New Brunswick technically only has Good Friday as a statutory holiday but the school system gives both Friday and Monday off and my workplace has both Friday and Monday as paid holidays (although I worked Friday and took a lieu day).
Spring break for us ended about two weeks ago. But my kids had Good Friday off as a “Spring Holiday”. In previous years they at least tried to shove a “Teachers Inservice” or “Administrative Day” in there but I guess this year they just decided screw it and called it a straight-up day off.
I was off last Tuesday & Wednesday, and yesterday and today (Money & Tuesday) for the first two and the last two days of Passover, because the store I cashier in is owned by Jewish people.
I worked Good Friday and Easter Sunday, where I got some thanks for working “on the holiday” and many a “Happy Holiday” and “Happy Easter.” I just say “Thanks, and same to you,” instead of pointing out I am a pagan who does not celebrate Christian or Jewish holidays.
My grandson had all last week off, as well as yesterday and today. Today was the last day of Passover and that’s why his (NYC) closed. IIRC, when I worked we closed both Friday and Monday. Monday was sort of compensatory for a Sunday holiday.
Victoria (Australia) here, and both Good Friday and Easter Monday are gazetted public holidays. MOST businesses and retail outlets are shut for the Friday (essential services excepted of course), but opening on Monday is elective. The first round of school holidays also fall into the Easter break so the kids returned to school yesterday (Tuesday).
I worked both days. We went into quarterly shutdown this week so almost all of production had Monday off. My kids in a public high school had Fri and Mon off. They had spring break two weeks ago. My wife works at a church school and had Tuesday off as well. My previous job had a union negotiated Good Friday holiday. Third shift there flipped Friday for Monday to have Easter Sunday night off.
England here; both Good Friday and Easter Monday are ‘bank holidays’, so most businesses are closed or open reduced hours. Easter Sunday has extra regulations, so many businesses that would normally be open on Sundays and bank holidays are required by law to close. This is partly determined by what they sell, and also by size (small shops can remain open).
Schools are closed, and generally Easter marks the end of term, so they’re closed for two weeks for the end of term holiday (occasionally this doesn’t happen, when there’s a very early Easter, when term ends a week or so later, but they always close for the 4 day Easter weekend).
Personally, I worked the Monday, and only didn’t work Friday because Friday is my normal day off.
Kids had Good Friday and Eastern Monday off. Both are public holidays in Colombia. The younger had the whole week off as is normal. The older is in her last year of high school and had classes Tuesday and Wednesday, highly abnormal. I though the whole country pretty much takes the entire Semana Santa (Holy Week) off.
I had Good Friday off but not Easter Monday. I work a four on, four off schedule. That is just the way my rotation fell. Had nothing to do with the holiday. We operate 24/7/365.
I happened to be on annual leave over Easter, if I wasn’t though, I would’ve had the Friday and Monday off. It isn’t a given, we are initially rostered to be on call, but once it becomes apparent our client will not be requiring our services, our on-call days turn into “unassigned” days, which is as good as a day off. This is working for a contract aviation company with a freight company being the primary client for our base.
Edit: My kids had Friday and Monday off as the start of their holidays.
I was supposed to have Friday and Monday off, but lost Monday because of a makeup snow day. I’m a sub, so I could have just taken it, my schedule is flexible, but I was scheduled to cover for a teacher yesterday and she asked if I could cover Monday too. She already had plans to be away before we had lost Monday.
For some reason, Maryland law specifies that public schools must be closed on Good Friday and Easter Monday. I don’t get it. As a non-religious person, Easter observance involves 20 minutes of looking for eggs Sunday morning. Even back in the days when my parents dragged me to church regularly, there was no conflict between going to services on Maundy Thursday and Easter Sunday and going to school/work on a regular schedule. We were mainline protestants. MandaJO mentioned Catholics going to church on Good Friday, but isn’t Friday mass usually in the evening? How would that conflict with school/work more than usual? Why would anyone need time off for Easter??
I didn’t have either day as a holiday.
Most Roman Catholic churches have their Good Friday liturgy at 3:00 in the afternoon, as that is the time that tradition says Jesus died on the cross. Many churches have some sort of prayer service (Stations of the Cross, rosary, etc.) between noon and 3:00, the hours Christ was on the cross. That’s why a lot of Catholics take the whole day even if it isn’t a holiday.
Maryland mandates that the public schools have Good Friday and ‘Easter Monday’ off, and to the extent that the schools continue to have spring break, they generally do it by adding time off before or after the four-day Easter weekend.
I assume that the four-day Easter weekend mandate is due to Maryland’s Catholic heritage, but I’ve never been able to discern the liturgical significance of Easter Monday. Maybe it’s the day when the resurrected Christ taught his disciples how to run church bingo games.
I worked both days, but we used to get out early on Good Friday. My bosses boss would just say “everyone go home early”. He no longer works for the company (not because of that 
). A lot of folks did take Friday off.
Brian
Easter is the biggest holiday in the Christian calendar. No Easter, no resurrection of Jesus, no Christianity.
I live and work in the USA but one company I worked for was HQ’d in Sweden. While I never got Good Friday or Easter Monday off, the Swedes always got Good Friday off. So I voted Yes to that.
In Norway Thursday, Friday and Monday are public holidays, a lot of companies have only a half day on Wednesday and schools and teachers always have the whole week before Easter off. This is in addition to a one week “winter break” in late Feb early March. There’s no “Spring break”.
I wonder if it’s the same way in Sweden, the same or similar days off around Holy Week.
Kids had Friday off as part of Spring Break. Our school district’s Spring Break is always the same week in April regardless of when Easter occurs. It just happened to cover Good Friday this year. I took a week of vacation last week to do Spring Break stuff with them.
I worked at one company that had a half-day for Good Friday (we shut down at lunch time). This was a dot-com start up with fewer than 100 employees. I’ve never even heard of getting the Monday off, except for the local Catholic school that got it off as part of Spring Break the week after Easter.
The Swedes don’t get Thursday off, so one third of Norway drives to Sweden that day to go shopping. I kid you not. https://www.thelocal.se/20170413/the-norwegians-are-coming-but-what-are-they-doing-in-sweden (Okay, so it’s just one one-thousandth of Norway, but still.)
How interesting. Strömstad from Oslo is only 140km, so not too bad without traffic. But that traffic sounds pretty bad. The farthest north in Norway I ever got to was Tromsø. To go shopping in Sweden, the nearest town of any decent size is Abisko. But that is a long 300km away. At least the northern lights there look amazing: Abisko, Sweden - Google Search.
Other than Sweden, I’d think there may be other countries giving days off during Holy Week. To Christians, Holy Week is about as big as it gets, for reasons I said upthread. But to non-believers, they probably can’t comprehend why. Like the OP.