down for an extra day, I would think that overall cashflow and customer service would take quite a hit by closing on that extra day. I'm just speculating, because I'm not an economist, but it makes sense in my head. Regardless of how companies decide to structure their work weeks, I will always love it when Thursday becomes the new Friday. Maybe someday far in the future we can all inlude "Wednesday is the new Friday!" in our email signatures.

1 comment:

  1. I.M. Fletcher is the greatest ghostwriter of all time.

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