How the Five Day Weekend Works

of our editorial calendar. Sure, yeah, yeah, sure, not not the not the the articles slated, but our actual calendar calendar. Oh no, no, no, I know you haven't. Well, you will be pleasantly surprised to find that if you go into the week of Christmas this coming December, we work two days. That's not and you know I'm not working any Are you taking those days off? Oh yeah, I'm taking off a couple of weeks. Wow, you know, I used up almost all my big catient time. I'm very

grateful for this, But do you realize what that gives us? Uh? Less, what it gives me? Well, it sounds like a two day work week. It sounds also like a five day weekend. Right, one man's two day work week is another man's five day week. Yeah, it definitely depends on how you look at if your workaholic two day work week, if you're you know, a slacker five day weekend, right, that sounds great? It does. And actually, um our HR department is isn't

the first to ever come up with this concept. It is so there's actually a movement of foot chuck called the Friends of the Five Day Weekend. There's actually a constitutional amendment, a proposal for one, which last time I counted had about signatures on it. I wasn't too impressed with that number. By the way, it could be better, um, basically petitioning Congress to say, all right, you know, we're we're going to have a two day work week from

now on and the rest is the weekend. Legally, you if you work more than this, you have to pay. You have to be paid over time. Right. I love that this group really went for it there. They didn't go with a three day weekend or even a fourth They just said, screw it, five days off, two days a week will work. Yeah, And we should probably give a little background on this group. I gotta tell you, um it sounds very tongue in cheek. It sounds um, almost satirical and a joke, and it almost completely is.

It's um. The group behind it is the Asheville Convention and Visitors Bureau, I Brave Asheville, North North Carolina, and um, this is uh an ad campaign of marketing campaign to get people to Asheville to you know, create this five day weekends so everybody could come to Asheville and spend their five day weekends there. Now, Gina, how it was

the idea just to get press, I think so. I think that was part of it, but I think it was kind of like a whole campaign, and then the press aspect wrote itself, especially once they floated a constitutional amendment, So it was kind of a tongue in cheek thing. But actually, um, people reacted to it. They responded to it.

You know, Hey, that sounds great kind of thing. Especially I imagine when there's like you know, they they had they held rallies at festivals and stuff like that, and I imagine the more beer there was there, the more of a response there was. You know, yeah, were five day weekend kind of thing. So, um, well, we found out about it here at how stuff works, and of course, as is our way, um, we took a tongue in cheek idea to the nth degree. It's extreme conclusion, and

wanted to find out. I mean, like, what what the deal is? Could this even work? What would happen if it did? So it's like you'd be careful making a joke around us, because we'll we'll we'll investigate it and publish it and if if it's a stupid idea, we'll we'll say so. But frankly, these people, I think they have a good idea. I think the friends of the Five Day Weekend they have a a good idea. And

they're they're actually pointing something out. What's that they're pointing out that Americans work way too hard and have become far, far too serious. Well, Donald Trump doesn't agree with you, No, he doesn't. But that's the Donald. You know. He said he said the idea was ridiculous. He did he actually he said it in his blog, right. I got to him in the first place. I'm impressed that he knows how to blog. So, um, yeah, he he didn't. He

didn't like that. But there's plenty of people who agree with the concept um and actually this this this idea that Americans are overworked is We've got yards of figures here, Chuck, Chuck, how about some figures. I'm the statmn UH in two thousand seven survey was performed by the Conference Board, and they found that a fewer than fifty percent of Americans were happy with their jobs, which is, yeah, that's pretty sad. Though UH in seven had job satisfaction. That's a sharp decline.

And you will know note that I think in nineteen eight seven, that was the year that the Michael Keaton pro America movie Gung Ho came out and really kicked the American worker into overdrive. We're not gonna get beaten by the Japanese. Let's get to work, you know, be the lovable Michael Keaton led the charge. Well, I think that's it centered exclusively around the movie Gung Ho. Yeah,

pre batman, Michael Keaton. Uh. And then there was another study in two thousand four that um, one third of all Americans feel overworked, which I thought it might be a little higher than that. To be honest, I would too, But I think we we've also developed an endurance over time, Tom and fat lazy pre gung Ho days to like, you know, kind of a lean, trim workforce. Yeah, and we have now that's slightly evidenced by and I know something else. You mentioned the article that, uh, a lot

of Americans don't use all their vacation days No. Ten of fourteen. Yeah, that's just that was in three thousand and six. That added to five hundred and seventy four million unused vacation days. Yeah, that is one thing you will never catch me with unused vacation That's great. Hats off to you, buddy. I just I don't I don't

get it. Time off is good. I'm not lazy. No, you definitely aren't lazy, but you know, you know how to live, you know how to take care of yourself, and the value of time off, it's a value at treasure it. But I think there's a lot of people. I think you could even say a majority of American workers don't know. They don't know how to do that. So that's kind of the point of this five day weekend. It's like, wake up, man, settle down, let's all just kind of chill out here there, learn to live like

chuck that kind of right. Well, I think I don't have any stats for this but I bet a lot of these types are the men and women that are after the dollar and that you know, they figure if they're snoozing, they're losing on money. And um, you know people use acidine rhymes to describe their motivations, right, and we're not really like that. We're meager livers and uh yeah, we we know how to be happy and content. Yeah without you know, making three hundred thousand dollars a year,

you're not making three Maybe I should renegotiation. So, um, if you'll notice, chuck the end of the five day weekend, Like I said, they proposed a constitutional amendment. Now, if Congress, for some weird reason took this up, championed it, and passed it, it actually wouldn't be the first time that they've done this. Did you know that there wasn't any such thing as a weekend in the United States until nine that's weird. And the weekend was actually created by

a congressional act. That's so cool. Yeah, I bet no one that that's that's the your takeaway today, folks. If you want to amaze around the water cooler, that's a good fact. The weekend was created by Congress, right, and it was called the Fair Labor Standards Act. Yeah, we talked about, um, we talked about the the Labor Department in Free Market Regulation podcast if we'll remember um, and

you know, they shouldn't exist in this free market. But really, the Fair Labor and Standards Act is one of these shining acts that really protects people. You know. It established a forty four hour work week, you know, Monday through Friday, about eight hours a day. Um. It also established a minimum wage, I got rid of child labor across the board. It was a good act and it's still the test of time, clearly because the forty hour work week is

still kind of between forty and still the standard exactly. Okay, So so what would happen if we did go to a two day a week work week? Um? Well, you tell me, you know, you tell me, Well, it depends on are you talking about economically speaking? Yeah, I know, people be a lot happier. Well supposedly, it depends. I mean, can you can you really say that? Well, that's just my feeling. Okay, let me let me tell you about

an unnatural law that you might be interested in. Right, here's the first problem with with the two day work week. How are you going to do five days worth of work in two days? Is it possible? Well, stay off Facebook exactly a good start. There's this guy named I believe Alan Parkinson. No, that's Alan Parsons project. I think you know, uh see Northcote Parkinson. He created Parkinson's law. It's like Murphy's law. Um, it's an unnatural law, right,

kind of a Rye observation um. And Parkinson's law says that UM work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. So if you have, you know, a one day job to you know, to do, but you're given a week to do it, it's gonna take you pretty much all week to do that job, no matter how hard you try. So I guess if you put Parkinson's law up to the you know, five day weekend, you could you could probably trim several days off of your work week if you just went all out for

those two days. Probably not going to be able to finish everything in two days, but it is possible, right, I would agree? Okay, So, um, So that's that's number one, UM, and then number two as far as the five the friends of the five day weekend see it basically, Um, we're not taking any time for ourselves as it is even on the weekends, because there's a lot of times, so much time spent working that the weekends are often

spent doing chores, housework, that kind of thing. And in a strict economic sense and as strict economic definition, actually, UM, leisure time is activities that give direct enjoyment. So just because you have time off doesn't mean you're engaging in leisure time, which is the whole point behind the five day weekend thing. We need more time to have leisure time because, like you said, we're vacuuming, we're running errands, that kind of thing. That's not leisure time. That's working

but not being paid for it, you know. UM, So that's another aspect of the whole thing, and there's also a physical aspect to it. Our health could actually improve, UM if we adopted a five day weekend case. In point a two thousand study UM from the University of Pittsburgh and the State University of New York Oswego, they found that there was a there is a direct correlation between middle aged men who are at risk for heart disease,

suffering heart attacks, and a lack of vacation time. Right I did a lot of articles recently on the heart and stress, as you know, and it's there. It's not supposed you know, it's those are direct links. Yeah, there's definitely a mind body link, and it appears to be stresses is the most clear um example of it, right right, So okay, so we would technically be able to to do most of our work in two days that we're

now taking five days to do. Um, we would uh, we would be able to actually engage in actual leisure time. Our health would benefit. And even more, there's a model already in place for lots of time off and that's in Europe. Correct. I went, I went to Malta. Remember this summer. There's this guy who's a diplomat over in crow Geatia. He's an English diplomat and he had like eighties six paid days off per year. You're kidding. No,

I'm not kidding at all. He hardly knew what to do with all the time off that he had, and it was fairly fairly common, fairly standard, and I'm like, wow, I get two weeks off, you know. So yeah, it was kind of um, it was a rough thing to come you know, face to face with, right I'm jealous of your We often talk about our weekend activities and I'm all, you really do do it right at your house. Yeah, but you you you have very you have a very improved house. Well, I'm renovating a house. Some of you

may know this, some of you may not. So there's a lot of work to be done on the weekends. Um. I do get pleasure out of that, though, So I guess technically that still counsels leisure time as long as you're driving. Pleasure is a direct pleasure. So, Chuck, let's look at it from an economic aspect. Now we know what the friends of the five day weekend. You're saying that it could be beneficial to us, but you know,

would it be beneficial of the economy. Well, this is where you need to school meet, because I know economics is your your one true love in life. I love economics. Actually it's so weird and nerdy, but I've become fascinated by it as I've grown older. And there's this guy who pertains to what we're talking about, um named John Maynard Keynes, and uh he appropriately enough came up with Keensian economics, and um, he wrote a paper basically Keensie

and economics is a form of macro economics. So before people would say, okay, um, there's this much much wealth in the world, or you know, people sold this many goods and um, you know there was this gross profit and then you know, minus expenditures, and now you have net profit. And there's economics. And keens is like, well, well, whoa, we're missing like a lot of aspects here, so like our are really um, I guess granular uh view of economics.

Now we're we're keeping track of office supply indexes or indicaes. Um, that's all KINSI. And he said we need to take into account debt and taxes and all this other stuff. Right, makes sense. So by the time he writes this paper, UM called um economic go Ahead, go ahead, Economic possibilities for our grandchildren. Right, And he writes that in ninety and he'd already established himself as like the the economic

genius of his age. So he writes this thing. Everybody's listening, right, and in it he says, okay, he took a very conservative growth rate of um of the economy and wealth, which he called capital um equipment. Yeah, thank you, um. He said two percent growth per year and seven and a half percent growth of the capital equipment, which is, I believe all the money available in the world, um, and within a hundred years we're going to basically be

living in this leisure society. The friends of the Five Day Weekend came up with, Yeah, I love this theory right now. He actually took a his estimates were pretty much spot on, and they were actually slightly more concerned. We've grown more than that, and I believe like our capital equipment has grown much more than seven and a half.

I think it's like a hundred or two hundred times or some some really enormous amount, and yet we're still not in this leisure society that Keene's envision within a hundred years. Even though we far exceeded his his predictions for growth, he was off the mark there for sure. He was though, why well, I think you actually didn't interview him, correct, I did two interviews, Uh, And I've always kind of had this idea that if you want to know a question, go to Harvard. It's they They

have some really really good interview subjects. And actually I also called a guy from Cornell too, and both of them just turned out to be spot on and um, yeah, from Cornell Robert Frank, and from Harvard Richard Freeman. And the thing is is I call both of them out of the blue. Neither one of them had ever heard of the five day weekend before, and both of them just right off the cuff talked just perfectly, gave me

all the information I needed. And as if that weren't enough, both of them had just submitted chapters for a book called Revisiting kens On the very question I called them about, and I had no idea that book was even coming out, So it was all just kind of going, like, you know, we're operating on all cylinders here. I'm kind of I can't sit down while I'm interviewing. I'm very excited. It's economics and all that. Um So Robert Frank from Cornell.

His his theory was that we haven't reached this Keynsian leisure society because Keenes grossly underestimated relative needs. So you've got basic needs, right, which are like food and water and say clothing, right, and then there's relative needs as well, which can also be basic needs, like, for example, clothing but instead of you know, tattered rags that keep you warm,

relative need would be a nice suit. And what Frank was saying was that, um, in our modern society, it's not enough to just have tattered rags that keep you warm. If you want to have a better life, if you want to provide for your children, you have to throw more into relative needs. So your suit has to be nicer so you can get a better job at an interview and then pay for your children. And it's become

much more important. You can't walk into a place in an interview and in rags, this basic need that's been recovered and expect to advance in life. So he it was his opinion that that's why Kenes missed the Mark Freeman and now you interviewed and this was from Harvard, correct, and uh, he just kind of flatly said that Keenes overestimated our desire for leisure and that it's a five

day work week is pretty optimal. Yeah, he said that that, Um, that labor and management came to a perfect agreement pretty much to the five day, five day work week, eight hour day. What do you think? I gotta tell you, you you know, I I had sent before that that's I don't like too much time off. It's weird. I feel weird. I feel like I have to do something, I have to produce something, and um yeah, too much time off

actually makes me a little edgy. I think a four day work week would be just about right for me. I think it'd be good to pepper it here there. I don't think it has to be standard every time, but maybe like twice a month you get a day or two off or something like that. And we're not talking about telecommuting. It's a different deal. It totally is. It's actually a day off, right, yeah, a day off where you're just not expected to do any work. Um. Okay, So so now we we the friends of the five

day week, they five day weekend. They don't, um they they're not the first to come up with it. Keynes did. Um. But I asked Freeman and Frank uh, you know what, really, what would happen to the economy? Epogetically? What would happen? Yeah, but you got well, I know the first thing that, um, you would have to do is to convince your employers to pay you a full wage for two day his work, so paying on production rather than time, right, which makes sense.

But I don't think either of them assume that employers would be willing to do that. So right there, you you've got two fifths of the wages we have now, which is fine for domestic products. Right, so anything that's produced domestically, Um, it's going to fall down and step eventually to reflect these two fifths of wages that Americans are making. In theory es okay, But also houses would get substantially smaller, cars would get substantially smaller, but we'd

be able to survive. Basically, America would take a gigantic step backward out of the rat race as one collective whole. But then it would all kind of catch up with itself and adjust itself. It would, and and everything would be fine. I would be much like it is now, except two fifths is valuable. But for and produced goods in comparison to our lowered wages, the prices of those would skyrocket. Right, So so long Sony plasma TV, because if you would be so, it be is out of

out of bounds. Is as you know, a five million dollar home is to the average person. Um, so you'd have that, but again we'd still be fine. Our our relative needs would with lower to to reflect that two fifth wage. But I think it was a Freeman, who predicted sadly that we would still compete with one another, like, we'd still want to get the best TV we could for two fifths of the wages we were getting, and

it we'd want it to be better than someone else. Yeah, which is kind of sad that, you know, even after taking a gigantic step backward, we would still compete with one another. There's an interesting article. It'll clearly never happen, but it's interesting to kind of think about what the what if? I think so too. So there's actually quite a bit more to this article, right, Uh, you tell me you wrote it. Well, let's let's let's just advise people to go on to our handy site, look into

our handy search bar. Just type five day weekend into the search bar, how stuff works dot com and stick around because it is uh. Listener mail time right, listener mail time, listener mail time? Okay, so, Chuck, who is our listener? Mail from? Our listener is David and we have the last name. We don't know where David's from. But David did not take kindly to our Delta Force podcast,

but he was very constructive in his criticism. Didn't just slam us David says, Hi, Chuck and Josh, I usually enjoy your podcast quite a bit, but your recent podcast on Delta Force was way over the line. While I appreciate the bone you threw human human rights activists at the end before suggesting that they may be killed for a policy disagreement, you're over the top adulation for all

things military was disturbing. You seem to suggest that any action they took was justifiable, saying how happy you were that they were taking care of business, not every policy decision made by our government, particularly when using shadowy military groups for the best. I'm not going to read it because it's too long, but basically he thinks our opinion of special forces might change if some European Arabian country special forces two tapped their way through the White House

to arrest our president. So he was kind of just disagreeing with a little bit. And at the end there David's referring to the colonel of Delta Force back with two tap methods, with two shots to the head of every terror, which I have to say, can we play a clip because we actually warned David and all the other listeners that it could evolve into something like this right, Sure,

let's listen. Okay it is Yeah, there's We should probably warn the listeners right now, Chuck and I will most likely devolve into some sort of weird boyhood admiration of all the sick, sick stuff Delta Forces done over the years. So just before warn if we start tittering or really excited or one of us takes our shirt off, don't be offended. Okay, so David actually shamed us a debt. We did feel bad after this one, if I wereall correctly, because we're not big workouts. No we're not. It's just

this weird power the Delts Force has over us. Yes we are odd, Yes we got a little a little juvenile, but yeah, David, generally we we would agree with you. We believe in in human rights and UM, diplomacy not military direction is as much. But I think one point that we tried to make it. I don't know if he made it clear enough, is that if there is action to be taken, we would much prefer a small operation UM, rather than some day and thirty thousand troops.

And yeah, and just quickly before we go, we gotta a message from another Dave about the same podcast. Hi, I listened to your podcast from the UK and really like the one about Delta Force. Would it be possible for you to do one on European special forces like in Germany and France. Cheers yes and sears to you Dave. Um. We were not aware that France had a special forefront. So some guys like that, some guys didn't. That's great.

Oh and don't forget our girlfriend in Sudan who started listening to it through her speakers and and it's an email saying that she felt uncomfortable doing so, so press pause, but she hit was happy with it as well. Great. So thank you to all three of you guys for sending email. Um and David, thank you very much for letting us know how you feel. We appreciate it. If you guys want to send us an email, let us know what's on your mind, whether you like what we said,

whether you didn't. Either way, we're cool with it. Uh. Send it to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you