I’ve had friends in the publishing, media, and music business who during the Summer, only have to work a half day on Fridays. They’d often go out and get nicely sloshed, and it’s apparently a longstanding tradition.
Is this practice still prevalent in those industries, or were my friends’ companies outliers?
What was the original rationale for the practice (other than all those industries having a reputation as pretty hard partying)?
Any other industries where this is common today?
Moderating message boards? 
Seriously, though, I’ve seen that in all kinds of businesses, but almost always with fairly small and/or fairly new businesses. It was common with Silicon Valley startups when I was out there.
One of the data points was Ogilvy & Mather, and it doesn’t get much bigger than that in advertising . . . .
Or older, either.
How about churches? Most churches I’ve attended scale back considerably during the summer. The service schedule is often reduced, clergy take vacation, and the office hours are shortened. There aren’t many major church days after Pentecost (usually late May to early June) so most liturgical take advantage of that time to have their ‘summer hours.’
I thought it was common in New York so that people could head out to the Hamptons or whereever their summer house was.
In NYC, and presumably other large American cities, “back in the day” (pre-A/C.), summer in the city was pretty nasty. So “the wife” and kids would be packed off to a summer place away from they city proper. (Depending on income, etc. Might only be Rockaway.)
So good old traditional breadwinner dad would be left to work in the city. But he would need to travel after work on Friday to meet up with his family for the weekend. Traveling late Friday might have been tricky, so letting dad off early could have been a way to make things easier, family life-wise. (And possibly also been encouraged to get dad home Friday night, rather than let him hang around in the city by his lonesome self and sample the Evils available to the lone male in the city.)
(Or I could have posted a terse answer like Dewey Finn.)
I work at a college and we have a 4 1/2 day schedule in summer. It was implemented about three years ago as a way to save energy: air conditioning is turned off Thursday night and turned back on Sunday evening. They are saving a lot of money, and we get what feels like a three-day weekend every week.
Most tax and many accounting businesses have a modified schedule during the summer. I haven’t heard of any using half of Friday to get started on a bender, though. As an example, the Liberty Tax franchise required (in 2005) franchisees to be open at least 60 hours per week during the tax season and only 20 hours per week the rest of the year. H&R Block closes many offices entirely during the summer.
Some of the administrative staff take Friday off at my university during the summer.
My department at a large healthcare company has summer hours; we get off at 3 from roughly Memorial Day through Labor day.
My only gripe is that it rewards the 8:30-5:30 crowd a lot more than the 7-4 or 7:30-4:30 crowds, since the 8:30-5:30 crowd gets off 2.5 hours early, while the 7-4 crowd only gets off 1 hour early.
I worked at a large ad agency (no, not O&M) until a few weeks ago. They had summer hours (defined as “closed on Friday afternoons from Memorial Day through Labor Day”) during the 1990s, but went away from them sometime before 2000, in large part because relatively few of their clients were observing summer hours any longer, and the clients insisted on being able to conduct business on Friday afternoons.
All administrative and dept offices at McGill close for 10 Fridays every summer as a result of an agreement with the unions in lieu of a salary raise. Obviously a university has less business in the summer.
One of my gripes with the Chapel Hill Transit system is that it runs a reduced service schedule whenever UNC is closed, supposedly because there is less demand during those times. I suppose it makes sense, but as a non-student resident who doesn’t drive it can be a bit of an inconvenience. On the other hand, the bus rides are free, so I can’t complain too much.
For some industries, “summer hours” are the opposite of what is being described here. The pickle plants located in the region where I grew up added extra shifts and people during the summer to deal with “green season”, when the local cucumber crops were harvested.
In at least 5 pharmaceutical companies that I’m aware of in Ontario and Quebec, the non-union staff get Friday afternoons off from Victoria Day to Labour Day, though they have to work an extra 30mins Mon-Thurs to make up for it. I don’t know what the union deal was - they may have had different hours, but I just don’t know what they were.
It seems to be alive and well in Big Pharma.
I don’t usually partake since I would rather not work extra hours four days a week just to have Friday afternoon off.
We implement an alternative work schedule for staff at my college. With supervisor’s permission (so no one office is completely closed) you can worker longer days M-Th and take F off. Same hours, just flexed.
The college in my town does this, too. The employees work a little longer Monday through Thursday to make up for it. There are far fewer kids here in the summer, too, so it doesn’t affect that many people. Not everyone does it; the president, all the vice-presidents, coaches, and some others work their normal schedules.
Some laboratories I’ve worked at do this as well, but some don’t. I don’t think this is due so much to the type of industry ( although it has some, I don’t expect any police dept shuts down when it’s hot) as much as it depends on the building, or maybe someone’s decision to save on cooling costs by shutting down the A/C for the weekend on half day early. Yeah, they spin it like they’re giving you more time to enjoy with your family, but really, its just to save on cooling costs.