Weekends

So, I think about the weekend a lot.

Like, a lot a lot

My main thought about the weekend is, why do so many people consider Sunday to be the first day of the week, yet count it as part of the weekEND?

The idea of the weekend is that it's the end of the week, right? So why is Sunday commonly considered to be the first day of the week, instead of the last?

Now, in the grand scheme of things, this isn't really important because weeks come one after the other in an endless cycle regardless of how we think of the days of the week. For all it matters, Wednesday could be the first day of the week and nothing would really change.

But it still bothers me a lot. Why call it the weekend if it includes the last day of one week and the first day of the next?

I mean, I consider Monday the first day of the week, and so does one of my employers (Mathnasium). Target, however, considers Sunday to be the first day of the week, as do many other organizations.

But that's not what's important right now.

What's really important is why weekends exist.

I took a class on Labor History of the United States during my senior year of college and learned (among many things) that weekends came about as part of the labor movement. You can thank unions and people who did walk-outs and strikes for your two days off each week, and for the fact that those two days off, for everyone who works a 9-5 Monday-Friday job (those who work in retail or food service or many other industries are not so lucky) coincide with those of many of your friends and loved ones. 

But if you don't have a 9-5 Monday-Friday job, you may have a weird weekend schedule. 

For example, when I worked at a Museum, I was generally working Tuesdays and Thursday-Sunday. I chose this to be my schedule, mainly because having two days off in a row is super-duper boring to me. I don't like not having something to do two days in a row, it's horrible. So I chose to have two days off non-consecutively (Monday and Wednesday) while I was working there, and that worked for me. Of course, this schedule overlapped with my being a full-time student for the better part of a year, so I didn't actually really have any days off at all since full-time studenting is pretty much a job and during the school year I had a second job in the Career Center at my school which I was working on Mondays-Wednesdays. But that's beside the point.

Now I usually work 7 days a week because I have 2 jobs and work 5 days a week at one (Mon-Thurs and Saturday for Mathnasium) and 2-5 days a week at the other (varies, but almost always on Friday and Sunday at Target). But a lot of peoples' jobs don't allow them to have Saturdays and Sundays off because places need to be open on weekends so people with those nice Monday-Friday jobs have things to do. Like, I would totally be in support of everything being closed on weekends so that retail workers and restaurant workers and stuff don't have to work those days, but then everyone would have nothing to do on weekends, and the world would not be happy (and like the people who work in places that are open on weekends would suddenly be free on weekends and also have nothing to do and it would just generally not be very much fun for anyone).

I think it would be super cool/better if there was some sort of thing where retail workers automatically get every other weekend off to enjoy the weekends, and if they don't want the weekends off, they can work the weekends they would have off and give other people the chance to have more weekends off or something. 

Either that or people working on weekends could be like automatically paid time and a half for those hours. I know some major companies do this (lookin' at you, Costco--time and a half on Sundays).

Anyway, those are my thoughts on weekends.

Really I'm just angry that Sunday is considered the first day of the week AND part of the weekend. Like, that's completely ridiculous.

xx,

Sienna

The Fierce Feminist