The weekend is 100 years old – but have ‘skiveday Fridays’ and hybrid working ruined it for everyone?
Summary
The Guardian piece marks the weekend as a 100-year institution, tracing its origins to Ford's 1926 shift to a two-day weekend and outlining how weekends have evolved with four-day-week experiments, hybrid work, and the omnipresence of smartphones. It explores the divide between 'time owners' and 'time slaves', the cultural rituals of Saturdays and Sundays, and the debate over whether a three- or four-day weekend is feasible in the modern economy, citing pilot results and policy proposals. The article argues that the weekend remains a shared social construct even as work patterns shift.