Are you one of them?
So keen are many Irish workers to impress their colleagues that they blatantly lie about their weekends on a Monday morning.
According to research from hotel group Jurys Inn, 45% of Irish people admit to lying about or exaggerating their weekend plans, while a little under one in three (28%) admit to completely fabricating stories about what they got up to in order to create a better of impression of themselves amongst their fellow employees.
More than half of those who admitted to lying about their weekends said it was due to a desire ‘not to seem boring,’ (53%), with 26% of people saying they do it ‘just for the laugh’ and a further one in 10 admitting that they do it because they’re embarrassed by how they really spend their weekends.
If you don’t make the most of your couple of days off – providing you don’t work weekends, of course, – you’re not the only one, with only one in five people (19%) saying that they spend their weekends doing something new and a similar figure (21%) admitting to making excuses to get out of plans over the weekend.
More than one in three people, meanwhile suffer from ‘the fear’ or what’s described in the survey as ‘Sunday night blues’ and just under half of Irish people (44%) regularly feel they haven’t made the most of their weekend.
The list of activities Irish people do get up to doesn’t exactly make for inspiration reading either.
- 60% of people said their most popular activity was scrolling through social media
- 22% of adults spend their weekend catching up on work duties
- 33% of respondents catch up on missed sleep and recover from the grind of the 9-5
- 54% spend the weekend chilling in front of the TV
- 53% said they spend the weekend cleaning
- Only 12% of adults reported doing some exercise or working out
As for so-called weekend ‘embellishments’, the following activities proved popular:
- Going out on the tear (15%)
- Hanging out with friends (14%)
- Working out (11%)
- Visiting a fancy restaurant (10%)
- Exploring the great outdoors (10%)
Commenting on the findings, Suzanne Cannon, Head of Marketing at Jurys Inn, said: “A weekend well spent brings a week of content. We’re calling on Irish people to reclaim their weekends, ditch the FOMO and make the most of their valuable time off by using it to explore new places, take a trip to somewhere you’ve never been, or try a new activity.
It’s not surprising that many of us are using the weekends to recharge after a hectic work week, but we can’t miss out on the opportunity to create fun memories from your days off – it’ll give you a weekend story so good you won’t have to make something up.”
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