TGIF

Thank God It’s Friday. TGIF. The war cry of the wage slave – a battle chant belted out across open‑plan offices by people who’ve spent the week in captivity under fluorescent lights, flogging their sanity to make someone else’s quarterly report look good.

But here’s the rub – TGIF only became a thing when plutocrats started ruling the roost. Back when work meant tilling the soil, hammering out horseshoes, or flogging cabbages at the market, nobody knocked off on a Friday and yelled TGIF. Farmers didn’t get to clock out – the cows still needed milking, and the fields still needed tending. You couldn’t tell a pig, “Sorry mate, it’s the weekend now, you’ll have to wallow quietly till Monday.” The pig would simply grunt, and continue being a pig.

Even into the Industrial Revolution, Saturday was a full day’s graft. Mill workers didn’t “thank God” for Friday – they thanked God for surviving the machinery with all their limbs intact. The idea of two consecutive days off didn’t exist until the early 20th century, when industrialists, terrified of strikes and bolshie unions, begrudgingly carved out a “weekend.” Not because they were generous, mind you – but because a rested worker is a productive worker. TGIF wasn’t liberation. It was a pressure valve, installed by the plutocrats to stop the wage slaves storming the gates.

And that’s what it remains: a sop. A shiny carrot dangled before office serfs who spend their week being “looped in” and “touched base with.” TGIF is the illusion of freedom, two short days of respite before you’re dragged back in on Monday.

Meanwhile, the older trades never had that luxury. Farmers still slog on. Retail braces for the Saturday hordes. Baristas gird their loins for the flat‑white brigade. For them, TGIF might as well stand for The Grind Isn’t Finished.

So yes, TGIF is a war cry – but it’s a war cry designed by the ruling class. A little chant to keep the wage slaves cheerful, while the plutocrats laugh from their country estates… where, naturally, the staff work weekends.