CHANGE IN BANK TIMINGS

Hello,

When I first came to Kuwait in 2006 the timings for the Bank was 7.30 AM to 2.30 PM.
The weekends were Friday and Saturday.

This was extremely convinient as we brought our breakfast to office and reached home by 3.00 PM which was the right time to have lunch and retire for the afternoon siesta.

It was also very convenient for people having work at ministries as the ministries worked on Saturdays. Their weekends were Thursdays and Fridays.

What was actually happening was that Banks were getting almost a three day weekend as Thursdays used to be relaxed with no ministry related work getting done.

The government got jealous of the workers in Banks and decided that we should have work on Thursdays and changed their weekends to Friday and Saturday. Meanwhile the Management in Banks also felt that the long afternoon siesta was making the employees lethargic and therefore they plotted to make things uncomfortable for us by increasing the timings by half an hour to end at 3.00 PM.

Earlier, leave on festivals were the same for ministries and Banks. If the ministries closed for 5 days then Banks did likewise but this year on Eid the ministries closed for five days but banks closed for 3 days only.

Now from 27th September, Banks will work from 8 AM to 4 PM. Another increase by half an hour.

This will reduce either our siesta time or the time we get to spend with the family in the evening by an hour and most probably lead to presence of grumpy employees.

But I have faith in the ability of the Management to change course midstream and I hope they analyze the disadvantages of the time change at the earliest and get back to the old timings for happy and productive employees.

Hoping for the best,
Manoj