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Monday Morning Dread

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    #26
    Originally posted by Sporting View Post
    God, yes, especially after the summer hols.
    I think I hated spring term most of all - post-Christmas let-down, plus cold, dark mornings, plus school per se...

    ...and I guess today would've been the day.

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      #27
      So if we were to move to a 4 day week as is being increasingly mooted, would you rather have Friday off and still get Monday dread, or Monday off?

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        #28
        This reminds me a bit of some stuff I did on "psychological safety" with regards to work quality and satisfaction. I think that has a huge role in dread like this. I realise now that I never really felt safe in school (or even on the bus to school), whereas I felt safe at home.

        Another time I felt dread was coming home from work when we had noise polluting neighbours. Often I could hear their music thudding away as I turned the corner of my street. As I walked home I could feel my heart rate increasing as I got nearer to my street, and all those physical manifestations of dread. I didn't feel safe at home because we were being constantly invaded by noise.

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          #29
          The last day of the holidays was a complete frustration for me when I was a kid. As it was my last day of freedom I had to spend it having as much fun as possible. So I'd go out and play football, but after five minutes think that this was my last chance to spend all day watching TV, but after five minutes of that I'd realise that I was missing my last chance to play with my lego, so I'd nip off to do that for five minutes, until I realised I was wasting the opportunity of playing football so etc etc. So basically just wasted the day. Every time.

          On the bright side, my Mum used to buy us new pencil cases every summer. So there was always the anticipation that this, finally, would be the term that we'd find out what set squares were actually for.

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            #30
            Originally posted by hobbes View Post
            So if we were to move to a 4 day week as is being increasingly mooted, would you rather have Friday off and still get Monday dread, or Monday off?
            I'd have Monday off, I think, if forced to choose between Friday and Monday. But tbh I'd prefer Wednesday.

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              #31
              I'm not sure that I ever dreaded school or work in the way that others here have, but neither was a place that I particularly wanted to be so Sunday evening was always accompanied by the sinking feeling that the weekend was coming to a close and a resumption of the grind was imminent. One of the many things that i enjoy about retirement is no longer having to experience that slump.

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                #32
                Originally posted by gjw100 View Post
                One of the many things that i enjoy about retirement is no longer having to experience that slump.
                That's one of the things I look forward to most about retirement, for sure. Also never ever ever having to go to sodding work ever ever again.

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                  #33
                  When I first started working in the post office in the 80s, there was one guy who was suspended for alleged mail theft. It dragged on for a couple of years before a tribunal found him not guilty ,and he was reinstated. Because he was reinstated fully, he was entitled to about 5 years leave, and was only about 18 months from retirement. On his first day back, he walked into the duties section and said " I'm taking every Monday off until my leave runs out, do you have a problem with that " Obviously they didn't, which was great if you were on spares, because it was one of the handiest deliveries going

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                    #34
                    One thing I used to do was set the alarm clock to go off at the normal weekday time on a Saturday morning. I'd wake up, think oh fuck it's time to get up, and then realise after about three seconds that it was Saturday and fall back to sleep with a huge smile on my face. Wondrous.

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                      #35
                      Sounds blissful. My memories of getting ready for Saturday morning school were further blighted by my sister's smug look as she let me know who the guests were going to be on Swap Shop before turning over and going back to sleep.

                      By the age of sixteen/seventeen, I finally 'snapped' and simply stopped going in on a Saturday. (Rebel that I was, like.)

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                        #36
                        I have one of the middle three days off during the week nearly every week, so Mondays aren't the start of a slog, but they're still shit, mostly (mostly unnecessary) meetings.
                        I find it useful to have a Sunday evening routine - bath, change bedsheets, prepare clothing for week etc.
                        In previous jobs (and a previous life) I used to enjoy a relaxed, slow-drinking Sunday evening pub session to round the weekend off and stave off the anxiety. Which meant a stinking hangover during all those Monday meetings.

                        The 4 day week, if introduced is going to be a shock for people, because they're probably all thinking "wahey! Long weekend!", but in actual fact a lot of people are going to have a choice of Tues, Weds or Thurs.

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                          #37
                          I plan to ease into retirement in a few years doing 4-day weeks. Having a Friday off tacked onto a regular weekend feels like a week to me.

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                            #38
                            I got it all through school and pretty much had it all through my working life too. Songs of praise, That's life or some horrendous sitcom of the time, Piggy in the middle I think it was called. That coupled with my mum, bless her, ironing away on the landing with the big light on.

                            I don't mind my job, so it could be worse but things always seem a lot bleaker late Sunday night than they do by 10.30am on a Monday. When I was in a job I really despised, the night before, the commute in, the walk up to the office were all a hundred times worse to anything I feel nowadays.

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                              #39
                              "No, Honestly" (ITV, 1974-1975) was my Sunday night sitcom of dread. I'd be in bed upstairs and it would be blasting from the telly downstairs.

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                                #40
                                If you dread going to work, the best thing to do is to always carry around your latest payslip with you. If it looks anything like mine, any time you feel dread or stress, you can just pull it out, look at it and go "They don't pay me enough to care this much", then you can get on with your life.

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                                  #41
                                  That's good advice and I can certainly relate to it from my past. They pay me peanuts so they think I'm just a monkey so what am I giving a shit?

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                                    #42
                                    Pre-lockdown I was working a four day week and had Wednesdays off, which was very nice. Somehow working from home I'm back on a 5 day week, though I'm pretty sure that I did more work on the 4 day one when I was in the office. Also, without really being able to go anywhere or do anything outside the house I don't exactly feel a great loss of that extra day off right now - pre-covid it was my going for a hike day as the kids were in school.

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                                      #43
                                      Originally posted by pebblethefish View Post
                                      If you dread going to work, the best thing to do is to always carry around your latest payslip with you. If it looks anything like mine, any time you feel dread or stress, you can just pull it out, look at it and go "They don't pay me enough to care this much", then you can get on with your life.
                                      That was one of the reasons I quit a job back in 2008. I had to make up the bills for projects that I did for external customers. I would write down "Project Specialist, 80 euros / hour". The Project Specialist was me. I didn't see anything close to those 80 euros an hour in my bank account. Letting you employee know just how much the company is profiting off him/her is a really good way to destroy employee morale.

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                                        #44
                                        I'd definitely take Fridays off over Mondays. Otherwise Tuesday just becomes the new Monday and all the pesky idiots who cause me the most irritation get a days head start on fucking things up.

                                        That sounds very negative doesn't it.

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                                          #45
                                          I'd never experienced anything even approaching Monday Morning Dread until 18 months or so ago. At that point 2 of us were independently running very similar volunteer-led projects, the aim of each essentially being to ensure that asylum seekers have roofs over their heads. It made sense that the projects were merged but it was with a horrible sense of foreboding that I greeted that news when it came. As I put it to senior management at the time, I was being asked to get into bed with someone I wouldn't even share the time of day with if I didn't have to share an office with him. Worse still the merger was going to release our immediate line manager to other duties, one of us therefore would take a lead role on the merged project and would be responsible for the line management of the other. No prizes for guessing which way that went. I lasted 6 months before I took a month off with stress. Naming the problem helped a little, but only a little.

                                          Spinning the situation as positively as I can though, the end to the issue is nigh.

                                          How much the insecurity of my position has added to my anxiety is hard to say. I've been with the same organisation for 18 years or so in various roles and went through the first of many redundancy processes almost 10 years ago - I interviewed to keep my job the day after we brought our eldest home from hospital for the first time. So all told I think I'm pretty philosophical about these things. Anyway the (Lottery) funding for my half of the new role ended last April. We'd been led to expect a decision on a further bid by March but were told all decisions were being put on hold due to the virus. My salary was paid from reserves for a couple of months as we'd been given a vague promise of bridge funding. This eventually came through in July to take me through to December. There's an underspend on the project to take me to the beginning of March but that's it.

                                          I spent Christmas mulling over the offer of being taken up on my own suggestion that I take a month or 2 unpaid leave in the hope we get a decision in the next few months (it's not a competitive bid, we're expecting the funding) but then thought why the hell would I want to stay somewhere when it's clearly damaging my health - gift horses move in mysterious ways or summat. So instead they're paying me until the end of March, my redundancy package will mean I don't need to worry about not having an income for a while (and Mrs H is the chief breadwinner anyway) and I finish this Thursday. To concentrate on home schooling for a while. Joy. I think!

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                                            #46
                                            Originally posted by gjw100 View Post
                                            I'm not sure that I ever dreaded school or work in the way that others here have, but neither was a place that I particularly wanted to be so Sunday evening was always accompanied by the sinking feeling that the weekend was coming to a close and a resumption of the grind was imminent. One of the many things that i enjoy about retirement is no longer having to experience that slump.
                                            Yeah, I'd go along with that. Though it's balanced by the sense that weekends aren't that special oasis of freedom anymore. Chores come up everyday of the week.

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