One thing I’m really looking forward to when I retire several years from now is the time to enjoy holidays like a normal person. Working holidays really interferes with life. I’m off a few but not many. We get 8 paid holidays a year and I’d say I work 5-7 of them every year. Our group is so small there is no rotation. Managers can’t fill in. So it’s designed this way.
I’m not going to get into a rant about how I feel its structured or compensated for. I will note how it changes holidays for those on our team. Basically there are few real ones. For example even though I have Christmas night off I work Christmas eve and morning till 6am. So if I’m lucky I’ll grab a few hours sleep and then enjoy the family.
I’ll be working through New Years eve and New Years day the following week so no days off that week. It makes it so you don’t even look forward to holidays because it’s NOT a holiday. Yeah I get a holiday pay for a day and pay for the hours I work, but I’d like to just have the time off with pay like everyone else does and have the time.
You know it would make it a lot easier if someone said thank you every once in a while, but that doesn’t happen. We do get to see people being sent home early to enjoy the holidays. You know, getting them an early start for travel or planning or preparing like normal people. Never happened to our team.
Such is life, it’s the season of giving and being thankful. I will be thankful for having a job. I will be thankful for all the fireman, medical, police and service members who also work every holiday. Also those who have infrastructure or transportation or grid responsibilities that takes them to work on holidays.
So I’ll give a salute to those fellow souls working holidays so the masses can rest easy.
Standing the Post on Holidays.
Photo by Mike Hartley
Random Thoughts of the Day
Patting myself on the back on how good the trees look.
Work has dampened my holiday spirits. Good thing its only temporary.
I wish I could hear less about Twitter. I’m not even on it and I’m tired of it.
Wishing my Son in-law to feel better.
I usually don’t have to shop on 12/24. But this year is an exception.
December 24, 2018 at 10:54 AM
Sorry to hear about the brutal on-call schedule. I was saddled with on-call work for many years, but we had more employees to shuffle in and out. Do you have a recourse through Human Resources, certainly they could see your side of the problem. I would think with a situation like yours the managers or directors would make themselves available to relieve the load off the team. It would help moral greatly if they joined in on the rotation. Good Luck
December 26, 2018 at 10:37 AM
Its just not structured that way. My manager is also running another department and he is on-call for that. So we don’t have him to count on for our group. Directors don’t do holidays.