Weekends hit different when one is employed and it kinda makes me feel like I’ve been scammed. Ostensibly, it’s a time to take a break from working and have some “free time” to do one’s own thing, but more and more I have the feeling that it’s just “sanctioned procrastination” — especially when one is working on one or more complex or sticky projects during the work week. This, in particular, makes me feel like the weekends of “my time” are just somehow borrowing against and compressing the “work time” that ends up pressurizing the stress of the job.
Deep down, I feel like weekends are perceived as concessions that Big Business has been forced to make to keep the workers coming back, and they want to keep that “down time” as minimal as possible. They plan as if there aren’t breaks in the work, but pretend that they don’t so that they can guilt/trick the employees into coming back on Monday.
The deadlines haven’t changed, so not working on the project is just delaying the inevitable and compressing the work that needs to be done into a smaller time frame. And yet, since that work is essentially contract work that was assigned by someone else, who is going to spend time working on that project when they’re not getting paid for it? If one does that, then not only have they lost some of “their” time, but the expectations of the company will just grow to assume that the person is capable of even more work. This is particularly bad when one hand of the company promises work from the other hand of the company by a certain date that the other hand never even had the opportunity to agree to or deny.
Not to mention the fact that most people have the same two days off, which means everyone is scrambling to get their own stuff done all at the same time, whether it be work or play. And for a lot of us, two days off work is simply not enough. Too many people are “living for the weekend” as the carrot at the end of their work stick, only to find out that they didn’t really get much relaxation at all and now have less time to do the same amount of overwork that they previously had on their plate. Hence, the advent of the “Sunday Scaries” (that feeling of dread in regards to having to go back to work on Monday).
When I was unemployed, weekends were just like any other days for me except that all of my employed friends were ostensibly free to meet up and hang out. Trouble is, because they were locked into these scam times of “busy relaxation”, they weren’t around because they were too busy burning out in their free time like they do at work.
I think it would be so much better if our society could better balance out those rest days such that it evens everything out for everyone. Sure, your “weekend” might be Tuesday/Wednesday, but at least you’d likely have more time to get whatever accouterments and supplies your “restful” hobbies entail, and maybe have to put up with the General Public a whole lot less. Or, just change the work week such that there’s equal time off for every hour spent working. 3.5 days working, 3.5 days of personal time. Every week. Balance.
I dunno. Whatever. Weekends are a scam thanks to Big Business, and we’ve bought into it because if it were up to them, we’d all be working 24/7/365 like robots.
What a way to run a societal railroad.
