For years, I have been the beneficiary of a schedule that requires each employee to work a closing shift one day per week. Each one of us comes in at 1 and works until 9 on an assigned day. We only close late Monday through Thursday nights, and my night is Monday.
This might sound unpleasant, especially considering the negative buzz that Mondays get as the first day back after far too short a weekend. Monday mornings for most people are part of the cultural lexicon of unhappy things working people have to endure. The alarm always goes off too early on Mondays. The urge to have a lovely lie in and skip the rat race is at its strongest. Deeply melodramatic feelings of nostalgia for the last two days off develop their own potent emotional gravity. We pine, we long, we ache for Saturday's independence and Sunday's gloriously unfettered lack of office grind.
Well, not for me the unmitigated ballyhoo. While other people are sobbing into their grits facing the new work week, I've already been to the gym, and am sitting in my recliner, feet up with the dogs watching my shows or reading or tapping out my draft for that week's essay. While other people are combing their inboxes for the email that Jane sent at 5 p.m. on Friday or totting up that week's to-do list, I'm shamelessly adding a few hours to the weekend's leisurely respite from the last work week and pleasurably deferring the next one.
When I moved into my current position, more than a decade ago, I was informed that I would be closing on Mondays. Up to that point, Tuesdays had been my night, which was awkward and unpleasant. It was so odd to start the week off normally and then get to have the morning off the next day. Then, after getting home—it always takes me the damnedest time to wind down after a day at work—I sit there staring straight at the ceiling waiting for my eyes to whack closed. So, I gladly accepted the new Monday shift, seeing that lovely extension of the weekend before me like a weekly snow delay to be coveted and enjoyed. Ever since then, I have jealously protected my priceless closing night from others who would pry it from me.
The other nice thing about closing Mondays is that occasionally one gets a respite from the late close shift when a holiday makes for a long weekend. On those weeks, unlike the poor saps who have to close on the other nights, I just get another day off and the rest of the week breezes by. They, meanwhile, have to dread the disruption of the week by having to stay late on Thursday or something.
“Monday, Monday,” sang the Mamas and the Papas, and they had no idea how right they were. But Monday mornings are not all rose petals and cream. We Bares are pragmatic and sensible folk. Rather than take time off work for a doctor or dentist appointment, I have traditionally scheduled these medically necessary events for Monday mornings since I am already off. Like unhappy blips on the radar screen of life, these sparse but no less pressing interruptions of my Monday joy disrupt and dismay.
When the dentist office called to remind me of my biannual cleaning recently, I noted with chagrin and disappointment that I had scheduled the oral torture session at 1030 on a Monday. It was so situated that I didn’t have much time after the gym before needing to be in the cleaning chair. Under other circumstances, this might seem like a pretty good set up. However, things are a little more complicated for me.
I have a genetic heart condition. This requires me to take a strong antibiotic an hour prior to going to see the dentist. Once I have swallowed the horse pill, my innards begin a complicated process of vacating my system of everything I have ever eaten. This can leave me feeling rather like the local farmland gentry are having a hoedown just beneath the belt buckle. So, having chugged the pill with a gallon of water, I started the dicy process of waiting for the signal for me to fly to the loo. This is not a relaxing scenario for my habitually calm Mondays.
A secondary problem arises when it becomes apparent that the dentist's schedule and mine are not aligned. They are thorough and careful with my teeth, of course, but ultimately, I'm always a little pressed for time to get home, change and head off to start the work day. They schedule my time and I'm always early, just in case they're ready, but they are perpetually behind the eight ball. Add to this the Cossacks doing their Russian kick dance in my lower intestines and things can get a little fraught. This last time, I was so unhappily affected by the antibiotic, that I had to scamper straight home after seeing the scheduling lady. I made it just in time. I felt robbed of my usually calm Monday and perturbed about the potency of the medicine.
Then, of course, I had to switch on the bath and have a wash and dress for work. For the rest of that day, I was worn out and more than a little digestively haggard. I also had a sore jaw from having the mandible propped open like a screen door on a cool Autumn day. When I got home that Monday night, I was shattered, a little unwell and more than a little irritable. I lay down and turned my face to the wall. What, I asked myself, is a man to do?
By the time the next Monday rolled around, it felt like the last time I'd had a relaxing pre-work chill was months ago. This could not be borne. What is the point, I asked myself, if I have a morning off and cannot enjoy it? In the depths of that night, while I tottered around the dark house, I had an unusually hot idea. I resolved to take the whole day for the next dentist appointment, so if my innards started giving me the elbow, I could just go straight home and rest. I rarely take a day off for my own health issues, but it seems that when I need them most is on the days I set my appointments.
We Bares pride ourselves on going to work every day. Not for us the almost constant use of sick leave of our younger peers. Being that I hail from the X Generation, I am bound by the vows of that venerable era to go to work regardless of what ails me. Arm off? See you at 9. Cholera? Remember we have that meeting with Jane about that email! I've worked through severe musculoskeletal pain, wounds, fever, colds, the ague, sore throats, roaring headaches and intestinal dysregulation that would make lesser humans fall to pieces. Well, we Bares are not lesser humans. We set our teeth and muddle through. We are about the best through-muddlers there are. My maternal grandfather once paved an entire back porch while one arm was broken in a sling. If I'm not mistaken, he also had a bad toothache. Sterner stuff about sums it up.
I have for years looked on with something approaching paternal disappointment when my youthful coworkers take their leave because they had a hangnail or split ends or, gods forbid, they needed a mental health day. To show up, even in less than ideal fitness is, for mine and previous generations, a point of deep pride. However, I think that I will take a page from their play books and start using my sick leave, as necessary. I will never be able to just call off because “I just can't quite manage today”. But, anticipating the dyspepsia associated with having to take those dentist meds, I could plan on being out the whole day on a Tuesday or even a Thursday without feeling like I was a malingerer.
If I take the whole day off, even if I'm feeling like the wreck of the Hesperus, I can get something done around the house and be close to the bathroom as needed. I have built up enough sick time to allow the whole 82nd Airborne two days each with enough left over to “take the cure” for myself for three more months. Best of all, it saves my beloved Monday mornings.
Could there be anything more wonderful? Four glorious hours between gym and having to step in the rain locker to scrape off the outer crust and don the uniform for work is enough joy for anyone to be getting along with on a Monday. I sit in my chair joyously imagining my coworkers grunting and sweating under the cruel lash of workaday strain as I scritch our pups behind the ears and yawn contentedly. My work day won't start for ages, I think, as I stare off into the near distance. Life seems like one grand, sweet song.
Those Monday hours are far too valuable for my mental and physical wellbeing to load them up with doctor appointments or other nonsense jotted on my calendar. Nothing will go to pieces at work if I take a day. Even if it does, I'll find out about it when I get in. Its all worth it to save my blessed Monday mornings!
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