It’s been a while since I moaned about China’s retarded holiday schedules, mostly because in recent years, it hasn’t been too bad, but now the idiot who makes up the schedule is back to his moronic ways. My guess is, he’s never actually had a proper job and therefore has no clue about the impact of his decisions.
So here it is, we break for the weekend as usual and come back to work on Monday. For one day. Then we’re off for 3 days. Then we work for 8 days straight. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
To make matters worse, this schedule was announced only a few days ago and differs from the original schedule which actually made sense. Rumour has it that it was changed because the original schedule would have meant 2012 had more public holidays than 2013. And we can’t have that, can we!
Beijing Cream expresses it perhaps better than I:
To recap: the sanctity of weekends means nothing here. Holidays will be forcing workers to go into the office on five Saturdays and an entire week of Sundays (seven). In two instances — Labor Day and Dragon Boat Festival — workers are working seven straight days before getting three off (then two on, two off, before returning to the normal workweek schedule). In the case of National Day, one workday is sandwiched between nine off-days.
I was going to comment but as usual this bureaucratic ineptness sent my blood pressure soaring so I had to go and lie down for a while.