What Should We Do About Fridays?

livemint.com:

Friday has long been a little bit different. It was the day the boss might invite the team to leave work a little early, or the suit-and-tie dress code might give way to slacks and sweaters.

But no matter how relaxed, Friday was still another day at the office. Then Covid turned the work world upside down, and Fridays lost their Friday-ness.

There was nothing special about a casual dress code, once we were living full-time in sweats, and nothing exciting about leaving work a little early to get home, because many of us were already there. By the time offices reopened, there was no way to bring back the Friday magic—or even any way to know what Fridays were supposed to be anymore.

We may have returned to the office, but an awful lot of workers are still home on Fridays. So now Fridays float in no man’s land, as not quite a regular workday, and not quite a weekend—creating a whole new set of workplace dilemmas.

Can you set up a hybrid schedule where different members of the team come into the office on different days, or will the Friday staffers always feel like they’ve drawn the short straw? Can you ask a client or vendor for a Friday call, or is that intrusive? Can you tell your boss that you’re working Fridays from home, or will that make you seem like a long-weekending slacker? Can you close the office altogether on Fridays, and save a bit on overhead, or do you need to leave the doors open for the handful of employees who prefer going into work on the day it’s all but guaranteed to be a ghost town? All this confusion is bad for business, bad for teams and bad for employees who need to know how to plan their days and weeks. We need to decide what to make of Fridays in this new world of work: Are they part of the