I never minded working Monday, at least after I quit drinking. Truth is, I didn't mind working Friday, either. If I didn't like my job for almost any reason I moved on. It helped that I had a pretty good history and reputation. I also had a couple of skills that would allow me to take 'something' until the 'real thing showed up.

I guarded my phone number jealously, but the pagers. We carried a pager on a rotating basis in most of the shops I worked. A lot of our equipment was used when the normal folks weren't working, so there was some 'overnight' work to be done.

Had a guy I worked with a lot, that did a lot of 'cold iron' refits. Take a long weekend when the plant was shut down and do some critical job or another. I mostly volunteered for holiday weekends unless we were going to be out of town (rarely, we tended to avoid crowds). The pay when you were called out Thanksgiving weekend was staggering. Anyway, my guy would stop at the shop a day or two before and see if I was carrying the pager. If I was he'd give it a call even if everything was working perfectly just to give me the half day of triple time. You can bet if he called at 0300 I was on it, too.

There were the other extreme, too, of course. We had a long term project (a new electrical substation for a major manufacturing plant) where the employees just couldn't be bothered to follow procedures for starting some of the equipment. After about the third 'dead battery' call I just started my day at his job site. I would start and run every piece of equipment on the site so that they would be warmed up and ready for the crew. For a couple of years. It was a monster contract for the company I worked for so everybody was happy. Especially me. I got an hour or better on the clock with coffee cup in hand...

So, I don't think I have a dog in this fight. I do agree that a company picnic or something should be mandatory on Labor Day. On the clock, of course :)