The unfair thing about retail and service industry establishments not being closed on sundays while white collar office jobs are, is that schools are only open during the week, thus retail and service industry workers don't get tax-payer funded child-care on those days, kids of blue collar workers don't get to hang with their parents on the weekend furthening inequality inherent in our society. Obviously noone is per se forced to work on the weekend but in practice at every retail and service industry job I have worked at throughout my life there was immense pressure to work at least one weekend day i.e you won't even get these jobs if you aren't willing to work on weekends.
In the US, Chick-fil-A is a fast food chain that closes 100% of their locations on Sundays. And I think that's wonderful for exactly the reasons you're describing.
imo this is fine, i mostly use them for business purchases, which i usually dont need over the weekend (its fun to go to their store on lazy sundays though...)
I live in the bible belt and visit the north frequently to visit family and I sometimes get a kick out of how most of the things I expect to be closed on Sundays where I live are closed on Saturdays. It's fun to experience.
You also get signs like "Will be Closed for Yom Kippur" like you see signs for "Closed for Easter" etc.
There's a lot of reasons I don't like Chick-fil-A, but I did work for them briefly precisely because they are closed on Sundays, which is so rare. I was freelancing at the time and had hit a bad dry spell with no work coming in, so I sent out some applications for whatever jobs were around, food and retail stuff. None of them would budge on not working on Sundays because the weekends are their busiest hours, and I wouldn't agree to work on Sundays for religious reasons.
Chick-fil-a was the single worst job I've ever had, but at least I didn't work on Sundays.
With increasing rents on retail space, how sustainable is that policy? Could the difference between customer flow 7 days a week and 6 days a week make or break a location?
The majority of Chick-fil-A's are not renting their space. Most Chick-fil-A locations are built new on free-standing property physically owned outright by corporate headquarters and franchised to Owner-Operators with a revenue sharing model.
(BTW, it also says they gross an average of $4.8 million per year per location, in 2016 at least. That's the highest sales of any Fast Food franchise in the US, vs the next in line, Whataburger, at only $2.7M per location per year. So being closed on Sunday doesn't seem like a big issue for them.)
The Chick-Fil-A locations I remember from two decades ago or more were in shopping malls where there was definitely lots of dead time during the week, and therefore one would think they would need to be open on Sundays to make up for it. So, I’m surprised by the high-volume concept you link to (though WFLA’s anti-GDPR policy prevents me from viewing it), though I have of course heard that shopping malls are less prominent a feature of the American retail landscape these days.
I’ve personally never seen one in a mall but I’m also not in the South.
The ones where I am are double lane drive through where the lines snake around and there are people roving the lanes to take drive through orders before they even reach the window.
Chic-fil-A is controversial because of it's political contributions and stated political preferences, but as far as I'm aware it has some of the better working conditions out there.
I worked for Chick-fil-A as a teenager for three years before I went to college. In that time span, I worked at two different stores for three different owners.
I had some run-of-the-mill frustrations at the time, but looking back on it I realize that I was always treated fairly and with as much flexibility, consideration, and respect as an otherwise completely unskilled teen just interested in saving up for an Xbox could ask for. There was zero abuse, zero exploitative pressure, zero sketchy behind the scenes stuff to cut cost or whatever.
I've never worked fast food other than Chick-fil-A so I can't really compare what the average conditions are like at any other fast food McJob, but my experience at Chick-fil-A was pretty much across the board positive and I think it set me up to have the right kind of expectations of myself and of the kind of employer I want to work for ever since.
I think this would be very hard to estimate because it would be hard to tell how many workers work their specifically because of this policy. There are also some customers who shop their specifically because they appreciate the fact that they are closed on Sundays.
I would bet that a significant amount of the business they "lose" on Sundays just translates into pent-up demand that equalizes during the week. But super hard to measure/prove that sort of thing.
I stand with the equal human rights crowd. Chik-fil-a is not one of us. Their stance on LGBTQ+ folks is clear. I’m not LGBTQ but I believe we all should be allowed to live the lives we choose so long as we don’t harm others or break the law (which normally are designed to protect others).
I've noticed that a ton of locally-owned restaurants in my area are open on Saturday-Sunday and closed on Mondays. Owners (who often work insane hours, living at the restaurant from open to close) prefer to be open on high-value weekend days and take a less profitable weekday off.
Monday restaurant closings used to be a lot more common at least in some big cities. (Probably aligned with a lot of theatres being dark that night as well.)
I'm sure the change happened at different times in different places. But in the the late 70s, even in a big city like Boston/Cambridge, almost nothing was open on Sunday. If you played sports or had other activities on a Saturday, you basically had to find a way to carve half a day out of classes etc. to run errands.
And to one of the parent's points, when the debate about Sunday store closing laws came up in Louisiana in the 80s, one of the arguments against making changes was that mom and pop stores, largely staffed by the owners, couldn't realistically open for seven days while, for the big chains, it was just a dollars and cents calculation.
> mom and pop stores, largely staffed by the owners, couldn't realistically open for seven days while, for the big chains, it was just a dollars and cents calculation.
When Poland enacted its ban on Sunday shopping, things worked the very opposite: the law allows a convenience store to stay open 7 days a week if it is owner-operated, and indeed these shops are the places on which people depend on Sundays.
implicit assumption that having things closed one day a week is bad.
It is perhaps less convenient, but that doesn't make it bad. Lived in an EU country until recently, where everything is closed on Sunday. It makes that day much more restful, and it doesn't take long to learn to get your shopping done on Saturday.
Also, it is still illegal to use power tools outside on Sunday. Which means you aren't disturbed by your neighbor's leaf blower.
Honestly, I prefer 1 day a week of true rest over
more convenience but never a true rest.
A commandment that one shall not view one's work e-mail, nor one's Teams, nor one's Slack or anything else work-related for one day in each seven would do a remarkable amount for mental health in the modern world. It would also send a signal to employers that there's a part of their employees' souls they do not own.
(Yes, emergency services and all that. Modern Israel has already thought of that one.)
I’m the same, but in most workplaces I’d been the odd one out. Many colleagues would check Slack even on holiday, so I had to be really explicit that when I’m not working, I am _really_ not working.
Edited to say that this attitude never got me in trouble. Given the conversation on mental health, work-life balance etc this clear boundary seems to be well respected. I’m in the UK.
I've definitely met people who haven't been able to leave their work behind when on holiday. I've not worked anywhere where that's a majority, but as a minority they were obviously more noticed for it, especially when they were sending emails at 5am or from a beach somewhere.
They would reject the advice that they should just stop working sometimes, they saw themselves as too important and too critical to the business. They imagined that if they didn't respond to an email the same day they received it that the business would fall apart.
This isn't the case of course, but they lived in fear that they'd "let the company down", or that things would fall apart without them being always available, but they never let that actually be tested.
One infamous colleague was rumoured to be replying to business emails on their honeymoon. ( Probably just a rumour. I hope. )
Indeed, had they tested it, they'd have likely discovered that they would get away with being on holiday without responding. Indeed even that having work/life boundaries are actually seen as a positive thing not a detriment.
I found myself suddenly taking 14 months off work from zero notice due to my health. Despite the fact I thought myself as fairly important to the development team at that time, but did the business fall apart? No, it just got on with adapting to the new reality and my absence was barely felt.
It can be uncomfortable for some, but the business will manage without you. Indeed if it couldn't, then that's a critical failure point that should be optimised out. You're also preventing yourself from being promoted if you've put the business in a situation where literally no-one else can fill your role.
I find I get frustrated when people don't test limits nearly enough, especially when those limits are either imagined or due to too much deference to the concept of "the business" as some kind of entity that must be pleased.
People will work long hours, or work their weekends so that they never miss a deadline, but have never tested to see what happens if that deadline gets missed. The reality might be that they actually get more resource to do it in time, rather than the imagined reality of disaster for everyone.
Especially in the UK with good employment laws, there is never a case where someone could be dismissed for not working their weekends. It almost surely would be unfair dismissal, and companies know this. But that doesn't stop inexperienced workers from half-killing themselves to get something done.
And that stress can bleed into their interactions with other colleagues, no just because overworking increases stress generally, but because they will often see colleagues who refuse to sacrifice their free time as "lazy", further increasing hostility.
Becoming trapped by the imagined result from saying "no" or setting boundaries causes those walls to grow higher, as norms in relationships are set around crazy hours or never saying no, increasing the size of the perceived disaster to finally saying no.
Eventually this often leads to burnout or worse, finally snapping and unreasonably shutting down completely in what used to be termed a "nervous breakdown" although I suspect that term isn't the current one.
I've learned to set expectations early, even signalling in interview, that I will not be that kind of person. That I'm comfortable setting boundaries and comfortable with challenging people who over-work.
My philosophy is that if I have some downtime on a weekend or holiday, I might skim my email and if there's something I can respond to quickly or just let the person know I won't have a chance to look at it until next week, I'll do so. I don't feel a compulsion to not even glance at work stuff when off the clock. I also don't feel a compulsion to never help someone out with something if it's easy (or if I made a prior commitment to doing a specific task during downtime).
And, yes, I've taken a month off here and there and things were fine--but there were people who were pretty much shocked I could just go and do that.
I have worked for employers that would have thought that weird, and probably would have fired the first person to do so. They didn't even pay that well.
It's partly a cultural thing - in both Germany and Israel, for very different reasons, "we own your Sabbath" would not fly. UK/US it seems to be much more normal to assume employees are always available, though it varies by sector.
In the UK I've found the expectation to generally be that you're available in an emergency. But not just for everyday business as usual activities. I have all work-related notifications turned off outside of working hours, but my employer has my phone number in case of emergency.
My boss called me once, at 9 PM. I went in to fix a problem. I was there until 1 AM. I was fine with it, because it happened once. In 13 years. Yeah, sure, I can come in for an emergency. (Also, my boss was already there when I arrived, and was still there when I left.)
There's an emergency every other day? Nope. That's a management issue. Hire some people to work those hours, or fix things so that "emergencies" quit happening.
> There's an emergency every other day? Nope. That's a management issue. Hire some people to work those hours, or fix things so that "emergencies" quit happening.
That seems to be pretty much the issue with the ASLEF/RMT strikes on the UK railways at the moment. At least in the sense that "emergency" means we'd have to cancel a train if someone doesn't work that overtime.
I'm in the UK and even emergencies have always been treated as best effort wherever I've worked. If it's the weekend, you might be drunk / on the beach / on a plane / whatever.
Obviously, if it is a genuine rare emergency, most people are generally fine to help if they are around.
I feel the same, and sometimes wonder why others don't. I have never put work email or slack on my personal phone, either - that can go on a work phone, if the company cares enough to buy me one, which they usually don't.
Like you I don’t have any work apps or accounts on personal devices, so it’s very easy to shut the work laptop down at the end of a day and keep the separation of church and state.
in Deuteronomy, it is written: “Six days you shall labor and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, or your manservant, or your maidservant, or your ox, or your ass, or any of your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your manservant and your maidservant may rest as well as you.”
I.e. you are already not supposed to do any form of work on Shabbat just based on the existing commandments. Naturally that includes work via email or IM.
> (Yes, emergency services and all that. Modern Israel has already thought of that one.)
Modern Israel doesn't have anything close to a commandment that one shall not view one's work email on the Sabbath :)
More seriously, while a large percentage of Israel are religious Jews, a large part of it are secular Jews who don't keep the Sabbath, and a large part are Muslims.
There are some things that are closed on Saturday, and there are laws about things having to be closed, but in lots of cities many things are still open.
It is still true to say that a lot of stuff is closed on Saturday (most stores are closed), and this is a big problem, since for many people, Saturday is their only day off, and they can't do any shopping on that day. If you need to e.g. go with your kids to buy new shoes, you can't do it on your one day off, so it's a pain. (Fridays things are open, but close early, and most kids have school on Friday.)
This is a great idea. I'm pretty sure had mobile phones existed in the Mediterranean during the Achaemenid era, the idea of what kind of notifications and algorithms are kosher would have made it into the Torah.
Then a few millenia from now, scholars will be debating whether or not e-mail, Teams, and Slack were accurately translated into Jovian Esperanto or whatever the language of the day is.
For some people yes. For others, like me, being able to see that there is no disaters waiting can be nice. I have no issue leaving work til monday, but its nice to know I don't have to start monday with a looming disaster.
That link just took me to my addresses page. To change delivery dates, I had to edit my home address, click the dropdown labled "Add preferences, notes, access codes and more", then open the accordian header for "Can we deliver to this address on weekends?", which reviews yes/no buttons for both Saturday and Sunday delivery.
My spouse and I do an internet / technology sabbath on Saturdays. No social media, no streaming services or video games. Mostly listen to the couple of records we have, read books, and do other analog things. I started after reading How to do Nothing, and thinking a lot about unplugging from the attention economy.
I find that it does a really good job of resetting / breaking the dopamine cycles. Going a day without being online every so often results in me at least being less tied to the Internet for well being the rest of the week.
That is an interesting view, that the cycle can be broken in 1 day. I guess looking back, if I go an entire day without using the internet, it is very easy to avoid distractions the next day. I'm going to try this our, albeit in a less rabbinical way.
Yeah, it took a few months of the 1 day sabbaths to really impact things. The first month I was back on twitter/x as soon as the sun went down, etc.
Nowadays, I'm a lot more intentional about when I use social media in particular. It may not be causation, the whole thing could just be correlations. But it feels almost rebellious to unplug like that for a day.
There was a Max Headroom episode (dating myself here) where someone got in trouble for having the ability to turn off their TV. Like all of society was structured around being in front of the TV at all times.
When I bought a new kitchen range half a dozen years ago, I was surprised to find that several pages of the owner's manual were dedicated to something called "Sabbath mode". I guess it is a way to allow for cooking without violating Sabbath rules.
Then there's this practice I only recently heard about, "The Wire That Transforms Much of Manhattan Into One Big, Symbolic Home"[0]
It's for keeping food warm. Observant Jews don't cook on Shabbat. All the food is prepared on Friday before Shabbat starts.
Elevators in some Miami Beach hotels have a Shabbat mode where they simply stop on every floor, open the doors, wait a minute, then close the doors. It's to allow observant Jews to use them without operating a switch.
We Jews are a funny bunch, finding ways to work around our 613 commandments without breaking them. You're generally not allowed to tear things on Shabbat, so observant Jews will pre-tear toilet paper and set aside a bunch of squares for the day.
In Israel, the cooking beforehand is done even by many non-observant Jews, just because those long-boiling recipes or the preparation of a big meal by sundown on Friday became such a big part of both Ashkenazi and Sephardi culture. My own friends in Israel are non-religious (so much so that how much they despise religious people is a frequent topic of their conversation) but their Shabbat food rituals seem impeccable, and indeed it is at people’s Shabbat dinners that I have done most of my socializing when visiting Israel.
I have a good friend who WAS observant of the Sabath when we were roommates. His new girlfriend, who was also Jewish, lived in the same apartment building 1 floor down. He'd frequently ask me to be his "Shabbat Goy". On Friday nights he and his girlfriend would like to watch a movie on their TV (VHS at that time). They'd start to watch the movie before Shabbat started, and I'd go down to their apartment at the designated time (after the movie), and turn off their TV for them. That arrangement was made BEFORE Shabbat obviously, as Jews can't ask a non-Jew to do "work" after Shabbat has started.
I also attended many Shabbat dinners at his parents house. There were always a lot of questions I had, about the fridge light coming on when it was opened (they would unscrew the light(s) before Shabbat). They had an alarm system too, with motion sensors that would turn on the red LED whenever someone walked by them, so they covered the motion sensor during Shabbat. It was pretty fascinating to learn all this stuff as a non-Jew.
I cannot get over the irony of this religion of a famously malevolent and punitive god coming up with things like some fishing line on telephone poles to cheat that same god
It's not cheating! If the bible is supposed to be the word of god - perfect - then obviously any creative interpretations which a less faithful person might see as "loopholes" were actually intentionally left in there by him. Frankly, thinking you can second guess his lawmaking by deciding that you, a puny mortal, know what GOD HIMSELF meant better than he did when he had it written is arguably heretical!
My understanding is that it's the entire point actually. Jewish people believe that these loopholes are explicit rewards for studying God's teachings. They don't believe they are "tricking" god or doing anything untoward, but rather that they and their god are sharing a shit eating grin of "yup solved your puzzle, pretty great"
That being said, I have to laugh at a lot of the "Sabbath" mode stuff, because it's purposeful self deception. If you use an elevator at all, even in sabbath mode that is fully automated, just your physical presence is actuating several physical switches and logical systems, with plenty of sparks generated from relays opening and closing.
The rubric under which all the actions prohibited on the Sabbath fall is referred to as melakhah. It is an expansive term, first used in the Hebrew Bible to describe the full range of activities which God engaged in to create the world. The only term which really approximates its scope is Jacques Ellul’s la technique, defined as “the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.” The heuristic which the rabbis of the Talmud used to determine melakhah is simple: if the action was performed in the course of the building of the Tabernacle, which after all functioned both as a mikrokosmos in the technical sense and as a microcosm of human society, it was forbidden on the Sabbath.
If a company has global support centers - for example in several time zones - one can even have 24/7 support while allowing everybody to rest on a specific day (be it Saturday/Sunday/Friday) or even mixed - according to employee personal belief or preference...
Beliefs and their specific holidays are an interesting facette of a diverse workplace that I feel is often overlooked in hiring for oncall and 24/7 jobs.
No need to have to shutdown the business or for employees to skip every second Christmas, Diwali, Ramadan, Friday prayer, Sabbath etc if you have colleagues from other religions cover for you.
While the seven day time period ("week") has been around for a long time in 'the West', it didn't really take hold as a form of scheduling until the early-1800s in the US:
> With meticulous archival research that draws on a wide array of sources—including newspapers, restaurant menus, theater schedules, marriage records, school curricula, folklore, housekeeping guides, courtroom testimony, and diaries—David Henkin reveals how our current devotion to weekly rhythms emerged in the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century. Reconstructing how weekly patterns insinuated themselves into the social practices and mental habits of Americans, Henkin argues that the week is more than just a regimen of rest days or breaks from work, but a dominant organizational principle of modern society. Ultimately, the seven-day week shapes our understanding and experience of time.
Yes, Christianity has been around for two thousand years, and the Lord's Day was celebrated, but in the pre-Reformation days there were many feast days for saints, both on a national and international scale, but also more local/regional celebrations, so folks had Holy Days (holidays) sprinkled between Sundays as well. People would often tell time not in day-of-week or day-month, but with regards to (liturgical) seasons and feast days, e.g.:
Also, pre-Industrial Revolution, most work was fairly agricultural, which was much more 'continuous' in that you couldn't really 'shut down' a farm: livestock and such had to be taken care of.
It was the combination of a more Protestant and industrial US that allowed for there to be mostly one 'special' day and the ability to not have to 'go to work' (in a factory) that really solidified the week as a time period.
In the rural Europe, attendance at church on Sundays was more or less socially or even legally obligatory even among the agrarian majority, but distances from farms to parish churches were sometimes so vast that the journey to church and back could take all day (in the Nordic countries it could even take two). Therefore, the idea of Sunday as a “rest day” might not have been so well-entrenched, but it was already a “no work” day for many farmers.
My grandfather was a strict Methodist and wouldn’t do any housework or projects on Sundays after church, for what I’m sure was at least 50 years. Typically he would visit with people or study his bible or do other reading. He would go as far as not supporting other people working, such as going to stores or buying gas. I don’t recall whether he watched TV or not on Sundays; I seem to recall a few baseball games on.
My wife's entire family are retail workers (mostly Walmart). Walmart has been very good to them, employing them despite almost zero knowledge of English. But Walmart's hours are brutal.
Nominally muslims, they would love to have a day - any day - guaranteed to be free for all of them to get together.
My preferred way to read the first of the 10 words is as anti-religion.
The minority tribe in many places wanted relief from the majority religion (then coupled with slavery/work and promoted through great works like idols and pyramids).
So they essentially said:
1. Any limited or concrete representation is not authoritative
2. Any priesthood is invalid (as taking the name of the lord in vain)
3. We get a day off
Interesting that the punishment for (2) was visited upon children and grandchildren - pretty serious, likely because the benefits of clothing oneself as a religious authority are immeasurable. (The punishment hasn't worked even among believers.)
Most interesting for this discussion was that (3) was expressly extended to wives, slaves/workers, et al. (though without speaking directly to them as agents).
The liberation theology of the 1970's-80's and Islamic radicalism both created a protected space for anti-oppression, but for the most part religion and government have renewed their mutual protection racket in every corner of the world, dropping antagonistic aspects in favor of courting each other. It's unlikely either would operate as a real limitation on the other -- ironically because we are in an era when legitimacy is so contended.
If we weren't stuck with closed-source, corporate-owned messaging apps we could arrange it to have a rest from any work-related communications during the weekend.
PS - The IWW has long advocated for reducing work hours during workdays rather than just having the Sabbath/weekend to rest from it; see:
Anybody who likes the idea of a sabbath should experiment with a digital one. Lock the screens in a box and look around the room, or get outside. I did it accidentally by leaving my phone in a locked room overnight and it was really liberating to get off the junk dopamine train and stop reaching for my pocket.
What Im always confused about is why Christians of most/all stripes seem to gravitate back to the Torah's "10 commandments" (which there are 20 of them).... And not go towards the Beatitudes.
I was somewhat curious about what that first article had to say, but found it impossible not to be distracted by the constant G-d and L-rd. Presumably this is a workaround to deal with somewhere being told not to use the name of God or something.
This sort of hack around commandments and other holy decrees seems incredibly odd to me. Either you think it matters and obide by the spirit of it, or you don’t, in which case crack on and just say “God”, if there is an omnipotent being who cares deeply about this I doubt they’re going to be fooled by you running a quick regex on anything you publish.
I feel similarly about the various hacks used around the Jewish sabbath, as mentioned elsewhere in these comments. Great wires around entire cities are not going to make God think “ahh, got me there lads, you’ve turned Manhattan into one big living room”. And if you believe in the sanctity of the sabbath then it feels off to me to work around that by hiring a bunch of people who aren’t Jewish to work then instead.
>“ahh, got me there lads, you’ve turned Manhattan into one big living room”
The "gotcha" IS the point. Jewish people ~~believe that god put loopholes into his rules on purpose, as an explicit reward for studying his teachings, and that finding and using those loopholes is basically an intentional part of Judaism. Remember, they are the chosen people, god gives them special treatment.
The second set of commandments is like watching a movie (the first ten commandments) with director's commentary. It's a lot of insight and clarification but fundamentally the same thing
> And not go towards the Beatitudes
The 10 commandments and the Beatitudes are fundamentally different and serve different purposes. The 10C gives very specific things that you should and should not do - very concrete and prescriptive. The Beatitudes are very poetic and descriptive, not prescriptive.
The Torah's 10 commandments are equally relevant. After the beatitudes, Jesus says:
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” (Mat 5:17, KJV)
He says that before giving more commands in the sermon on the mount (the next two chapters of Matthew), much of which extend the old law/10 commandments.
Faith in Jesus is the primary one. There's many given in the next two chapters of Matthew which come after that quote, and I'd say they all hinge upon belief in Jesus and his teachings (i.e., faith).
The beatitudes are much more difficult, with some of them unlikely to be prescriptive (blessed are those who are persecuted), some of them being unclear (blessed be the meek) and others that are difficult to translate to actions (blessed be the pure of heart). In contrast, the simple rules of the ten commandments, most of which just tell you not to do a basic thing you probably weren't doing anyway (thou shalt not steal) are much easier to follow and much easier to confirm you are doing well in. People resonate more with simple yardsticks like the ten commandments than with the vaguer "be a good person and it's ok if things are bad for you now" beatitudes.
People find it easier to follow rules rather than principles.
The 10 commandments tell you what to do/not to do. The Beatitudes offer values and require interpretation to put into practice. They also are more ambiguous in their punishment/reward on the physical/spiritual level.
Compare:
"You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal."
vs
"3 Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted."
...
"25 Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry."
I grew up in a heavily Jewish area and most Jewish owned businesses that didn't absolutely require the owner present just had non-Jews working on Friday evening and Saturday.
Similarly I've swapped on-call shifts with non-Christians so as to accommodate religious holidays.
The only command in the ten commandments that explicitly says "Remember", guess what? The pagans removed it and replaced it with their own. They even tried but will fail, to change the order of days from Saturday to Sun-day.
Resting and common time off work for community building is crucial. That's the core reason behind designated rest days in any major religion. And yes, it is specifically for the benefit of mankind.
Many of today's problems arise from weak communities with no bonding.
