A mid-afternoon picnic in Central Park? It’s possible with Summer Fridays. (Getty Images)

Memorial Day is fast approaching and with it we hope a turn toward warmer, summer weather. Heck, at this point, we’re even looking forward to the smell of hot, stinky garbage. Anything but the rain and unseasonably cold temperatures we’ve had!

But, there’s another ritual that happens in New York City in the summer and that is Summer Fridays. For the uninitiated, Summer Fridays occurs on Fridays between Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends in which NYC employees with the Summer Fridays perk leave work early – anywhere between noon and 2 p.m. — to get a jump start on the weekend.

Who Invented Summer Fridays?

Good question. We dug around and found a survey from the research and advisory firm Gartner,  which noted that 46% of organizations in North America offer Summer Fridays to their workforce. This percentage is up 30% since the question was first asked in 2012. And while it seems other businesses have caught on, it is believed that Summer Fridays were once a very NYC-specific tradition.

The exact details of who invented Summer Fridays are a bit murky, but they are often attributed to advertising agencies in the 1960s who discovered their employees were less productive during summer months. And the top brass and publishers wanted time to beat the traffic out to their Hamptons homes. The practice soon spread to other media-related organizations and became popular in other industries. While Hamptons vacation homes may be out of reach for many New Yorkers, the Summer Friday phenomenon is still a treasured perk by those lucky enough to have it.

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Summer Fridays also lend to the age-old tradition of day drinking. (Getty Images).

A Perk for the Privileged Few

While Summer Fridays are a popular perk, it is important to note that this benefit is overwhelmingly offered to white collar workers. For those that work in retail, food service, medical professionals and other emergency response industries, Summer Fridays are simply not an option.

Other companies like KPMG and Ryan have opted to kick Summer Fridays up a notch by having a permanently modified four-day work week. However if you’re really looking to reclaim your time, consider moving to Norway, which has the shortest work week in the world.

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