"I don't like Mondays." The immortal words of Bob Geldof ring in all of our ears whether we've actually heard the song or not, or even if we know it but don't pay attention to the actual lyrics (a teenager goes berserk and then blames his actions on the day of the week). Regardless of Mr. Geldof and the Boomtown Rats, no one likes Mondays and haven't for quite some time. It's the day when everything important is due and the day that everything put off the previous Friday has its reckoning. It's the day you play catch-up to keep from getting even further behind. And you do this while sleep deprived because that catnap you took on Sunday afternoon turned into a three hour siesta and you subsequently found yourself watching House Hunters International or the latest Zumba infomercial at one in the morning.
This particular Monday got me thinking: Do we really need Mondays? I mean, we may technically need the day so we don't lose 52 days on the calendar--can you imagine Christmas coming back around two months sooner? "The horror! The horror!" as Marlon Brando would say. But we don't actually need the day to be a work day, do we? So I thought I'd blog about how the workweek itself was structured and where it came from. Although there is some dispute about the origins in their totality, much of what we consider to be commonplace business practices--the 40 hour work week and the weekend--are courtesy of a century or more of labor struggle right up until the 1930s. I seem to recall from a class I had in college that at one point in the nation's history a 4-day workweek was seriously considered. Such a thing exists now in some municipalities, but purely for budgetary reasons, kind of like the furloughs that states have been rolling out for public employees. The rest of us still slog through the 5-day variety, if we're lucky.
So how come, in the light of day of technological progress and the ease of living such wonderment touts as its raison d'etre (or at least it did in all those 1950s TV commercials), do we still work as many or more of our waking hours in a week as not? Shouldn't the technological awesomeness of advanced civilizations such as ours have by now downgraded the need to ritualistically show up some place we'd rather not be and perform routinized tasks for longer than we would care? Much to the point, workplace studies show the average American to be working far longer in an average week than he or she did 30 years ago. At such a rate, the weekend itself might be a thing of the past by century's end (truly a horror).
An article published in the Guardian a few years ago provided a history lesson and analysis of a long dormant idea, and one positively insane to us 21st century folk: the 15 hour work week. (What?!) Apparently, John Maynard Keynes, the imminent economist and bane of the libertarian right, theorized in the waning moments before the Great Depression that mankind’s natural course would lead to such a superfluity of work that society itself would restructure to provide for maximal leisure time. Coincidentally, I think Marx prognosticated a similar notion decades earlier.
So why has this not happened? The article hypothesizes one reason may be, “that many of us actually enjoy work, despite what we say to pollsters and to each other. To be sure, work can be boring, repetitive or exhausting, but it is also an arena where people get pleasure out of their achievements and enjoy mixing with other people.” How about no, Scott. Even if work is a good place to chat and mingle, the mere absence of alcohol or sporting events means that most of us would much rather be doing our socializing in different environs. The article also offers a second hypothesis: “Robert Frank's explanation is that Keynes failed to spot the importance of context. We consume more because technical progress has vastly improved the quality of goods on offer, and as we get richer we want the luxury car…” There is always a better mouse trap to build and own, etc, etc, ad infinitum. So, in essence, we are all highly self-conscious mice, or perhaps their grotesque cousins, trying to keep pace with the pack, wanting more and more and working desperately to get it.
That’s a likely scenario for some. But as Richard Wolff and other left economists have pointed out, Americans are essentially working harder just to try and keep their standard of living the same, not to raise it. Real wage earnings and purchasing power have stagnated or decreased since the 1970s. While the rich kept getting richer, the middle class found itself treading water and sinking fast. We took on credit cards and second mortgages, leveraging ourselves to death, and the end result was a credit bubble that exploded in everyone’s face four short years ago.
It may sound positively anti-American, but I don’t want to work this hard, or this much. (As I wrote that, I heard my own father rolling over in his grave.) And the ghosts of our Puritan ancestors may strike me down for my "work ethic" apostasy, but I’d rather spend time with my family than sitting behind a computer screen pretending to be nice to people and feigning concern about their problems. For those of you who genuinely love your job and are thrilled to get out of bed each morning—even Monday morning—I wish you joy and peace. I really do. So, in the spirit of goodwill, I bestow all of my Mondays from now on to you. Go forth and prosper. Meanwhile, I’ll be kicking back with a cold one watching Zumba.
...at least on Saturdays and Sundays I will be, by gosh.
 |
| Bob Geldof, above, performing his latest wonder: Levitating Africa. |
No comments:
Post a Comment