Official "I have to work on the 4th and it sucks" thread

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

It really saddens me that holidays aren't even really holidays anymore for a lot of service workers anymore. I may be showing a bit of age here, but I remember growing up when a lot of stuff was actually closed most holidays.

Do you know what happened in those days? NOTHING. There was no panic, no freaking out. The world did not come to a screeching halt because the majority of businesses were closed for 24 hours. Crazy I know.

If I had it my way, our company would be closed for five holidays:

- Memorial Day
- July 4th
- Labor Day
- Thanksgiving
- Christmas Day

That still leaves 361 days out of the year for us to be besieged by SCs 24/7.

I mean don't get me wrong, I like having a job that pays decently, but I can't help but feel a tad bit disappointed because it's a beautiful day here for the 4th and a large group of my friends and family is doing a beach/party/grillout thing that I will sadly have to miss.

It's time to give holidays back to the workers. We already break our backs enough for the bosses as it is.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Don't have to work today, but will have to tomorrow morning.

Sleep will probably be difficult with all the pow-bang-whistle going on in the neighborhood.

[Estil]

All I ask is at least Christmas Day be off for everyone but absolutely essential services (like police, fire, hospital, military). Shoot, even SCROOGE gave Cratcit Christmas off, WITH PAY. :P

[Victory Sabre]

Here at work today, but I'm not going to complain. It's been a busy day, and I'm making money, which is very good.

[Krivak]

Yeah, i'll be at work for an "emergency" coverage team. OT/Holiday pay. awww yeah. I swear, after leaving the front end type retail, i've been having more days off called holidays. I'm still not used to it, so i usually volunteer to work them. It's a sign that i worked too many as it is before i started where i am. :/

[Javarod]

I have to, but i agree, i miss those days.

I don't keep everything up to date here, so y'all wish me some luck, i'm prolly going to need it tonight, considering what things looked like last night. What do i do these days? Overnight stocker at the St Charles Walmart handling water/soda/juice, often solo. Yeah, July 4th... Oy vey.

[jnd4rusty]

I have the day off with pay but I wanted to work because then it is double time and a half but they did not need me. We have to work holidays because we are Associate Instructors who provide 24 hour Direct Support to persons with disabilities in their homes. Many of the people we serve go home with their families for the holidays and out of the 28 residents that live in community homes we have only 13 home so we do not need all the staff.

[Trixie]

I had to work this evening and it was so freaking slow. Then about 9 the girl working third shift called in to say that she's never ever never ever coming back because she worked too many hours at the new job she just got thinking she could work third shift full time and another job. So fuck her. And I didn't even work with people I like. I don't think I even walked so fast out of there as I did tonight.

[Teefies2]

Annnnd let me tell you about my day!

I volunteered to work, as mentioned by someone else, it's double pay. I don't mind - I have no family in the area, so no biggie. But this..... THIS ..... made me want to curl up in a fetal ball.

We close at 10pm. It had pretty much been slow, which is good, I got a lot of work done that I'm required to do when there aren't customers. Now, discounting the drunk/party people who came in tonight, we had a pretty good night. <shrug> it's a holiday on a Friday ... if you don't have to work, go for it!

About 9:30, a homeless guy we all know comes in and heads straight for the bathroom. Okay, you say, homeless people need to use the bathroom too. But wait! This one lives in the woods right behind the store and has JUST gotten out of jail for throwing his girlfriend off the railroad bridge onto the tracks, also behind the store. So, yeah, I don't have a WHOLE HELL OF A LOT of sympathy for him.

He's in the bathroom for 20 minutes, exits the store - never saying a word to anyone. It's now 10 minutes to close. And we discover that not only has he had diarrhea (sp?) all over the bathroom, he had the "squirts" all the way to and from. Meaning there is an entire 24 foot aisle of poo! Guess who had to clean it up? Yeah this girl.

ARRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (to quote Charlie Brown)

[KhirasHY]

I've been dreading this day all week, since the hotel is the busiest it's ever been (100%, and almost every room is 4+ people to a room), but oddly...it's been manageable. The mornings suck, and people are semi-annoying when I first get in, but the night itself has been almost alarmingly quiet.

I can't help but be afraid that something is wrong...

[Bright_Star]

Well, back in the day, just about every store was not only closed on the holidays but Sundays as well.

[Smapti]

We get 2.5 times regular pay for working on holidays (i.e. New Year's, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving), so I don't mind working those days.

[xxscooterxx]

I got holiday pay for working yesterday but it really wasn't worth being called a bitch because God forbid I didn't stop ringing up the customer in front of me just to go read a sign for some SC.

[ComputerNecromancer]

All I ask is at least Christmas Day be off for everyone but absolutely essential services (like police, fire, hospital, military). Shoot, even SCROOGE gave Cratcit Christmas off, WITH PAY. :P

There are manufacturing processes you can't just "turn off" at the drop of a hat. Turning them off for a day is *possible*, but actually amounts to losing several days work.

The one I'm most familiar with is growing single crystal silicon "ingots" for semiconductors.

These can be many inches across (back in 1990 they were starting with 200 mm (8") ingots.

Those are drawn from the melt with exquisite care, and the draw rate is measured in millimeters an *hour*. This for ingots that can wind up being a meter to 2 meters in length. At 10 mm/hr, it takes 100 hours (over 4 days) to grow the ingot. And as I noted, you can't stop in the middle.

You can't schedule them around a holiday either because the grow rate has to be manually monitored and adjusted. So time from start to finish can vary a fair bit.

End result is that the ingot growing department runs 24/7/365. It also has a house sized bank of battery backup to keep things going at a minimal level during a power outage. At worst, they can shut down cleanly, losing however much of the melt is left ( a shorter ingot is worth considerably less).

But power failures were uncommon because the plant had power coming in from *both* local power companies over seperate routes.

[Shyla]

I know there are places that are cheaper to run 24/7 than to shut down and start up. But restaurants, department stores, many call centers could shut down for 12-24 hours with only the sucky customers claiming harm. I remember when all gas stations closed at night. Yes, it's convenient having one open at 2 am but we could all plan ahead for a few holidays. I agree with the sentiment. I just don't think the greedy companies will ever see it. Even if they lose money staying open on Christmas, they will claim it's important for promotion or reputation or whatever.

As trivia, I think even the brick oven at the little pretzel factory had to stay running since it took forever to get it hot again.