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serynI'm pretty sure I hate Saturdays.
Sundays are bad too.
First thing I dislike about Saturdays, most of the good lunch places are closed. Second thing I dislike about Saturdays, everywhere is full of people. Third thing I dislike about Saturdays is the inevitable failure of Netflix streaming.
Netflix has really been pushing their streaming service. I think they're getting a hassle from USPS and it's probably cheaper for them if they don't have to mail you anything. But their infrastructure really melts under the pressure of a typical Saturday night.
I'm constantly surprised that people are heartily anticipating the weekend. I know I'm glad when I can sleep in, and I know working really sucks so having a day off is wonderful. But the Saturday/Sunday weekend is impossible to get anything done. The grocery store is mobbed. Laundromats are mobbed. Parks and theaters and malls and even sidewalks are mobbed. It's like suddenly there are 200-times (20000%) more people. And yet... there are fewer restaurants open.
It's almost impossible to get a hotel room anywhere within 5 hours of here on a weekend, but if you call about a Tuesday night, you get your choice of rooms and usually a bargain offer.
It's hard to get to work during the week. Buses and trains and highways are jammed from 5am to 10pm. Well, actually those are jammed on weekends too, because there are very few buses and trains so they're over-full and more people drive too.
It seems like we should allow choice of weekend days. Everyone gets 2 days off per week. I would love to have my weekend be Tuesday/Wednesday or something like that.
The only real problem is schools. Parents with schoolchildren will insist that they be allowed to have matching schedules and schools could not allow flex-weekend scheduling... each school would need to be constant. And for the families who have multiple children, all levels of school in the area would need the same weekends.
But think about the vast improvement if everything infrastructure related was open every day of the week, each day the same. No more Sunday bus schedules with a bus every 2 hours compared to Monday's every 20 minutes. Stores wouldn't have ridiculously constricted Sunday hours and stores which refuse to be open on Sundays for religious reasons would be hugely obvious and people would start avoiding them for their discriminatory practices. (This happens to Jewish stores now, by the way... many people are actively offended when a store is closed on Saturday.)
Around here we have enough people who are Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu or atheist that fixating the societal standard weekend around Sunday does not make sense.
We've obviously got too many people if the only non-crowded thing to do on weekends is stay home. But no one accepts my opinion that we would all lead happier lives if the population were decimated, so maybe we could just time-shift some them so they're not all hogging the swings in the park and the oranges at the store.
Sundays are bad too.
First thing I dislike about Saturdays, most of the good lunch places are closed. Second thing I dislike about Saturdays, everywhere is full of people. Third thing I dislike about Saturdays is the inevitable failure of Netflix streaming.
Netflix has really been pushing their streaming service. I think they're getting a hassle from USPS and it's probably cheaper for them if they don't have to mail you anything. But their infrastructure really melts under the pressure of a typical Saturday night.
I'm constantly surprised that people are heartily anticipating the weekend. I know I'm glad when I can sleep in, and I know working really sucks so having a day off is wonderful. But the Saturday/Sunday weekend is impossible to get anything done. The grocery store is mobbed. Laundromats are mobbed. Parks and theaters and malls and even sidewalks are mobbed. It's like suddenly there are 200-times (20000%) more people. And yet... there are fewer restaurants open.
It's almost impossible to get a hotel room anywhere within 5 hours of here on a weekend, but if you call about a Tuesday night, you get your choice of rooms and usually a bargain offer.
It's hard to get to work during the week. Buses and trains and highways are jammed from 5am to 10pm. Well, actually those are jammed on weekends too, because there are very few buses and trains so they're over-full and more people drive too.
It seems like we should allow choice of weekend days. Everyone gets 2 days off per week. I would love to have my weekend be Tuesday/Wednesday or something like that.
The only real problem is schools. Parents with schoolchildren will insist that they be allowed to have matching schedules and schools could not allow flex-weekend scheduling... each school would need to be constant. And for the families who have multiple children, all levels of school in the area would need the same weekends.
But think about the vast improvement if everything infrastructure related was open every day of the week, each day the same. No more Sunday bus schedules with a bus every 2 hours compared to Monday's every 20 minutes. Stores wouldn't have ridiculously constricted Sunday hours and stores which refuse to be open on Sundays for religious reasons would be hugely obvious and people would start avoiding them for their discriminatory practices. (This happens to Jewish stores now, by the way... many people are actively offended when a store is closed on Saturday.)
Around here we have enough people who are Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu or atheist that fixating the societal standard weekend around Sunday does not make sense.
We've obviously got too many people if the only non-crowded thing to do on weekends is stay home. But no one accepts my opinion that we would all lead happier lives if the population were decimated, so maybe we could just time-shift some them so they're not all hogging the swings in the park and the oranges at the store.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-24 08:32 am (UTC)"Jammed," really?
I'm not sure why more people need to work on Sat/Sun merely for your pleasure. :) The bus system in question used to have more service on weekends, but they cut it in part because not enough people were using it. (Budget concerns, too, obviously, but they ran surveys and held meetings to ask when people rode buses most often. I went to one of those meetings.)
no subject
Date: 2010-01-24 09:34 am (UTC)Most libraries are closed on Sundays now. Even though the librarians I talk to say it was one of their busiest days.
It seems like the transit authority should be able to tell when people ride transit based on fares. I know why they don't do that around here though, then it wouldn't match their preconceived notions of when rush hour is. Techy people don't usually start at 8am...
I cannot imagine how horrific the traffic would be without the invention of flex-time. I just think we need the flex-weekend too.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-24 12:14 pm (UTC)I don't see why they couldn't, actually; the only thing it would require is classes that meet less than five times a week...
no subject
Date: 2010-01-25 04:39 am (UTC)It's not impossible to work out. I don't think a lot of people would bother changing their weekends... but it would be awesome to have the choice.