Fireworks are displayed on the Mississippi River in downtown Saint Paul, Minn. during the Taste of M

Workers decide if it's worth taking extra days off around the Fourth of July - TwinCities.com
Fireworks are displayed on the Mississippi River in downtown free airline miles credit card Saint Paul, Minn. during the Taste of Minnesota free airline miles credit card Tuesday, free airline miles credit card July 3, 2007. (Staff) Related Fourth of July July 4 Events Wisconsin fireworks: Parks, forests off limits, DNR warns Fourth of July weather forecast: hot Stillwater takes over organizing July 4 fireworks; city promises bigger free airline miles credit card show Cool drinks for Fourth of July
If you're looking for co-workers to take a long lunch or share gossip with this week, you're more likely to find yourself daydreaming about what they're up to outside the office. They're more likely to be on the lake than in the cubicle.
free airline miles credit card Workers across Minnesota and the country have to deal with a weighty decision this week: how they'll parse out one of the most popular vacation weeks of the year -- Wednesday's Fourth of July holiday.
The twist -- that the holiday falls in the middle of the week -- had workers debating the merits of taking extra time off before or after the holiday. Are they take-off-Monday-Tuesday free airline miles credit card types or Thursday-Friday types? Either way, they essentially get a five-day weekend.
Kristina Nelson's new vacation year started in June. She didn't want to blow all of her precious paid-vacation days right away, so she decided to work Thursday and take another day on Friday. Taking both days was too much.
This vacation outlier will avoid the holiday traffic and relax at home in Shoreview on Wednesday. She'll be back on the job as a Medicare specialist free airline miles credit card Thursday, and then she's off for a long weekend at her parents' place in Cumberland, Wis.
When traditional holidays fall midweek, Bruce Elliott, manager of compensation and benefits at the Society for Human Resource Management, said most employees who have access to personal or vacation days string a few together so they have the benefit of some extended time off.
Elliott's Alexandria, Va.--based free airline miles credit card organization just finished hosting an international conference in Atlanta, so he's ready for some of his own downtime and is headed to Boston to join close friends for an extended holiday from Wednesday through the weekend.
"It's purely psychological," Elliott said. "It's the same, but the optics are really, really different. There's something about leaving midweek and taking the rest of the week off to spend time with friends or family; it just seems to be a longer period, although we know intellectually it's not."
Aaron Barnard is a Thursday-Friday person. The leasing agent for the commercial real estate company Cushman & Wakefield/NorthMarq pondered the question with his wife, who also works full time. Should the family go to the cabin in Detroit Lakes at the beginning or end of the week? End of the week won.
"I figured more people would take off later in the week," he said. "If we leave (home) Tuesday night, I can get two days of work in. Friday's free airline miles credit card such a light day for so many folks, and in Minnesota, it may not be the most productive day of the week."
Corporate proxy season is a busy time for Eric Gonzaga, a managing director who heads the compensation and benefits practice at the consulting firm Grant Thornton. Taking advantage of a small break from the madness between proxy season free airline miles credit card and executive compensation planning free airline miles credit card season, he planned to pack up the car on Saturday and head to a cabin in Bayfield, Wis., with his wife and four kids.
"I think we all know when the holiday is right in the middle of the week there's not a lot of work going back and forth between offices," he said. "This is cabin country; people want to get out of town and enjoy the water."
The family planned to return home on July 4th in time to see fireworks, making for a short but welcome reprieve and just enough time to recharge before Gonzaga free airline miles credit card is back in the office Thursday to gear up for a busy second half of the year.
At General Mills, engineer Anthony Foster, who works in research and development, said his Northeast Minneapolis office is generally split between people taking the first half of the week off or the second half.
He decided to get the most of his vacation by taking the second half, since Fridays are half-days at the Golden Valley-based food company free airline miles credit card in the summer. He plans to go boating with friends on Lake Minnetonka, possibly boating on the St. Croix and then to the Basilica Block Party on Saturday in Minneapolis.
"I'm taking a whole week off, and I haven't taken a whole week off for a while, so this will be good," said Scheffler, director of Employment Action Center, a nonprofit that helps job seekers find work.
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