Erf.

[psipsy]

At work, we have a compressed work-week schedule, commonly known as 9/80. I may have explained this before, but if not, here's how it works: Instead of working a normal 8-hour day, 5 days a week, each work day from Monday to Thursday is 9 hours long. Then I'm off that Friday. The next week, the 9-hour shifts from Monday to Thursday repeat, and I work 8 hours on the second Friday. The 8 hours from that "off" Friday are effectively farmed out over the course of 2 weeks. So, in 2 weeks time and 9 work days, I put in a full 80 hours. If you want to see it in calendar form, it would look like this:
M-T-W-T-F
9-9-9-9-0 36 hours
9-9-9-9-8 44 hours

Going from 8 hours to 9 per shift wasn't as much of a jolt as one would think. Once I'm at work, the extra hour comes and goes, and it enables me to take on jobs that run a little longer. What I get in return is every other weekend is a 3-day (and when combined with certain holidays, a 4-day) weekend. Paychecks aren't an issue since we're paid bi-weekly. It makes vacation usage a little wonky, and holidays are only paid for 8 hours (to be fair to the people who stay on a regular 5/40 schedule), but they let us use it in 1-hour increments or make up the hour elsewhere in the week.

For me, it shines its brightest when there's a convention I'm planning to attend, and it's on the same weekend as an "off" Friday. Not all conventions land on it, nor do I expect all of them to. When a convention does land on one, it means I can use that vacation time for something else. If not, I can deal with it. Also when an off-Friday is in the same week as a regular holiday, I'll add a couple days of vacation and presto! I have the whole week off. Magical.

The program is entirely voluntary and employees can go on or off it if they want, but I've been on it for about 5 years now and can't imagine going back. It's also proven highly popular throughout the company. It's reported that over 70% of employees have chosen to go on it.

For as long as the program has been in place, there was a definite beginning and end to the schedule on a yearly basis. It would run until mid-November, meaning there were two months where everyone reverted back to a 5/40 schedule before it automatically resumed in mid-January. This was mostly because of the cluster of holidays used for Thanksgiving and Christmas Shutdown. Well, it seems they figured out how to work around those, because they just announced the 9/80 schedule is now year-round.

The end result is that with the 9/80 Fridays plus the holiday schedule, I am now effectively off from work for over half the Fridays in a given year, before any vacation time is factored in. Taking an additional 2 days off around Christmas/New Years would yield a 17 day stretch of time off from work.

It might be a bad time of year for road tripping, but with that much time, I might actually get some cleaning done.