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I have been on both sides of this question for better than 35 years, for nearly a quarter century I worked for employers who insisted that I work 6 day work weeks. That of course destroys any kind of work life balance, and in retrospect, I really resent that I missed my kids growing up. It is hard to run this kind of schedule in a small shop, because you either need to split up the work shifts, do a shift rotation or look for part time help. Today techs have more choices, and 6 day weeks are not going to cut it.
On the other hand, I really do understand the temptation. When business got slow here ( I am in rural Iowa in the midst of a lagging farm economy) I decided one of my only options was to open up on Saturdays, which I do on an appointment basis. I do not hang around hoping for walk in traffic. Wasting a Saturday hanging around in hopes of doing one LOF or fixing one flat tire makes no sense to me. Honestly, I cannot say it has done anything for me. MY competitors customers are not flocking to me because I open on Saturdays while he does not. In fact I am one of only two shops in the county (the other one does tire service, lof and exhaust only) that is even open extended hours, and there is NOT a line of people waiting to come in. Oh sure I do some work on Saturdays, but it is mostly work I didn’t want to put off until Monday, hoping of course that Monday might get busy. Mondays can be pretty slow too. Very few customers take advantage of my Saturday hours, with the exception of one small commercial account. Your results may vary. Other folks in larger markets will tell you that Saturdays are their best days, because that is when their customers have the day off. So when do your employees get time off? Does a weekday work for them? Do they have kids in school so that weekday off means nothing? Does it make sense to offer a 4 day week with longer hours? You might be the type driven to work long hours and six days a week. Is that fair to your staff to ask them to do the same? And whatever you decide, do NOT ask them to put in Saturdays while you take them off to go fishing……
