This is kind of a nut-drag post that I wrote las year while entering into a funk. This diatribe has comfortably collected cobwebs in my drafts file since. I’m cleaning things out, as it were, in order to fill it up again with new half-assed thoughts and ideas. This morning, as I was ambling away at one such impulse, my ADHD/Menopause brain dragged my ever-willing mind on a tangent of roadmap-like proportions as I hopped from one excitable thought to another. Eventually, I ended up in my drafts file looking for…I have no idea. But I did find a fully written blog and decided to drop it here while I get back to my other work. Whatever the hell it was.

Society came to be this way: Capitalism prevails over community. And the people suffer for it, dragging their asses to jobs they are unsatisfied with to barely get by. And here we are as a collective, vying for Fridays, weekend warrior-ing on Saturdays, dreading the upcoming 40 on Sundays.

It’s true, there was little-to-no regulation over employment in the way back when, and people worked for very little in very deplorable conditions. Henry Ford’s decision to popularize the five-day, 40-hour workweek assisted in the push to bring it to law within a couple of decades. And it’s true, he utilized this workweek to boost the morale of his employees (and to improve productivity by doing so – as if there are any unrewarded gifts). And it’s also true that Ford was an antisemite and believed black people to be inherently inferior, owning a newspaper that fostered fear and spread outright lies. The guy was an asshole, who counted Hitler among his fans.

So. This guy, this ugly, tiny, self-righteous man, is who I’m looking at when I want to turn the work week on its end. Sure, it sounds like he did something good for our society given the previous working conditions we faced. And that’s true…to an extent. Just don’t go thinking it was entirely altruistic on his part; that would be an outright lie.

And here we are, less than 100 years post Fair Labor Standards Act. And it’s got some of each, awesome and awful. The passing of this Act established overtime beyond the 40-hour workweek, a standard minimum wage and regulations regarding child labor. These things are the awesome.

The awful? Here we are, commerce overtaking commonwealth, less and less mom-n-pops out there than ever, working for The Man and making them incredibly wealthy. We’re stuck in the work week we have agreed upon. And while, I have heard chat about four, ten-hour days being a possible thing, the message remains that our professional life is more important than home, given we spend more waking hours at the prior. Our precious time is skirted away from us, mostly just to make ends meet, while all the while the pay gap – that fucking pay gap – widens to a chasm.

So, here’s my idealistic idea: The Two-Day Work Week. That’s right, Ladies & Gentlemen, and the whole alphabet of human gender and sexuality, we have a winner. Let’s flip the damned bitch on her head and snatch away those extra days wasted on life away from our homes and those we love! Let’s sleep in on Mondays – long and deep, doing absolutely nothing all day long. Let’s grocery shop on Tuesdays, lunch with friends on Wednesdays, run errands on Thursdays, and do absolutely nothing again on Fridays before hittin’ it hard at work on Saturday and Sunday. Oh! And let’s take a long nap every weekday, too!

Oh, that it were so easy. I guess I can dream. And meanwhile, five days a week I’ll be slingin’ drinks and polishing countertops over patron gossip at the Lounge. I’ll serve up stupid jokes alongside delicious cocktails, doll out advice that rivals their therapist and barely twist their arm into another drink. Hey, it’s my job. And until we collectively snag onto my brilliant bizzaro world concept, I’ll see you at the bar for a laugh!