Sunny days off? Britain’s work ethic has turned into a ‘me’ ethic

The heatwave has arrived and already a red mist of madness has descended across the land. No one is poaching eggs on the pavement yet, but the grass is fried yellow, the salads are boiled ham and Jacob Rees-Mogg has undone the top button of his tweed waistcoat.

For we are British, you see. We cannot simply enjoy a few days of seasonal sunshine like normal inhabitants of a temperate climate; like the sensible Danes or the factor-30 Dutch or the French with their nicely cut linens and breezy pique-nique lunches.

Instead, we go completely insane, in a million different ways. Kids are fed Sandwich Spread until it pools out of their ears, hosepipes are banned and people scour the internet for heatwave survival tips as though they were crouching under a tattered palm leaf in the noon Sahara.

ONE social media user advised beating the heat by placing a damp towel in the freezer for an hour, taking it out . . . and then packing it in a suitcase and moving to Belfast.

My favourite piping-hot slice of lunacy is that some British firms are being pressurised into giving staff Sunny Days off — extra leave to be used when the weather is nice because workers have been complaining about having to turn up when it is ‘too hot’.

Why stop there? Let’s also have Rainy Days, when they can take a day off when it is ‘too wet’.

And snowflakes will certainly need a fair allocation of Snowy Days — those wintry afternoons when they don’t want to work because it would be so much nicer to stay at home to build a snowman and have hot chocolate afterwards than commute through the cold and slush.

One company claims Sunny Days are a good thing because they reduce the number of ‘sick days’ being taken during spells of hot weather, so staff morale increases.

‘It keeps everyone happy,’ they said. I’ll bet it does!

But with the country and the economy in the state it’s in, surely bosses should be more worried about staff productivity than staff morale?

Yet what seems to be important these days is not the work ethic but the Me ethic; what matters most is not the balance sheet but keeping the work/life balance tipped heavily in favour of Sheila in accounts who needs Period Leave next week; Marion who’s away on a Menopause Month; and Geoff in marketing, who is on a Vape Break right now, but is taking August off for his mindful cycling sabbatical in the Alps.

God forbid any employee should ever be inconvenienced by the rigours of the weather or the everyday trials of the working world or — shriek! — having to answer the phone on a Friday afternoon. Or indeed, having to do anything he or she doesn’t feel like doing. Perish the thought that a worker could be troubled by hard graft, long hours or the demands of obligation when they could be focusing on their own personal fulfilment instead.

What about the stuff it takes, to get up when the morning breaks? It seems to be in short supply.

Yet during the big heatwave of 1976 — and this one is only a puff of hot air in comparison — people coped. They soldiered on without shutting down their businesses, getting hysterical, or cancelling their lives until November.

If we need days off when it gets too hot, where does it all end?

ALREADY we have unemployment at its lowest since 1974, but millions are still claiming out-of-work benefits, with a lot of that number being the longterm sick.

Of course, many are genuinely ill and deserve all the support available — but we all know a lot of them are not. And surely not everyone can have long Covid?

Sometimes I wonder about these kids who get triggered when they hear something that displeases them, or try to shut down an argument they disagree with.

how will they fare in the workplace when they are older, where an element of self-sacrifice and tolerance is required? Along with the understanding that sometimes life is not a bowl of cherries, but a big fat raspberry instead.

Millions of us put our shoulder to the boulder and work hard every day. Instead of arguing about WFh or factoring sunbathing hours into the working day, perhaps we should take off the sunglasses, realise the world is still in post-pandemic chaos and that times are going to get very hard indeed.

We should be making hay while the sun shines, not indulging the sun-worshipping whingers by taking time off.