Summer Fridays and the Under-Studied

Our pal Choire Sicha from The Awl has written about Summer Fridays at the New York Times Magazine, and argues that it may not last for much longer:

Summer Fridays are most likely on the way out for two reasons: Old media can’t afford them, and new media won’t allow them. This summer, Condé Nast’s Friday workdays in the World Trade Center will end at 12:30 p.m., ‘‘business needs permitting,’’ as the memo put it. (Beware, the coffee bar will close at 3 sharp.) But good ol’ Time Inc., Condé’s soon-to-be neighbor, canceled its summer Fridays as of last year. Sanctioned hooky and layoffs don’t pair well.

On the flip side, outfits like BuzzFeed, now a thousand employees strong, simply don’t observe. They’re too busy publishing the news, and they scoff at companies that have vacant floors by 2 p.m. (BuzzFeed, at least, once had a drink cart that appeared around 5 p.m. on Fridays. But no more.)

A similar attitude prevails in no-collar Silicon Valley, where all work time is flex time, and all flex time is work time. At Google, and places like it, summer Fridays simply can’t exist. That brand of privileged worker is free to set her own hours, free to toil from any beach on any day.

More interesting, still, may be this section that ended up being cut from the piece:

A great bit I had to lose from my NYT Mag piece on Summer Fridays, from a smart CUNY prof — http://t.co/c4tsi2KFbu pic.twitter.com/pFNDeIpiUq

— choire (@Choire) July 17, 2015

How do you study those who do not want to be studied? In any case, we’re not giving up our Summer Fridays!

Photo: afu007

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