For many Americans, going in to work every Monday is made just a little bit worse because their companies force them to use Internet Explorer.

Redditor Flying_ScotchMan noticed a really interesting pattern when he was looking at aggregate browser use statistics over at StatCounter Global Stats.

Here's the chart of daily browser market share:

chart of the day IE BI

Take a look at the weekly periodic perturbations of Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and to some degree Safari.

During the Monday to Friday work week, Internet Explorer gains around 2% marketshare.

That browser drops over the weekend, when people aren't working and using their home machines — which have either Google Chrome or Safari on them, each of which enjoy a roughly 1-2% jump in usage over the weekend.

That's one interpretation of this data, and by far the most compelling.

It's a cool look at why people prefer different browsers and why, despite a relatively poor reputation, Microsoft's browser is able to maintain such a consistent marketshare.