Summer Fridays

Last Friday I was chatting with Boss #1 and I longingly said, "I wish we had summer Fridays."

"For what," he said.

"I dunno, go home and get an early start on my Netflixes. Go back to sleep. Anything other than being here."

"Summer Fridays is an industry standard that is slowly, but surely, disappearing," he said. "I mean, not many people still have that house in the Hamptons to jet off to."

"Sure, not everyone has that summer house, but who cares? It's less busy in the summertime, hence half days on Fridays," I ignorantly persisted.

"Oh, Bluenana. Don't you know where summer Fridays came from? This industry was once made up solely of rich, privileged, white, Hamptons-summering folk. The only reason they created summer Fridays was so these people can get a head start on traveling out to their second home for the weekend. Nowadays, it's pointless."

Ding goes the lightbulb! Having been raised as a middle class, first generation Filipino-American, I'm not hip to the ways that rich people think. I never realized that the whole point of half days on Fridays was so people could beat the traffic on the Long Island Expressway.

The Tyranny of the Second Home is one of the most popular articles in the New York Times today, but I wonder if it's because of people the many people who can relate to the article or because of people who love to read articles like this, like an anthropological study of a fascinating breed of animal: the nouveau riche. I know which category I fit into.

I know I'll never have the privilege/hefty responsibility of having a second home, but I sure would like to be writing this post back in my warm bed.