I get no substantially fewer calls or mail on fridays than on other days.
I can get my work done in four days, but I also get work requests with same-day deadlines, either a soft expectation that you can miss sometimes but not structurally, or a hard expectation that you simply can't miss.
This is especially the case for friday because clients will often work weekends on the high-priority stuff. Sometimes they rely on something that takes me 2 hours on a friday, if I don't do that, they're stuck till monday. It's just not acceptable in my line of work.
I've not really found a good solution.
I can get fridays off formally, but then you're not just cutting your salary, you're also cutting chances for promotions (which isn't just a matter of pay, but also a matter of career development, personal development, keeping work interesting and dynamic, status/ego). There's a strong preference for employees with full-availability such that clients have one point of contact, instead of multiple parttimers across the week. And leadership positions are expected to always be working during regular working hours.
It depends what kind of company. The company I'm at is a consultancy, so you're (ideally) mostly working on billable customer projects - you are not going to get away with disappearing for a day. And when you're not on a customer project, you are on a 7-week countdown to termination, and are constantly asked by random people what you are doing.
I can get my work done in four days, but I also get work requests with same-day deadlines, either a soft expectation that you can miss sometimes but not structurally, or a hard expectation that you simply can't miss.
This is especially the case for friday because clients will often work weekends on the high-priority stuff. Sometimes they rely on something that takes me 2 hours on a friday, if I don't do that, they're stuck till monday. It's just not acceptable in my line of work.
I've not really found a good solution.
I can get fridays off formally, but then you're not just cutting your salary, you're also cutting chances for promotions (which isn't just a matter of pay, but also a matter of career development, personal development, keeping work interesting and dynamic, status/ego). There's a strong preference for employees with full-availability such that clients have one point of contact, instead of multiple parttimers across the week. And leadership positions are expected to always be working during regular working hours.