Four-Day Week Saves (and is) Green
When I started working at DDA (which wasn’t terribly long ago), people seemed taken aback by our four-day (but still 40-hour) work week. “Wow, that’s cool,” or, “Wow, I wish I could do that,” seemed to be the typical response (it was especially emphatic from the mailman when he handed me my mail a few Fridays ago).
While our four-day week at DDA helps us be more “green” and environmentally friendly, it also saves each of us some green (not to mention the totally awesome three-day weekends). One fewer fast food lunch, one fewer trip through the Turnpike toll booths, two fewer 20-mile drives in my gas guzzler, and one MORE day’s use out of the same pair of dress pants (just kidding fellow writers and office-mates, I wash them all the time…well, most of the time…sometimes…OK, on occasion…).
But now, everyone wants to come to the four-day party. First, it was state employees in New Jersey, Colorado, and elsewhere. Now, with school around the corner (really looking forward to bus traffic on the way to work, by the way), even schools are tossing around the idea of a four-day week. A Google News search of “four-day week”produces 266 results in the last two weeks alone, as newspaper editorials and small-town columnists debate the idea.
The idea seems especially “green” in the world of public schooling, which is always looking for ways to save money. Big school districts run hundreds of bus routes every day, twice a day. Imagine how much gas is saved, and the pollution prevented, by eight trips a week instead of 10. Not to mention heating costs, food costs, and everything else that could be saved.
Usually, too many people at a party makes for a crowded house, but in this case, the more the merrier. My wife Andrea watched some show a few months back about pollution, and later asked me bluntly, “Did you know we’re killing our planet?” as if it was the first she had ever heard about pollution. Now it’s become a running joke every time one of us throws a glass bottle in the trash, leaves the car running, or forgets to close a window with the air conditioner running.
At DDA, every copywriter, graphic designer, search engine optimization (SEO) specialist, programmer, and video artist is doing everything they can NOT to kill our planet. And if that means I’ll have to suffer through another long and grueling three-day weekend, well, then I’ll just have to live with that.
Entry by: Steve