And How Was YOUR Holiday?

Tomorrow is the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  My son, who I am seeing for the first time since August, came into town on Wednesday, and is leaving very early Sunday.  Tomorrow I will be at work.

Libraries, supermarkets, hospitals, think about all the places that aren't closed for holidays, that are open for business on weekends.

There was a time when, if you had to work on Sunday, you at least got paid time and a half or even double time, but now, we clerks are "lucky to have a job" and told to report for duty at the pleasure of management.

Here at the library we are at least closed on holidays.  That is, since a minor protest resulted in the Board approving that we be closed on Memorial Day, just like the rest of the libraries in the country.

We have a generous four days off for Christmas, but excuse me for complaining, we are open on New Year's Eve, which, to my mind, is the actually holiday, New Year's Day just being the sick day afterwards.

And then there are rules prohibiting an employee who deals "with the public" from trying to get away with an extra day off on either side of a holiday.  So you wouldn't try to sneak out of town to visit family, or just hang out for an extra day.

Most people who have 9-5 jobs are totally out of touch with the day to day sacrifices people who work with the public have to make, adjustments to their daily lives that mean less special time with family, less time to prepare for, or recuperate from, a hectic holiday.  Days off that just add sanity to life, and even quality.

Sundays and holidays are especially ugly.  "Family values" crap comes out of one side of the power brokers' mouths while patriotic garbage about making sacrifices and not whining comes diarrhea-like out of the other side.

I too, am a hypocrite, and I realize that most of the time I am going to a restaurant it is a time when other people are reliably not working.  I make excuses and do it anyway.  We all draw the line somewhere.


But I never NEVER shop on a holiday, not even on President's Day, which we commemorate by having sales, and Labor Day, which used to be about celebrating the work force and now just forces workers to work the holiday in order to make more profit for the corporation.  If Wal-Mart, on "Black Friday" (an expression abounding with irony) was offering to pay up the mortgages on the first ten people in line, I would curse their black hearts and not even consider being a part of the line-up.  I am very aware that, where I am being served, others are being forced to work, more often than not for not enough pay.


So tomorrow, when I am standing at the desk in the library, if you come in and ask how my Thanksgiving was, which you will, I will say "Fine", but I will be thinking, "My son is home for one more day and I'm checking out your stinking DVD's; and how are YOU?"