Getting Fridays Off in Winter Is Now a Thing

Every Friday in the winter, if her clients don't have any pressing needs, Anne Sholley gets to leave work after lunch. While her friends are still slaving away in their offices, sometimes in the dark or during snowstorms, Ms. Sholley, the program director for Highview Creations, a company in New York that designs and installs green roofs, swims laps at the Metropolitan Recreation Center in Williamsburg or practices yoga at Shala Yoga House in Fort Greene. Sometimes she is in her car getting a head start for a ski weekend at Sugarbush Resort in Vermont or a relaxing getaway in the Catskills. In the last few years Summer Fridays have become common in certain sectors of the white-collar work force, like publishing and public relations, with professionals scurrying off from work early to get in a long weekend of sun and heat. Highview Creations gives Friday afternoons off in winter in part because the company can't afford to in the summer. "Summer is the most intensive time for landscape design, and we are putting in 50 to 60 hours of work a week," Ms. Sholley, 30, said. Employees can only hibernate when their plants do.