The days around the “official holidays” always amuse me as I look at work schedules and productivity. For context, these comments are coming from a software geek who works in offices. For four years I worked for a company where the day after Thanksgiving was technically an official workday. Business as usual. Uh-huh. Right. The reality was that 2/3 of the employees took it as a “floater holiday” or vacation day, and the rest that came to work either got a ton of work done without interruption, or spent the time slacking off.

Fast forward to my current job, where we have Friday as a holiday but in theory we’re working today through Wednesday. The reality is that about half of my project team is on vacation meaning that these days will either be incredibly productive, or incredibly useless. Unfortunately my current role is one where I need to coordinate a lot of information amongst multiple people, and with half of them on vacation that will be a challenge.

What’s it like at your office? Are you productive when half your employees are on vacation? Or do you use this as prime web-surfing time? Feel free to chime in with an anonymous comment…