“Mom, can you BELIEVE I have to work Christmas Eve???”
“Well, honey, you DO work for a supermarket. They close at six on Christmas Eve, so no huge deal.”
So he’ll miss 4 pm mass with the family, but we’ll wait an hour for him to finish before we head off to my sister’s.
I don’t think he ever quite grasped before that there are people in the world who don’t follow a school schedule. Sure, he knew things were open, but never really understood that people were missing other events to staff those stores and restaurants and gas stations. Living in a house with 2 teachers and 3 students, I get it. But it was still kind of a rude awakening for him.
This will be the second Christmas that D1 hasn’t come home; she is a server and restaurants are open the day before and the day after Christmas (as well as almost every other day in the year).
Although I teach and have the holidays off, we spent many a year doing “Santa gifts” at 4:00 am, early enough that DH could report for his 8:00 am firefighter shift on Christmas Day.
However, I still think these types of things will be a “reality shock” to my sons when they have their first jobs.
I had the opposite experience. My first career out of college was as a medical technologist. When I switched careers to accounting I was like" Wow I have Christmas Day off!"
@FallGirl I graduated with the same major and it took until 13 years and completing law school part time that I finally knew what it meant not to work weekends, evening/night shifts and holidays. Come to think of it, I still miss the evening shifts #NotAMorningPerson (-:
My S worked in a retail store in high school and summers and breaks while in college. Now that he has graduated and is working real job he can’t believe he has holidays, nights and weekends off!
I work in healthcare and for years I worked most holidays with the only days I didn’t work being Christmas and Thanksgiving. I am an Occupational
Therapist , so technically not "essential " for patient care on holidays, but considered essential as far as reimbursement from insurance companies are concerned. This year is the first year I haven’t had to work holidays or weekends and it has been quite an adjustment. Growing up my entire family was in law enforcement or healthcare , so celebrating the holidays in shifts was the norm. On the other hand, none of my husband’s family works in those fields , so they assumed that we would have off quite a bit of time at the holidays.
Worked 8.5 hours on Thanksgiving and 7.5 on Black Friday this year. Wish retail places would close on holidays. And I now have a very strong sympathy for people with “essential” jobs who always have to work on every holiday.
I actually kind of enjoy working (some) holidays. Being in the hospital on Christmas, you really do feel “needed”–because no one is in the hospital on Christmas if they don’t have to be! This year I worked Thanksgiving, so off Christmas.
The fact that retail employees are forced to work holidays makes me sick. I despise it. If people want to voluntarily work, fine, but to force them shouldn’t be allowed imo.
That’s different from things like grocery stores (food is a necessity), hospitals, cops, etc. It makes my skin crawl when people say things like “Well, the doctor doesn’t get to take a break on holidays so why should retail workers?” Well… Because doctors save lives, retail workers don’t. It’s a dumb comparison.
I’ve worked many holidays at the IPV (intimate partner violence) shelter I used to work at. Working Christmas was hard but they broke up our shifts so we each only had to do 4 hours. Every other holiday I voluntarily took because I loved the double pay. My roommate works at a youth detention center and is voluntarily taking as many holiday shifts as possible because of the double pay.
I’m not in any way prepared for a real job where I have to be up at 7 or whatever. Don’t get me wrong, I worked jobs like that for many years, but as a professional student now my days don’t start before noon. I’m very spoiled lol. I’m not a morning person
It will probably be a rude awakening for my kids as well someday unless they manage to follow in my H or my footsteps. I’ve always worked for a company that shuts down between Christmas and New Years (and I always add some vacation time to extend it to at least two weeks…this year I’m on a 3 1/2 week vacation!). Meanwhile, my H is a school teacher. So, yes, all my kids have ever known is the whole family home for two weeks.
What’s a holiday? H is clergy. People don’t seem to understand that all those long weekends have Sunday’s in the middle of them, and Chirtsmas? Ha! busiest holiday of them all. D is working Christmas Eve and Christmas Day this year. Didn’t phase her a bit.
SFMom, it;s not just spring break- it’s also fall break, a long Thanksgiving weekend, the ultra long Xmas break, the time between semesters. And then summer.
