Yes, more people take Friday than Thursday, but quite a lot of people enjoy the zen-like lack of distraction when they work Fridays. Or so I've been told!
Some enlightened countries pro-rata stat days, but New Zealand doesn’t.
That way if you have a family and are all off you can spend it together, but if you have nothing to do can use it when it better suits you.
If you don't know what a "stat day" is (I didn't), it apparently stands for "statutory holidays" which is like public holidays.
During my brief time in the US, I observed that over there the public holidays tend to be something like "nth Friday/Monday of so-and-so month"; that way you get a long weekend. This is how it's done in some other countries as well.
Unfortunately not in my country (where I'm lucky to have both Saturdays and Sundays off! (I should probably move...) ); if a public holiday falls on a Wednesday, you get the Wednesday off. But on the bright side, there's plenty of holidays here.