We had a similar setup in our 1970’s university computing center. (Monday first; Sunday last)
Two weeks of DDDOOOO
Two weeks of OOODDDO
Two weeks of OOONNOO
Two weeks of NNNOOOO
Shifts were 6-6. We were down from 6 pm Saturday to 8 am Sunday, and from 6 pm Sunday to 6 am Monday (except for hardware/software maintenance, when we could volunteer for overtime). The 8-6 Sunday day shift was up for grabs at double time (we took turns if more than one person wanted it). Over the eight-week period, the twelve day shifts were paid the same as the ten night shifts (due to salary premiums for working nights). No one wanted night shifts (but I did), so I did a lot of swapping of shifts.
There was always four days of off time between day/night shift changes.
This lasted four or five years - then we went 24/7, and back to 8-hour shifts.
The columns are labelled Sunday (in red), Monday, Tuesday [fire], Wednesday [water], Thursday [wood], Friday [gold], Saturday [earth], then it repeats, for a total of 14 columns.
I read a book about nuclear submarines [Big Red] which explains that submariners live by an eighteen-hour day (six hours on watch, six working in their departments, and six hours off). It also mentions the communications officer conducting lay Christian services on Sunday, though; I suppose anyone interested in a traditional daily or weekly activity just has to keep track of the time…
I always thought a 6 day week w/b convenient. 4 work days, 2 week end days, 5 weeks per 30 day month, all months 30 days with 5/6 extra (weekless/monthless) days tacked on at the end (or sprinkled throughout the year)
In fact, they did not get a lot of sleep and their fatigue levels therefore had to be monitored carefully. But on paper they had six hours, possibly more, off duty every 18 hours; what does not add up?
73 is a prime, so having a year of 73 five-day weeks won’t allow you to group those weeks into a higher level of subdivision (“months”) of equal length. Also, you’ll run into trouble with leap years. You could have a French revolutionary calendar-style “epagomène” leap day that is not allocated to any of the weekdays, but that’s kind of cheating.
Ever since reading an essay by Asimov on various calendar systems, I’ve thought that a year consisting of thirteen 28-day months, with a intercalary day (two in leap years) to make up the difference, would be very convenient.
No need to ever change calendars, no wondering, Is the fifth a Friday? Every month would be exactly the same. The 1st is always Sunday (for example); the 18th is always Wednesday, etc.
The only downside is having an odd (and some believe unlucky) number of months.
You could also have twelve 30-day months with five (or six) intercalary days, but that means up to seven different arrangements of months, although the most sensible organization would be to repeat six arrangements twice.
So not as big an improvement over the current system as thirteen 28-day months. But if Jan. 1 was Sunday, Feb. 1 would always be Tuesday, March 1 Thursday, etc.
And that would still be easier to remember than twelve months of four different lengths arranged more or less randomly around the year. No one but savants can memorize all the permutations of the current system.
The whole point of this thread is that we should not care about seven-day weeks, or, at least in the past fewer people cared about seven-day weeks. The Aztec religious calendar had a 13-day week.
5 days is not bad, because, remember, progress means people are supposed to be working fewer hours, and it also neatly fits into 10, and 10 is metric/revolutionary or something.
That depends on the period you mean when you say “the past”. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition (i.e., about the last one and a half millennia as far as mainstream European civilization is concerned), and also in Islam, the seven-day week is very important: It is considered to be divinely mandated and defines a whole range of religious obligations. Gregory had no problem redefining the calendar in 1582, but he did not dare touch the days of the week.
No scheme that did away with a rigorous 7 day week (and I mean no extra year end days as well) would be approved in the US any time soon. The Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religions would fight it tooth an nail.
If it came down to it (there were some impetus to change the calendar instead of taking the easy way out and keeping the existing calendar that everybody already uses), why? Why should the religious or cultural calendar have the same number of days per week as the civil calendar? In Java today it does not.
Naturally, I am assuming nobody is going to try to force anybody to come into work on their Sabbath.
PS wait long enough, and the length of the year, length of a day, etc. all change anyway.
“Because that’s the way God mandated it” will be the argument. I don’t think it’s exactly rational, but then I don’t think the very religious are about things like that.
And there you have your problem. As soon as employers need to accommodate the holy days of religious employees, and those religious employees make up a significant percentage of the workforce, you won’t be able to avoid building your civil calendar around the religious one. In most cases it will be easier to close shop altogether on Sunday than to distinguish between Christian and non-Christian staff, with the latter coming in on Sunday.
In the old days when many parts of the world were isolated from one another, I could see an isolated group having any calendar they wanted without a problem. Today’s world is a “global village” when it comes to business and travel and communications. Attempting an alternate calendar would just be chaos.
The thing with any change is - there has to be a reason. Europe converted to the Euro because it was a lot easier than managing a dozen different currencies, when travel became common. The Gregorian calender fixed a real problem where religious feast days diverged from the days they were astronomically tied to, when the religion was important to the whole of Europe.
Something like a 10-day week was only possible because revolutionary fervour was important, and the ones who objected obviously had insufficient fervour, when there was a guillotine to correct that problem. Hence, it fizzled when the motivation to adhere was gone.
The metric system , however? The need for a consistent measurement system was obvious, and with the rise of international trade, and the fact that France dominated the continent for a decade or more, made it universal enough there was no point in going back to the foot size of the current emperor of Prussia or Austro-Hungary.
The current calendar works and has sufficiently few problems that nobody sees an urgent need to change it. This is even more obvious in a wolrd where you can look up the anticipated dates and wekdays of any year in seconds. With a diverse workforce and even fewer weekly shopping time restrictions, there’s less incentive to change and more risk of disruption. Imagine the chaos if we had, say, a 5-day week (1 day off, 2 days?) but certain people were entitled to every 7th day off for religious reasons? You would certainly need to bring back the guillotine to ensure compliance.
