It’s the beginning of the work week. Your inbox is starting to trickle full of “Happy Monday,” greetings. You ask someone how they are, and they reply, “It’s Monday.” Yes, It is Monday, great job. Three days prior your co-workers were saying, “It’s Friday,” unprompted, as though they were saying there was cake in the break room.

The phrase can be used for any day of the week. As long as that day has the corresponding tone, it makes sense. Wednesdays are more neutral; Tuesdays and Thursdays can either come with surprise or exhaustion. 

“It’s Monday” really means, “I hate Mondays,” and “Happy Monday” is its sadistic counterpart. “It’s Friday” really means, “only a few more hours,” or “thank God it’s Friday.” I consider all of these phrases to be roughly equivalent since they all mean just about the same thing: they’re all statements on our collective attitudes towards work.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a worker in possession of a five day work week must be in want of a weekend. That is to say, if we all hadn’t collectively agreed on our attitude toward “Monday,” the typical beginning of the work week, the phrase wouldn’t make sense. Maybe if work happened on Big Rock Candy Mountain, or if Monday was the end of the work week, we’d all be saying, “thank the dear Lord it’s Monday!”

But we’re not. Nobody says that. It is, rather, a truth universally implied that work sucks.

These phrases are the open but implicit acknowledgement that something about work is uncomfortable, undesirable, undignified. Even the people who love their jobs and who find great fulfillment in their careers, like the teachers I work with every day, exchange these phrases as readily as hello and goodbye.

One might be persuaded that the real drag Monday poses is the readjustment to another week, like this article suggests. This line of thinking doesn’t hold, though. The natural conclusion might be that weekends themselves are the problem, that it only interrupts our natural workflow, as opposed to being our only respite from it. It would also seem to suggest that work is inherently a bad thing, that our resistance to work might be the natural laziness within us all (not unlike original sin).

But people are not naturally lazy.  The vast majority of people actually want to be useful, contributing members of society. Retirement homes are seen as undesirable for a reason. Watching TV all day and lounging about may be fun for two days, but not for two years. We like working, but we don’t like work.

This Forbes article may be a bit closer to what’s actually happening. It suggests to the reader (presumably an employer or manager) that certain flexibility may be warranted on Mondays, given the psychological strain common in workers on that day. It’s almost an admission that work might be better if the conditions were better. Actionable policies that would make work better for everyone, like shorter work days, more flexibility, and asking for employee input, are seen as little treats to be given to quell poor attitudes, when they should just be standard workplace policy.

Empathy exercised by employers, under this view, is optional. It is the bone thrown to an antsy dog. It is seen as the solution only insofar as it keeps workers just below the point of complaining, or from doing more than just reminding each other what day of the week it is.

The worst offense is that your boss doesn’t need to go all the way to Forbes to learn how to make the workplace better. You and your co-workers probably have a long list of complaints already. It’s not like asking for or implementing the solutions to these complaints would be unreasonable either. All your boss has to do is actually listen. In my own profession, teaching, the complaint is that we don’t have the autonomy to make basic decisions about what and how to teach our students.

The complaint, in my case, is not that the job sucks. What sucks is that the very basic respect and trust any professional would ask for is so often denied in favor of corporate or government interest. Nobody, not even the administrator down the hall, has our backs. It isn’t that we hate our jobs—that we hate Mondays—it’s that we hate how we’re so consistently mistreated and abused.

The same is almost certainly the case for your workplace. Even if someone really, truly hates their job, there are still ways to make it more tolerable. The real issue isn’t identifying the problem, it’s identifying the solution.

So many of us have been convinced that it isn’t our place to ask for change. Indeed, the indirect nature of “It’s Monday,” suggests that there is a disconnect between the possibility of change and our dissatisfaction. Monday will always be Monday, but work doesn’t have to suck. What actions may be available depend entirely upon your workplace and what resources are available.

The universal first step, correctly identified by the Forbes article, is empathy. If your coworkers complain, listen. Your boss might not care, but you can care about each other. Figure out what your coworkers’ experiences are. How are they similar to your own? Asking questions is my secret weapon, because not only does it give me perspective on the issues, it makes the person answering think about what they believe and experience.

Even if you work for the most brutal, lay-off happy ghouls, having someone who knows what you know is powerful. It means that you aren’t alone. It means that you’re not asking for too much, especially if it’s just a little respect. It’s not about theory or Marxism or moralizing. It’s about being treated fairly. The first step is always conversation.

Some people will tell you that if you’re dissatisfied, vote. Voting isn’t going to help, though. If it did, we’d all be a lot happier with the state of things. We all know politicians don’t keep promises. Thinking on such a grand scale is nobel, but leads easily to paralysis. Action can happen on a small scale too; it must happen on a small scale. We can make promises too, and we can keep them.

It could be as simple as a promise to stick up for each other when the boss is being a bit too picky about how you spend your time. It could be a promise to deescalate a competitive workflow. It could be a promise to say, “I agree,” when your coworker finally says, “this meeting could’ve been an email.”  If you won’t speak up for your coworkers or yourself, nobody will. There is no knight in shining armor. There is no corporate savior from above.

We only have each other. It doesn’t matter what books you’ve read, or if you think you know what direction the country should go in. Empathy is right and it can be radical. It might even make your Mondays a little more tolerable.