Hating on Monday

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

— Garfield, Garfield and Friends

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, which not many people look forward to the ending of. Of course, this isn't universal, as some people work in facilities that have a different weekly business schedule (such as Wednesday through Sunday), or are open 7 days a week and therefore the days one has off may be different than the usual Saturday and Sunday, or even inconsistent from week to week, or they just love their job enough for the thought to never occur to them.

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Examples:

Arts

• The sentiment is mocked by street artist Banksy here◊. The dull and dreaded beginning of the work week (and that hatred's commercialization) has nothing on people whose lives are dreadful every other day.

Comic Books

• In G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Marvel), Snake Eyes hates Tuesdays.
  Snake Eyes: I still wake up in a cold sweat on Tuesday mornings. Tuesdays was "debriding day" at the Army hospital burn unit where I recovered.

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes: While Calvin never directly complains about Mondays per se, he does say that he can never enjoy Sundays because, in the back of his mind, he knows he'd have to go to school the next day. "It's like trying to enjoy your last meal before execution."
• In The Far Side, when investigating the murder of a butler at the Butlers of the World convention, the detective in charge of the investigation groans: "I hate to start a Monday with a case like this."
• Garfield famously hates Mondays.
  • Originally, there was no real reason for this, since he's a cat who doesn't have to go to school or work, but later strips would make him a Cosmic Plaything on Mondays specifically. For example, Garfield wakes up on a "beautiful Monday morning" with clear skies and no rain in sight — except over his house, resulting in him getting rained on.
  • He also hates February — he refers to it as the Monday of months. Much like how Monday is listed as the second day of the week on most calendars, February is the second month of the year in the Gregorian dating system.
  • He especially hates Monday the 13th. Especially if that Monday the 13th falls on a February.
  • Jim Davis, his creator, later explained that, while Garfield doesn't work or study, Mondays are a reminder to him "that his life is the same old, same old cycling again". Thus, he hates them, and the universe uses Mondays to deliver some Laser-Guided Karma.
  • Averted earlier in the comic run, where Garfield actually loves Mondays◊ — because he doesn't have to go to work.
• In Mutts, there's a strip where Sourpuss says he hates Mondays. Then it rains, leading him to say that Mondays hate him, too. Also a Running Gag.

Fan Works

• In Oh God, Not Again!, when Neville faces the boggart, it takes on the form of alternate-Harry as Minister of Magic.
  Boggart Harry: You know, Monday is probably the most depressing day ever, let's cancel it. And what's this nonsense about not being able to own a dragon in Britain? ...

Films — Animation

• The first two trailers for The Garfield Movie dropped on Mondays; the first premiered on Monday, November 13, 2023, for extra irony. Garfield's coffee mug in the promotional art also says "I Hate Mondays".
• At one point in Shrek 2, Puss in Boots somewhat randomly moans that he hates Mondays, likely a reference to a certain other orange cat...
• Inverted in a deleted scene from The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water — SpongeBob is so Married to the Job that Monday is his favorite day of the week, even singing a whole song about it.

Films — Live-Action

• In Polish comedy classic Nie lubię poniedziałku (I don't like Monday) the whole plot is about random citizens of Warsaw suffering unpleasantries and hilarious twists of fate on Monday, blaming that day for being unlucky. Titular words are used a lot, along with "Never start anything on Monday".
• 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."
• In the spy parody film OSS 117: Lost in Rio, Agent OSS 117 goes to the French secret service offices on a Monday morning, asks one secretary how she's doing, and she answers with a jaded "Like on a Monday...".
• The Film What Happened to Monday does this literally. The titular woman named Monday pulled a Face–Heel Turn and sold her sisters out to the authorities.

Literature

• Adrian Mole: Adrian moans about Sundays more than other days, because of shops being closed, occasionally being made to go to church by his grandmother, his parents doing nothing but read the Sunday papers, or there being no postal delivery.
  Does the clergy imagine that God gives a toss whether or not humans receive letters on a Sunday?
• In Rainbow Magic, Megan the Monday Fairy's job is to prevent people from being grumpy on Mondays. When her magic flag is stolen, this trope comes into play for everyone until she gets it back.

Live-Action TV

• In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the eponymous character knows that if Dawn is in trouble it must be Tuesday again. Which is a bit of Leaning on the Fourth Wall, since, at that time, Buffy aired on Tuesday.
• One of the speeches on Doctor Who that the Eleventh Doctor 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 possible.
  • The Doctor would later change their tune on Sundays once the series started airing on Sundays as of 2018.
• Drake & Josh: When Mindy was promoted to assistant manager at the movie theater, she makes Crazy Steve works on a Monday. Helen and Josh freak out, because Monday is his "bad day". Steve goes on a rampage until Josh is able to calm him down.
• Inverted in jPod, where a character talks about how Thursdays are the best day of the week.
• The secretaries Kathy and Cathy from The Kids in the Hall discuss this in one episode. Tanya the temp also hates them.
  Kathy: TBIM, huh?
  Cathy: "TBIM?"
  Kathy: "Too Bad It's Monday."
• Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide had an entire episode revolving around Ned trying to find a way to beat the Monday blues, only for all of his attempts to fail. Eventually he turns to Coconut Head and Lisa Zemo, who are always very chipper on Mondays, for help and they give him some ideas that work.
• In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "In the Pale Moonlight", Captain Sisko starts to hate Fridays because that's when they post the weekly casualty lists from the Dominion War.

Music

• "Manic Monday", written by Prince, sang by The Bangles
• As mentioned in the Real Life section, "I Don't Like Mondays" by the Boomtown Rats.
• Carpenters, "Rainy Days and Mondays"
• "It Sure Is Monday" by Mark Chesnutt. The narrator partied hard all weekend, but now it's Monday and he's paying a high price for it.
• The Cure has "Friday I'm in Love", with little love for the other days.
• Devo Spice has a song called "I Hate Mondays."
• The opening lines of "Friday on My Mind" by The Easybeats:
  Monday morning feels so bad
  Everybody seems to nag me.
• "Lundi Méchant" by French-Rwandan singer Gaël Faye uses this as a metaphor to express the general bleakness of the world. The title literally means "Nasty Monday".
• The Mamas & the Papas, "Monday Monday:"
  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
• "Except for Monday" by Lorrie Morgan:
  Didn't take too long 'til I got it together
  And everyday I thank my lucky stars you set me free
  Except for Monday, which was never good anyway
  Tuesday, I get a little sideways
  Wednesday, I feel better just for spite
  Thursday and Friday take too long
  Before I know it, Saturday's gone
  But it's Sunday now and you can bet that I'm all right
• HoneyWorks and Amatsuki's "Monday's Melancholy" talks about a guy who originally felt depressed at the beginning of the work week, but has since gotten better now that he's found the weekly habit of attending idol concerts.

Radio

• In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978), after being told that his friend is a space alien and the world is about to end, Arthur concludes that it must be Thursday because "I could never get the hang of Thursdays".
• 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."

Theatre

• Recurs in Stone's Private Eye Monologue in City of Angels:
  "Monday. What other day works so hard at reminding you not to get your hopes up 'cause it's gonna be coming around again real soon?"
  "If there really is someplace called Hell, the calendar's nothing but Mondays."

Video Games

• In a twist of Holiday Mode, creating a new character on a Monday in Ancient Domains of Mystery results in them "feeling exhausted" and starting with less than their max HP. In rare circumstances, this can even outright kill them.
• An advertisement in Freedom Planet 2 references this trope.
  Igor: "Do you hate Mondays like we do? Then come on down to the Battlesphere for Mayhem Monday! Face down the awesome power of our Battlebot Brigade... and don't forget about out knuckle busting Battle Royale... where fighters from all over the globe duke it out for a chance to win the grand prize! Are YOU a bad enough dude to survive... the Battlesphere?!"
  Kalaw: "If you are, you'll face me... Captain Kalaw!"
  Disclaimer: "Must be 13 years or older to apply. The Battlesphere is not responsible for death, dismemberment, injuries or hair loss of any kind. This advertisement is brought to you by Mayor Zao and Zaoland Entertainment Corporation. Grand Prizes are subject to change at the discretion of Mayor Zao at any time and are non-negotiable. All entrance fees are non-refundable."
  Igor: "ENTER NOW!!"
• In Killer Instinct 2013, Cinder's arcade mode has a segment where he activates a group of Fulgores as "target practice"...only for his intense heat to cause them to short out and butcher Ultratech employees en masse. His response is simply "Mondays, right?" If his backstory is any indication, blaming Mondays is his thing. Even when it's Tuesday.
• 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.
• Francis in Left 4 Dead hates Mondays, among other things, but he will tolerate the day if it's Lasagna Mondays.
• In Paradigm Rebooot, playing the song "SUTTA MONDAY" on a real-world Monday awards the title "I don't want to go to work!!!"
• Towa from Slow Damage isn't fond of the month of December, feeling an almost visceral discomfort when seeing decorated streets or even children Christmas shopping with their parent. Given his own, very dysfunctional and abusive relationship with his mother, and the fact that her death occured in December, he's got bad memories with the month. Even if he repessed them.
• 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.

Webcomics

• Channel Ate believes a sound beating is better than Mondays.
• Tiger the dog in Housepets! is a Garfield parody who, for no explained reason, hates Thursdays.
• In Kurami, Zane the cat hates occasionally seen expressing his dislike of Mondays as a reference to Garfield.

Web Original

• The Iron Sheik peppers his Twitter feed with multiple "FUCK THE MONDAY" posts every week.
• LOLNEIN's song "It's A Monday" is all about how miserable the singer is on Mondays, with an environment that's grim to comical proportions.
• Nobody Here: In "World", Jogchem's biggest concern about the Earth melting into the Sun billions of year into the future is that it might fall on a Monday.
• In one Red vs. Blue holiday special, Grif joins every religion in an attempt to get more days off. This includes six days of rest per week except for Monday. Grif takes that to mean it "sucks universally."
• A common topic of Kaela Kovalskia's Pejuang Senin ^translation Monday Warrior free chat streams is her trying to convince those watching they should not dislike Mondays.
• This Fake Movie Real Trailer by Paul Otaking for an anime Alien movie called Alien: Monday has the tagline The worst day of the week. No prizes for guessing what makes this Monday turn out so badly.

Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball: In "The Joy" Gumball and Darwin wake up in a bad mood because it's Monday. In an inversion, Miss Simian loves Monday because it's when kids are the most miserable.
• 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.
  • When Fry accidentally gets her career chip, said former boss asks if he hates Mondays. He says no, and the boss replies that he'll have to redecorate his entire office.
  • Fry makes the obligatory remark about hating Mondays in "The Tip of the Zoidberg" after contracting Garfield Syndrome, an ailment that makes him resemble Garfield.
• Garfield and Friends: In "Monday Misery", Garfield's hatred of Mondays gets to the point where he mails himself to Samoa in an attempt to avoid Monday. Unfortunately, thanks to crossing the International Date Line, Garfield arrives in Samoa to find it's still Monday. This also gives an explanation of why he hates Mondays even though he doesn't go to work. It shows bad things happening to him for no reason other than that it's Monday.
• Rick and Morty: Of course included into their Affectionate Parody of Garfield.
  Gazorpazorpfield: [yawns in bed] I hate Mumunmununsdays. And I really could go for some enchiladas.

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".
• Lampshaded with the charity thrift store chain Goodwill; one of their truck slogans is "Giving people the chance to hate Monday mornings." The joke being that since the proceeds from their stores go towards humanitarian work, they're helping homeless people get off the street and working again.
• Retail workers usually hate Saturday and Sunday in particular:
  • In general, due to the increased activity and thus volume of stressful customer interactions as a result of people with traditional Monday-Friday jobs being off on those days and thus getting the chance to get shopping done. For people working in such industries, Monday is perhaps one of the least stressful days of the week to work.
  • For hotel workers, the weekend is when room rates are at their lowest, which consequently means the more unsavory kinds of customers may show up. During the weekdays when rates are higher (often two- or threefold compared to the weekend rates), most people coming to hotels are there on business rather than to party, do the naughty, or have little staycations.
• Prisoners in British prisons often hate weekends, because there are fewer staff on duty, and so they have to spend more time locked in their cells.

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