I am reminded weekly of the perks of being a city employee.

In Rosemead, for example, city employees will get a week-long vacation. Instead of just having Christmas Day and New Year’s Day off, they will be off from noon on Dec. 24 and reopen on Jan. 2. As if squeezing out stories for the paper during the holidays wasn’t hard enough.

But even without the holidays, we have to deal with the 4-10 workweek and need to remember that cities are closed on Friday. I can’t tell you how bad it screws up reporters when we are planning for the week, scramble for our story for the weekend, and then it hits us: “Crap! My city is closed on Friday.”

It must be nice. I would love to skip out on Fridays. Sure, you’d have to spend 10 hours a day at work, but come on, it’s not like many of us don’t do that already. I’ve always wondered whether employees on theat 4-10 schedule really stay until the end of their day. There have been many a time when I call at 4 p.m. only to find out that the person I am looking for has “left early for the day.”