The Daily BuzzCelebrating National Leave the Office Early Day the right way
Are you still in your chair at work, typing away on your keyboard? (Or, if you’re reading this, surreptitiously checking Yahoo on your phone while taking a quick break? Don’t worry, we won’t tell.) And do you find yourself pining for the hours to fly by faster, so you can start the rush-hour trek home?
This is the one day a year (at least unofficially) you don’t need to wait until 5 PM for take your leave.
Today is National Leave The Office Early Day, an American "holiday" that has gained some interest abroad, too (and let’s be honest, we celebrated Cinco de Mayo last month, what’s to stop us from adopting another foreign holiday?). You’re not likely to see this printed on any calendar, and it might require some convincing to get your boss to go along with it, but there’s actually good reason why he or she should be game to let you make an early departure every once in a while.
The day was created by Employee Productivity Specialist Laura Stack, an American public speaker who suggested the need for employees to not spend as much time in the office in 2005, and chose June 2 as a great day to make it a priority.
Stack, however, isn’t entirely thrilled with how the day has evolved in the ten years since she first suggested it. She stresses that it isn’t an excuse to do less work, but instead is encouraging people to prioritize their tasks:
Let’s set the record straight: National Leave the Office Earlier Day does NOT encourage people to play hookey. Rather, it encourages people to be more productive during the day, managing their time better, and eliminate time wasters, with the goal of leaving earlier than the normal 10-12 hour day workers often log. Through better productivity, you CAN get down to eight hours, leave earlier, and get home to your life. But you still must accomplish the same results. So if at 3:00, you’ve put in a full day and achieved what was required, then go for it!
But shh, you don’t have to tell your boss that. Just remind him or her that studies have found countries with fewer working hours, like Germany, have much higher productivity rates than their counterparts elsewhere in the world putting in more hours every year. And you can also add in this little tidbit about how employees with flexible work hours are found to be healthier, too.
If you do manage to increase your productivity today to the point where you can skip out a little early, you can celebrate a second ‘holiday’ today, too.
As it happens, according to the same celebration-a-day site, it’s also National Rotisserie Chicken Day. Now if heading over to Swiss Chalet for an early quarter chicken dinner isn’t the perfect way to enjoy that extra time away from your desk, I don’t know what is.
