Office summer hours

[redbird]

Starting next week, we have the option of working "summer hours," in which we work longer hours Monday-Thursday and have half-days on Fridays. It sounds like a fine idea, and for a lot of people it is. Last summer, I found that very often, I was worn out enough by the longer days, including by the need to get up a little earlier for them, that what I did with my half days off was go home and nap.

My thought for this year is that I will either not do summer hours at all, or do them on occasional weeks when the chance to leave early on Friday without using a half-day of vacation/personal time seems valuable. To some extent, that depends on whether I (think I) can sort of drowse on the train to Boston and pull myself together when I get to South Station.

Comments

[bibliofile]

Taking care of yourself can be such a simple thing, and yet... there was more thought there, but it went away before I finished.

I am glad that you seem to be pretty good at this taking care of yourself thing.

[redbird]

It can be simple, and it can also be over-complicated, because what I need conflicts with what I want, with what I think I ought to be able to do, or what else I need. Friday afternoons off are tempting on a number of levels, from easier travel to see Adrian to an easy way to get alone-time (while Cattitude is at work), but napping is not useful alone-time.

[drcpunk]

Back when I was working, our company did this. I found that I tended to put in longer days regardless. That is, we had 2 options: Work an extra half hour Monday-Thursday and get off two hours early on Friday, or work an extra hour and get off four hours early. I tended to put in that extra half hour as a matter of course, so I took the two hour option.

I don't know if working summer hours some weeks, but not others, would have been allowed. One of my people wanted to try that, and my boss said it was okay for me to let him switch on a monthly basis, but not week to week. However, this was never an issue, as he had enough trouble getting in early enough to make the longer days viable, so he decided not to work summer hours.