When given the choice, more hybrid workers stick to their soft pants on Monday and Friday, while suiting up the rest of the week. This new kind of work schedule has become so popular, it has spawned a crude shorthand. It’s an acronym, made up of the first letters of the days of the week these employees are in the office, fashioned into a slang term for genitalia: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Better Than WTF (Wednesday, Thursday, Friday)
Using anonymized location data from cellphones, commercial real estate firm Avison Young is tracking the gradual return of downtown workers to Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. Foot traffic in urban centers such as Toronto was lighter on Monday and Friday, according to Avison Young. (Evan Mitsui/CBC) Over the past five months, foot traffic in these urban centers was heaviest on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays — and lightest on Mondays and Fridays. A similar pattern was observed in May on public transportation in three Canadian cities. In Toronto, the average number of subway train boardings was 663,000 on Mondays compared to 751,000 on Thursday. Also in May, there were significantly fewer commuters taking Toronto’s southbound subway from Bloor-Yonge station in the downtown core on Mondays and Fridays compared to Wednesdays and Thursdays. People boarding buses and trains scheduled to depart downtown Vancouver between the hours of 3 p.m. and 6 p.m., peaked midweek and dropped on Mondays and Fridays, according to TransLink numbers. Calgary bus ridership followed a similar pattern, peaking in the middle of the week and falling on Monday and Friday, according to city numbers.
TW-T workers mean coffee sales are down
With more employees setting their own schedules and working from home on Mondays and Fridays, some businesses that rely on office workers are feeling the stress — like Cecile Lau’s coffee kiosks, which sit within Calgary’s downtown pedestrian network. LISTEN | Hear first hand what it’s like in Cecile Lau’s cafe: Cost of living4:53 Only in the office Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday? There is a nickname for you “So [over] in the last month, Mondays and Fridays have half the sales compared to midweek — Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,” Lau said. “It’s like we operate four days. But it’s out on the fifth day, because even if it’s late, I have to get staff here.” TW-Ts go out for fancy downtown coffee less often, whether it’s downtown Toronto or downtown Calgary. I have no idea if coffee shops in Nashville, like the one pictured in this 2015 file photo, have the same problem. (Mark Humphrey/The Associated Press) The caffeine purveyor said it is also seeing fewer requests to cover corporate lunches on Mondays and Fridays, which it calls a big blow after enduring two tough years of pandemic restrictions and office closures. Lau would like to see the TW-T crowd turn into a MTWTF crowd. She told CBC Radio’s The Cost of Living that it would be so much nicer if all her customers would come back, see each other’s smiling faces and meet in person. They could also more easily enjoy the benefits of enjoying a coffee in person, rather than through a video call. “Smell the scent,” Lau said.
Soft pants preferred Monday and Friday: research
Between April 11 and May 2, 2022, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) surveyed riders about their intentions as they transitioned from working from home full-time to a hybrid arrangement. When asked which days riders preferred to work from home, the majority of those surveyed said Friday, closely followed by Monday. Wednesday and Thursday rank below Monday and Friday, with the least popular day to work from home being Tuesday. A manager at the Business Development Bank of Canada, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak for his employer, said almost everyone on his team follows a Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday work-from-home schedule. “After the weekend, you can relax, sleep [and] take your time. And then on Fridays, stop working and enjoy the weekend,” she told The Cost of Living.
“High trust environment” can work for a TW-T
Employers like software company Wave Financial said that even if employees take their week (and weekends) off by working from home on Mondays and Fridays, that doesn’t mean they’re not doing their jobs. Ashira Gobrin, head of people and culture at Wave Financial, says the new normal for working at the company will be to allow the company’s 350 employees to do their work wherever they do their best work: at home or in the office . (Tina MacKenzie/CBC) “We have a high-trust environment,” said Ashira Gobrin, the company’s head of people and culture, from her home in Toronto. “Everyone has proven that we can work productively from home.” Wave Financial has approximately 350 employees throughout North America. Before the pandemic, these workers commuted to their offices every day. But since then, the company has adopted a hybrid approach. “We don’t want to tell people they have to go back to these days or these hours. We’d like people to keep the flexibility they’ve enjoyed so much and be able to take ownership of the spaces that work best for them,” he said. the Gobrin. Hybrid work is now a fact of life for many companies, according to Cissy Pau, principal consultant at Clear HR Consulting in Vancouver. Pau’s perspective is that managers who order workers to return to the office on certain days should be prepared to lose staff because, right now, in the face of labor shortages in some sectors, many workers are holding the cards. HR consultant Cissy Pau says managers who aren’t flexible can lose employees who like the idea of being TW-T. (Jonetsu Studios/Submitted by Cissy Pau) “I think there are going to be employees who say, ‘I’m not doing that. That’s just not going to work with my life,” Pau said. “They have the flexibility for two years and … workers can vote with their feet, they can walk, because there’s such a shortage of talent.”
