July 4th is a federal holiday, so lots of businesses close. US law certainly doesn’t require you to close your business, nor does it require you to pay your employees extra if they do work on the 4th, but most likely, your company considers it a holiday. This year, the 4th is on a Tuesday, so I’m going to make a radical proposal: Treat the 3rd like a holiday as well. Here’s why:
An Awesome Four Day Weekend
Instead of having to work Monday, have Tuesday off, and then come in on Wednesday, your employees could have a great four day weekend. That allows people time to travel, relax, or get some summer yard work done. For those of us who throw awesome Independence Day Parties, having an extra day to do the work makes our parties even better.
To keep reading, click here: Should You Declare July 3rd an Additional Holiday This Year?
And note: I do throw an awesome 4th of July party, only it will be on the 1st, because, you know, I live in Switzerland. If you’re in the area, you’re invited. Email me.
Our company has opted to provide the additional paid day off on the 3rd.
Yay!
Really? It is time for you to get a real job and see how real people work. Where did you get your human resource “experience”? It appears from your lack of understanding of people, business, profit, policies, etc, etc your background must be a figment of your imagination. Why not close every day and just pay employees? I don’t know where you worked that you think everyone slacks off before/after a holiday. Your advice has no touch with reality. Those sources who carry your column should evaluate that decision.
I work in manufacturing. It actually costs our company too much money to justify starting up for one day, shutting down the next, then starting up again on Wednesday. So we opted to switch out President’s Day for July 3rd on our list of paid holidays for 2017.
I’m not understanding where all of the hostility and resentment are coming from. Not every business can operate like this, but you shouldn’t assume that this suggestion makes zero sense at all. It just makes zero sense to you.
Chill out parker davis! It is just a light-hearted post. And every place I have worked it, the productivity is lowered the day before a holiday. Maybe your workplace is not the norm.
We have off the 3rd “because of our hard work and dedication.” Perks like this make me not want to leave!
Exactly. Little perks like this build love and dedication.
My company’s corporate offices are closed on July 3 because, yes, that makes sense for the environment. The same way it makes sense for us to close on the day after Thanksgiving.
Most of our employees don’t work in the corporate office, though, and will be working on July 3 and 4 when we expect to be doing large volumes of business. It’s the nature of the industry. It’s one of the reasons I was more than happy to leave retail: the nature of that beast is to never have holidays.
When I worked retail HR, holidays were hard because the stores were open and they didn’t give a lot of extra privileges to corporate staff–which I think was fair. We were all in this together!
But people who worked on the actual holiday got holiday pay, so that was good!
My brother lives in Basel, I’ll tell him to look for the party.
Awesome. 🙂 Although the current forecast is for rain, so we might get rained out.
We’re open, but half the office is taking a vacation day the 3rd. Being that I won’t be traveling and don’t really need the day off, I see it as an opportunity to work in a quiet office and get a lot done. But I appreciate that I could have it off if I chose.
I happen to agree with one of your commenters on not seeing the need to have that extra day of businesses closed. It is great for those businesses who don’t need daily customers and I can’t think of many except those who follow the banking/ business day work week schedule.
But there’s plenty of businesses (retail) who don’t follow that mandate of schedule and need to be open because the privileged employees will be out shopping , not caring about those retail employees who are working. It is to those employees , I am making this comment.
We have here in the US mandated 3 day holiday weekends , more than sufficient over the year, almost one per month, which everyone who works a business/ banking schedule get as a paid none worked day. But those who work in retail don’t get all those days as as paid, they are lucky to get 5 paid holidays and probably will still have to work to get the influx of shoppers who come out.
Perhaps we need to look at how our workers in US time off is encouraged and given, But those of you who get all weekends and holidays off , Remember to be nice and polite to those who have to work while you have time off.
You’re correct that industries like retail or food service don’t get many days off, but neither do a lot of corporate workers. The U.S. has less paid days off than any other developed country. We are hugely behind on that (among other things). I’ve worked for several companies that did not give you ANY vacation until you’d been there for an entire year, and part-time workers don’t usually get any at all. It’s not uncommon. More businesses are hiring freelancers for certain jobs instead of hiring actual employees and they don’t get paid days off either.
You are also correct that everybody should be nice to those working when they don’t have to. And FWIW, I absolutely refuse to shop on holidays unless it’s unavoidable.
I’m in higher ed and our president has given us liberal leave for the 3rd if offices can be shut down or run on reduced staff. I’ll still be working as I don’t have enough leave yet to cover this and my summer vacation. It’s evidently a quiet day on campus and usually people get sent home by lunch or early afternoon anyway.
Most US based businesses (excluding retail and food industry) have about 10 paid “holidays” each year (government workers usually get more), sometimes you’ll also get 1 or 2 “floating” holidays that could be used for something like this.
Toss in 10 days of vacation another 5 for “sick” time.
I’d rather have no holidays (always arguments revolving around religion) and the company says 25 or 30 days PTO. Use however you like, holiday, sick time, vacation. I’ve seen too many folks start to use “sick” time as “alternative vacation” because they rarely get sick and then if sick time gets rolled over and accumulates they retire 2 years early and take sick leave for.
I’ve been reading this blog for many, many years, and when I was in Switzerland backpacking a few years ago, I was trying to come up with famous Swiss people (other than John Calvin, I was pretty empty) and I did think, this is where Suzanne lives!
Never thought I’d be invited to a America Day party there though 🙂
I also work in higher education and it was quieter than normal for the summer today. It was a treat not having to sit next to anyone on the bus today.
It’s kind of like the day before Thanksgiving, except my male coworker with kids came in today, albeit late, because he couldn’t use his kids as an excuse to get an automatic day off on a day that is supposed to be rotated. Him getting a verbal warning for his chronic absenteeism made it worth coming in today. I’ve been waiting months for our boss to say something and she pounced at the worst possible time for him – right before our annual reviews. Here’s to hoping that she uses most of her spite and bile up with him so that she doesn’t have too much left for me.
I worked because I didn’t feel like using a vacation day now. I’d rather get the day before Thanksgiving off for travel.
It would have been nice getting the day off but our overpaid and good for nothing Republican governor and legislators loathe public sector workers, with the exception of public “safety” workers. We’re among the several states that don’t have a budget yet for the 2017-19 FY cycle, so it would have been nice if they could have worked today, until we have a budget in place.