Rigonomics:

One of my pet peeves is government offices that are closed Fridays.

Why is it that city, county and state office across the country think it is in our benefit to be closed on all Fridays or every other Friday?

Please do not start telling me how the employees still work 40 hours a week by starting earlier and staying open longer on other days to make up their 40-hour week.

When you call a city department on Friday, it does not matter that the staff started work at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday or they worked until 5:30 p.m. Thursday. You need to talk to them now.

Trust me, if you call your insurance agent at 4:59 on a Friday for a binder, someone will pick up. That also goes for anyone else that you do business with if they want to keep your business.

In the private sector, the work hours are set by what the client or customer needs. If you work in retail or hospitality, you often have to work Saturdays and Sundays. That is what the customers need. Not government — they go to work on their schedule; not their customers’.

I remember when this first started years ago during some traffic congestion crisis. Orange County decided to close county offices on Fridays to help relieve traffic congestion.

What a great sacrifice: take off Fridays to ease freeway congestion. Later, I asked one of my friends who worked for the county what it was like not driving to work on Friday mornings. He told me the traffic was just as bad driving to the golf course. So much for solving traffic congestion.

For many Americans, the 40-hour work week starts at 8 a.m. and goes to 5 p.m. with major holidays off. Therefore, if your business is open during those times, you should be able to take care of your customers or clients. It is what is expected.

Most state offices in California have started their furlough days. California passed a law to close all government offices the first three Fridays each month for budget reasons.

When budgets shrink in the private sector, employees take pay cuts, work longer hours — or both — to keep their employer from going out of business. The public sector idea of a cutback is taking a day off without pay. Add three to four weeks of vacation a year, and you can never get a hold of anyone individual you need at most government offices.

This is killing businesses that have to work with the state. On a recent trip to Sacramento, I bumped into a friend whose business is building hospitals. In the middle of a recession, with construction unemployment at 17.4%, he cannot start construction on fully funded hospitals because the department that plan-checks hospitals is closed three Fridays a month and is backlogged with hospital plans.

Let me give you another example closer to home. Friday afternoon, when I called Irvine to get the audit on the “Great Park,” they of course were closed.

The person I was looking for’s voice message said he was out of the office Thursday and the city would be closed Friday; and of course he was also taking off Monday and would be in the office Tuesday.

Like many employees in the public sector, he is doing what most people would do if they had every other Friday off. They are taking two vacation days on both sides of that Friday to give themselves five-day weekends.

Add the five holidays that are always on Mondays and, well, you can see where this is going. Not only are government employees not working five-day weeks — you do not know which days they will be in because of how they are breaking up their vacations to make longer weekends.

I really enjoyed Irvine’s taped message that said they were open from 7:30 to 5:30 Monday through Thursday and closed on “alternate” Fridays. What day is Alternate Friday? Would that be the first and third or second and fourth Friday of the month? With 35 cities in Orange County, it is hard to keep track of which alternate Fridays cities are closed.

Why do government offices close on Fridays? Because they can. Government agencies by their very nature are monopolies. You can only get a building permit at the city. If government had to compete for your business, believe me, they would be open every Friday.

By the way, all you elected officials who say your office is open on Friday: I do not count being open if the only person there is someone who can only answer the phone. If you and most of your staff are gone, your office is closed. If we are going to get though this recession, we all need to get back to work.

JIM RIGHEIMER is a Costa Mesa Planning Commissioner, local business owner and a father of four. He can be reached at jim@rigonomics.com.