Fridays before long weekends are typically dead days at every office I’ve ever worked at. If employees have not taken the day off or decided to work from home (“work” is used quite loosely in that statement), they typically are at the office and only half there in mind and in action. No one really wants to be there, but they know they have to be, otherwise it gets counted as a paid time off day, and no one really wants that unless they are definitely doing something they deem “worthy” of a paid day off. Today, about half the office was actually in the office, but given the number of meetings and the chaotic chatter throughout, it was clear no one was that busy today. I ended up leaving the office just past 3pm. My clients had either all taken the day off or left their offices by 1pm to officially start the long weekend.

It ends up being a wasted work day, a day where you are working in name only but you don’t really get much accomplished. In that event, why don’t companies just give the Friday before long weekends off? I guess if they did, workers may just got lazy even earlier on the Thursday before, and then the cycle of laziness would just continue. There’s no incentive to work hard on the day before a long weekend, so as a group of people, we just don’t.