Ever since America’s favorite lasagna-eating cat declared “I hate Mondays,” it’s been a fashionable thing to… well, hate Mondays.

And for this reason, Monday is the misfit among days of the week. More people hate Mondays more than any other day. I know I do.

For some of us, the why is obvious: we have a whole week on the job just starting, and Friday–and our weekend off–is at its most distant. Mondays are even more insidious for those of us who are “not morning people,” as we tend to make up for the week’s sleep deficit by sleeping in on weekends–which makes it that much harder to get to bed on Sunday night, setting us up for another week of sleep deprivation beginning on Monday.

Of course, the obvious cure to this phenomenon is to simply stop sleeping in on the weekends. Duh! But who wants to do that? Here again, the morning people have the advantage: those who are used to getting up at 6AM are more likely to continue this pattern through the weekend. But this is no solution for those of us who’d rather stay up until 9 (or later) no matter what day it is. So we put up with the weekday sleep deficit and keep hating Mondays.
I found a few interesting statistics about Monday-hating on the web. A U.K. government organization found that there were more suicides on Monday than any other day of the week (and fewer on weekends). What was surprising was that this pattern held even among retired people. Supposedly, people are more likely to be late to work/school on Monday, too. Not surprising, for those of us dealing with the jet-lag phenomenon of catching up on our sleep over the weekend. It’s even been suggested that more heart attacks happen on Mondays.

I also found a few mentions of people who actually like Mondays. Some are undoubtedly people with a non-traditional work schedule, but a surprising number were people who do start the work week on Monday. These people took the view that Monday is a fresh start, or that they have the whole week ahead of them to complete their work tasks.

What about you? I’d love to hear from you! Do you hate Mondays, or are they a new beginning for you? Do you work a traditional Monday trough Friday job, and does that influence your opinion?