No Hope

A couple of days ago, I wrote a post about not hating Mondays because on Monday there is still hope. I've had several people ask me what I meant by that. I'm a bit more specific about why Fridays are such a pain when working in a law firm in one of the first posts I put on this blog. What I meant was that on Monday, there is still hope that the week will end nicely without any major (or minor) catastrophes. On Monday, there are forty (if you're lucky, only forty) whole hours before you in which you might actually get at least one project completed.

As it turns out, crappy Fridays are the exception rather than the rule in most work environments. One of the secretaries here in the law firm where I work came from the outside. She hadn't worked in a law firm previously and said that in her previous work life, she actually used to look forward to Fridays.

It seems that in the normal work world, Mondays are the hated day of the week. She said that on Mondays, there were always meetings and leftover work from the week before and people were just generally in a rotten mood. By Friday, everyone was happy again and people actually worked at a more leisurely pace.

"No way!", says I. "You mean the competitors of your previous employer didn't come up with arbitrary ways to jack with your company at 4:30 Friday afternoon? At around four o'clock, the fax machine didn't go completely insane? You left the office at 5:00?! You didn't have to work on the weekend as the result of something that suddenly became an emergency fifteen minutes before you were walking out the door?"

What a novel concept.