Inside Panda’s head: 9-day work week! Whoever heard of that?!
Chinese gov’t has an interesting way of um…planning things.
Since Chinese New Year is coming up (actually on the 7th of Feb in case people want to know) and it falls on a Thursday and also the fact that people normally get days off for this, this is how the gov’t decide to rearrange our schedule:
Give us Feb 6-12 off and make us work the weekend before to make up for the off days of Feb 11-12. Why they do that?! It gave us a 9-DAY week!! 9 DAYS!! Ok I know there are some jobs that require long work weeks and maybe I am just spoiled…but still…9 days!!! But I didn’t do all 9 days :p We had snow in Shanghai so I took one day off. Because I live far from work LOL Yes I commute about 3 hours a day total (to and back) but this allows me to take days off 
The weird thing is I am not sure if the gov’t ever did some sort of productive analysis when they make people work 9 days…I mean most people are gone now. Traffic is like almost non-existent in Shanghai because people asked for more days off. So what is really the point? The rest of us just go through the days waiting for the holiday to come and it’s really hard to work because you can’t really start anything before the holidays. Like me, I don’t have anything important now that I can start because there is no point.
I don’t get it…
Cynthia Yang
Born in Taiwan and grew up in Indonesia, Thailand and China. Went to the US for college and have been working between Shanghai and Connecticut ever since. Fluent in Mandarin and English and can understand basic conversation of Thai.Related Posts
3 Comments to “Inside Panda’s head: 9-day work week! Whoever heard of that?!”
February 5th, 2008 at 12:55 am
Oooh, I feel for you.
I used to get those now and then when I worked in a hotel in Zurich. Particularly in a restaurant, bosses sometimes don’t mind asking you to come in on your off-days, and next thing you know it’s 2 weeks of work straight.
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February 5th, 2008 at 3:17 am
People need their weekends.
I once had to work 20 days in a row and believe me it was hell! I also worked late into the night sometimes going home after sunrise during this time. Boy was I glad to get out of this industry :p
(And yes, people start making stupid mistakes so it’s not really productive as you pointed out.)
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February 12th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Yea no kidding! I had 10 different problems coming at me a week before the holidays…geez…
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