This thread made me remember something related. I was going to post this in that thread, but felt it could be a possible “hijack” and I don’t want to hijack.
When I was a kid, (1970’s) I vividly remember it being standard practice for many businesses to only be open for a half-day, on Wednesdays. They usually closed up between noon - 1 pm. As far as the types of businesses that practiced this: IIRC, utilities, banks, jewelry stores, bookstores, dime stores, libraries, most “office” jobs, doctors, etc.
Does anyone else remember this? What was it’s purpose? Whatever happened to this practice?
AFAIK, a very small few types of businesses (in my town) still practice half-day Wednesdays. This seems to only apply to physicians now, AFAIK.
In the Navy we’d occasionally get a 1/2 day off on Wednesdays. It was referred to as “Ropeyarn Sunday”. I’ve never seen this tradition in civilian life. Where did you grow up?
IIRC, this was because religious services were/are held in many Baptist churches in the South, on Wednesday. The same businesses which were closed on Sunday, because of services, were also closed after noon (or in some cases all day) on Wednesday for church.
For what it’s worth, this was small town Mississippi, circa 1960’s.
I grew up in west central Indiana, in the 60s and 70s. They were closed, the doors were locked, but the people were still in there working, they didn’t have the day off. Wednesday afternoon was the day they did the books for the week. Remember everything was done by hand with prehistoric instruments like typewriters and pencils and pens and crayons… where was I? Oh yeah. Likewise in the Navy. We really didn’t have the day off. We were supposed to use the time to take care of/repair our uniforms, shine shoes, etc.
Except for doctors, if I remember right doctors played golf on Wednesday afternoon, if they could get away with it.
On preview, it could be what NinetyWt said. My family didn’t go to church.
It used to be very common here in the UK - it wasn’t always Wednesday, but it would be the same day for pretty much all of the shops in any given village or town. It only works if everybody observes it - if one shopkeeper decides to open anyway, he has an immediate competitive advantage over his rivals and they are compelled to do likewise.
It was explained to me as being done to give everyone two days off a week - since most places were open half a day on Saturday and closed on Sunday, closing on Wednesday (a typically slow day anyway retail-wise) made up for working part of Saturday.
It didn’t seem fair to me - you still had to get up early 6 days a week!
In my little Midwestern town, Wednesday afternoon closing is still observed by one of the two banks, most of the lawyers, the dentists and some of the insurance offices. The reason is “men’s day” at the local country club. In the town next door the closing is on Thursday afternoon for the same reason. Some of us take it as a chance to have one undisturbed afternoon in the middle of the week to catch up. Others go play golfand drink, or poker / bridge and drink in the never-ending winter. Some just go home and become reacquainted with the wife. It is a nice small town tradition that is being wiped out by the demands of modern, highspeed, 24-7 commerce.
In my little town (rural Southwestern Ontario) stores used to close Wednesdays too. No idea why, as God knows we don’t have a country club. Just saying that it’s not confined to the States.
Here, just outside of Boston, the schools have half-day Wednesdays, every other Wednesday or so. I’m not sure what the purpose is – administrative housekeeping, maybe? I guess it’s a long-established custom, but it caught me by surprise. I never had half-Wednesdays as a kid.
While we’re collecting anecdotal evidence, when I was a kid in Hawaii (80s-90s) school was 2 hours shorter on Wednesdays. No change in businesses that I can recall.
We had off every Wednesday afternoon throughout elementary school because it was Catholic school and Weds PM was when the non-Catholic-school kids would go in for CCD (catechism classes). I remember fondly being a seventh grader and our little crew going off to Burger King on Weds PM. good times
I worked as a bank teller during the summer in the late 70s and we had and early-close day. And, yes, it was for doing weekly paperwork and balancing. In some branches, tellers were also recruited for filing cashed and deposited checks to be sent back to customers.
I go to a public high school in Manhattan Beach, CA, and we have “minimum days” on the last day before Thanksgiving, Christmas Winter, and Spring breaks. This means that we come to school at the normal time but leave around 12:30 instead of around 3:00. As a result, every class is shortened considerably. Nothing much is usually learned on this day, as you might imagine. My understanding is that the state of California counts this as a day for funding purposes, so it’s slightly better for our budget than simply leaving off Wednesday entirely.
Actually, in eastern Massachusetts in the 1970s, most schools had a half day one Wednesday a month. It was slated in the contract for union actifvities (sometimes called “professional development”, but only union stuff counted) Teachers were not technically supposed to go home early, but some might, depending on how relations were between the teachers and administration and union were that year. Only the students actually got the half day off.
In english universities, we all get wednesday afternoon (well, from about 2 onwards) off, the idea being is that that’s when we “compete in athletic and sporting pursuits”, which teaching institutions should promote. Back in high school and previously, we didn’t get wednesday afternoons off because we had P.E. lessons anyway.