Super Bowl Monday or President's Day?

Perhaps you have heard there is a petition circulating to send to President Obama to make next Monday, the day after the Super Bowl, a national holiday.The idea is to replace President's Day with the new holiday. It says a lot about our society that sports is more important than history. It says a lot about our society that the uncomfortableness we feel on the day after booze-drinking and over-eating should take precedence over an honest day's work.

" Declare the Monday following the Super Bowl a national holiday" is the brain child of the Fantasy Football site, 4for4.com. Here is the petition:

“In 2012, an estimated 111 million American citizens watched the Super Bowl, making it the most- viewed television braodcast in history and one of the largest location-independent gatherings of American people to date. 

We at 4for4.com Fantasy Football petition the Obama Administration to consider  declaring the Monday following Super Bowl Sunday a national holiday. By doing so, the Obama Administration can promote camaraderie among the American people, keep the streets safer for our children on Sunday night and Monday morning, promote a productive workplace when work resumes on Tuesday, and honor the most popular event in modern American culture.”

I read other ethics blogs and found the one posted by ethics alarms to be quite insightful with respect to the message sent by trying to accomplish making Super Bowl Monday a holiday. Here is an example of what I mean:

"The Super Bowl may represent what America is degenerating into -- a loud, excessive, bombastic, usually disappointing exercise grotesquely dominated by the media, corporate cash, substance abuse and clods with the manners of coyotes -- but that's hardly something to celebrate. At least keeping President's Day, watered down as it is, close to George's birthday by leaving it on the third Monday of February shows a shred of lingering respect for the man who deserves a holiday all to himself."

Glassdoor.com surveyed employees asking what the Super Bowl does to the workplace the Monday after the game. They found:

• 20% of employees say that employee morale is typically better in the office the day after the Super Bowl.
• 22% of employees notice, however, that the Monday following the Super Bowl is commonly a less productive day than usual.
• 8% of employees plan to take the day off following the Super Bowl.
• 9% of employees plan to take the Monday off as a vacation day.  
• 3% of surveyed employees admit that they plan to call in sick the day after the Super Bowl.

Glassdoor.com also asked employees if their employers offer any type of perks for the Monday after the Super Bowl. Several employees said that they are either allowed to work from home or use the Monday as a flex day. Another employee noted that their weekly Monday morning meeting gets bumped until later in the day on the Monday after the Super Bowl. Other survey respondents said that their employers buy breakfast for employees on the Monday after the game.

Our country runs the risk of falling behind China as the world’s largest economy. We need to get serious about the importance of staying competitive in an increasingly globalized world economy with countries like China chomping at the bit to overtake us as the world leader. We need to rediscover the work ethic that made this country the envy of the rest of the world rather than a convenient target to take "economic pot-shots" at as they rise to challenge our engines of economic development in the world.

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on January 28, 2013