It used to be that you couldn't get anyone who worked in an office in the city on the phone on Friday afternoons. All the bigwigs leave town early to go to their weekend homes. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, the movers and shakers were all working four-and-a-half-day weeks.

In corporate America, there was a new unofficial holiday: Friday afternoons in the summer.

Then, a few years ago, it started getting difficult to get anyone on the phone all day Friday during the summer. "Why bother to come in Friday morning?" must be the thinking. "Why sit through traffic just to leave three hours later?"

Not long after that, it started getting hard to snag an exec on the phone on Thursday afternoon. If you're not going to work on Friday, you might as well beat the traffic and drive up to the weekend house Thursday night, am I right? So then, the people you couldn't get on the phone Friday afternoons, you also coudln't reach on Thursday afternoons.

They're at their weekend houses, relaxing. Relaxing from what? A three-and-a-half-day work week? And it's not like their life in the city is so harsh.

"Oh honey, it's so hard living on Park Avenue, telling the servants what to cook for dinner and what to clean," one can imagine them saying. "It's such a chore. I'm tired of going to plays and movies and fancy restaurants and museums. Let's get away for the weekend and just do nothing. Do you want to go to the beach house or the mountain house? Should you tell Jeeves to make the arrangements or should I? Will we need the downstairs maid?"