It’s mostly simply just Wednesday, we call it Wellness Day, but often, referred to as Hump Day. Dictionary.com proffers:
hump day
or Hump Day
[ huhmp dey ]
Phonetic (Standard)IPAnoun
, Informal.
1. Wednesday, the halfway point in a typical work week:If business is slow midweek, try offering half-price drinks on hump day.
So, I guess the feeling is, if you work a full-time week, you ramp up on Monday and Tuesday go full throttle on Wednesday and can then enjoy a downhill slide on Thursday and Friday towards the weekend. Since the pandemic (yes, the hangover still lingers) times have changed. Days of the week became… arbitrary? And flexible working has made weeks a little less… structured?
Superficial internet research tells me that Hump Day became a thing in the 1950s or 1960s in the US. This immediately conjures up images of crisp white shirts, pocket protectors and horn-rimmed spectacles, pencil skirts, set hair and the clacking of typewriter keys. We’ve come quite a way since then and the working week drudgery seems to have dissipated into the air, like the smoke trailing from desktop ashtrays.
So, do we still think that Hump Day is a thing?
For one thing – hands up who works a full week in the office? I know a few people who do, but they seem to be in the minority in my circle. Our working week can be broken up from the daily drudgery by morning gym sessions and afternoon coffees with friends, school pickups and making appointments during the week! I remember back when, if I had a day off, I would go to the bank. Because I could never actually go to the bank. The bank opened after my workday started and closed before my workday ended and the lunchtime queue was too long and anxiety-ridden to chance it. What times!
I now have two contact days in the office – that I look forward to. I can schedule my hair washing days accordingly. Having to have office-suitable locks on the daily is a stress I am glad to have left behind. My ten-day workwear rotation now lasts two months, not two weeks.
If I can help it, Monday is a work from home day. That doesn’t mean that I am not completely ‘on’ on a Monday, usually I hit the ground running. It just eliminates the Sunday Scaries, which were very real in my home. By 4pm Sunday evening, everyone would be in a mood. Weekends are so choc-full of activities, if we forget to get bread and sandwich fillings for the week ahead, we can relax knowing a quick supermarket trip in the early AM will not derail our day. Nor plummet us further down the polling for Parent of the Year Award.
Is Hump Day just a psychological hurdle that we’ve placed in front of ourselves from the old ways of working? I really don’t feel the hump any longer, to be honest. I’m more of a Friday? Already? kind of person lately. Is it that our work week looks different? Or have our attitudes to work changed? We’re steered more towards finding fulfilling careers than the old punching-the-clock attitudes of generations past.
And, a secondary rudimentary internet search for “hump day” brings me to a whole lot of memes and commercial opportunities, that I’m not sure were intended in 1960.
