Hating on Monday

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"Whoever invented Mondays should be drug out into the street and shot."

Characters can sometimes hate a certain day of the week, due to bad luck and misfortune that seem to only happen to them on that day. When they start hating it, they often start dreading the coming day on the day before.

As suggested by the trope name, Monday is one of, if not the most hated-on days, perhaps because it's the day that many people go back to work/school after the weekend.

Examples of Hating on Monday include:

Comic Books

"I still wake up in a cold sweat on Tuesday mornings. Tuesdays was 'debriding day' at the Army hospital burn unit where I recovered."


Film

  • In Office Space the main character is told "somebody's got a bad case of the Mondays" by a coworker when he's kind of grumpy. He asks if anyone's said that, to his next-door neighbor (who works as a construction worker) who tells him "you'd get your ass kicked for something like that."


Game Shows

  • In a bit on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me riffing on the report that al-Qaeda had office interns, one of the panelists said "We hate America...but we also hate Mondays."


Literature

  • Arthur Dent's classic line in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "It must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays."


Live-Action TV

Kathy: TBIM, huh?
Cathy: "TBIM?"
Kathy: "Too Bad It's Monday."

  • One of the speech in Doctor Who that the Eleventh Doctor gives names several days as not very interesting. It also reveals he really like Saturdays, perhaps because a certain British sci-fi show airs on that day?

The Doctor: Time isn't a straight line. It's all... bumpy-wumpy. There's loads of boring stuff. Like Sundays and Tuesdays and Thursday afternoons. But now and then there are Saturdays. Big temporal tipping points when anything's impossible.


Music

Every other day, (every other day)
Every other day of the week is fine, yeah
But whenever Monday comes (But whenever Monday comes)
You can find me crying all of the time

  • The opening lines of "Friday On My Mind" by The Easybeats:

Monday morning feels so bad
Everybody seems to nag me.

  • "Manic Monday" by The Bangles
  • As mentioned in the Real Life section, "I Don't Like Mondays" by the Boomtown Rats.
  • "Rainy Days and Mondays" by Carpenters.

Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.


Newspaper Comics


Radio


Video Games

  • The Garfield example is referenced in Kingdom of Loathing, where the "Potion of the Field Gar" gives you bonus adventures for eating lasagna - except on Mondays.
  • In Portal 2, there's an office where you can pick up a couple of coffee mugs. One mug has "I hate Mondays" on it.


Web Comics

  • Channel Ate believes a sound beating is better than Mondays.


Western Animation

  • On Futurama Leela's former boss returns a poster to her (a monkey captioned with "I hate Mondays").

Leela's Old Boss: I also kept your poster showing your dislike of Mondays!
Leela: Monday Monkey lives for the weekend, sir.


Real Life

  • As reported on NPR, "In 1979, Brenda Spencer opened fire with a rifle at the Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, Calif., killing two adults and injuring nine children. She later explained her actions with the statement, 'I don't like Mondays.'"
    • This was the subject of a song by the Boomtown Rats, "I Don't Like Mondays".


Uncategorised

  • Inverted in JPod, where a character talks on how Thursdays are the best day of the week.