The Super Bowl, the championship game for the NFL championship, should be made a national holiday in the United States. Not on Sunday, when the game is actually played, but on the next day, when many workers are absent from work.
So-called Super Bowl Monday is notorious for being a particularly unproductive day. A study by the UKG Workforce Institute estimated that approximately 16 million people were absent from work on the 12th, the day after this year’s Super Bowl, in which the Kansas City Chiefs faced the San Francisco 49ers.
“People will pretend to be sick and not really tell the truth,” said Jarik Konrad, president of UKG.
So how should we respond to mass infections of “Super Bowl disease”?
Last year, two Tennessee state legislators introduced a bill to make the Monday after the Super Bowl a national holiday. There is also talk of pushing back the Super Bowl by a week to the day before Presidents Day (the third Monday in February). That would allow millions of workers to officially take the Monday after the Super Bowl off as a public holiday.
Dan Patrick, a former ESPN sports anchor who now has a popular radio show, recently advocated for the Super Bowl to be held on Saturday. Both teams will have almost two weeks of rest after the conference title game, and fans will not have to work the next day after drinking nachos and chicken wings.
But NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says Sunday is ideal, as it has the highest number of viewers.
The impact of the Super Bowl on the workplace extends beyond absenteeism. A UKG study estimated that around 45 million people lose productivity on Super Bowl Monday. That’s about one-third of full-time workers in the United States.
news-rsf-original-reference paywall">Original title:US Employers Brace for About 16 Million Super Bowl Sick Days(excerpt)
2024-02-12 16:14:00
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