Who Works During the Holidays?

While sitting here at my computer, plugging away at tending the bin, I started wondering who else might be hard at work, instead of enjoying what most in the world (especially in America) would consider "the Holidays". I've stumbled into working this season for the second year in a row, and I find myself not bothered much by it at all. If you had asked me even 5 years ago if I would give up my Christmas vacation for work, I would have laughed and answered with a resounding "No!". Have any of you fallen into similar behavior? As an aside, what Holidays do many of you find yourselves working, whether it be Christmas, Thanksgiving, or some other Holiday, what drives you to work when others are enjoying their time off?

No Christmas Holiday In Japan

[Bob_Robertson]

I got lucky, doing network operations on the evening shift in a high-availability 24x7x365 shop for 6 years. "The Holidays" were my best time for making overtime pay, taking shifts for people with kids, or who were on trips.

It earned me the brownie points to be able to take days off the rest of the year without anyone hesitating to say "yes" even when I wanted things like 4-day weekends.

But I'm Japan now. Dec. 24 is the Emporer's birthday, so Monday was a holiday, but Dec. 25th is just another day.

However, NewYears is a really big thing here. For three days there is actually almost nothing open for business. Not stores, not restaurants, not offices, banks, whatever. It's amazing! It's really a good idea to stock up on food, unless you like rice-balls from the local AM-PM which is the only thing open.

But we're back to work on the 4th (Friday), back to normal. A one day work week! I wonder how long it will take them to legislate a one-day work week in France?

Bob-

Re:Banks/Credit Unions

[msobkow]

My current contract is in the financial sector as well. Even when the Federal Reserve is closed, someone still has to be on call for the batch jobs that are still running.

Fortunately we have 2-3 (or more) people assigned to support each system, so we can rotate the hot pagers around. I have to carry it this Christmas/New Years, but had Thanksgiving off. (Like I said someone has to carry the pager!)

When working contracts in manufacturing, major holidays were the busiest times, as it was the only time the manufacturing lines were down long enough to do non-emergency system upgrades and enhancements.

About the only contracts I've ever had that didn't require holiday work were pure programming jobs for the Telco and Property Management sectors.

Some of the worst jobs are active on Christmas

[JPawloski]

Two come to mind immediately:

1) People at warranty companies. NeW (the company that OfficeMax and Best Buy go through) and GE all boast 24/7 technical support on many items (printers and scanners, etc.) Obviously there needs to be someone there to pick up the phones. I have a friend that used to work at technical support and he would tell the usual horror stories, the usual idiotic customers and the usual rude customer. I'm not sure if customers tend to be better or not in Christmas, it could go either way (the stress from the holiday season and the product not working could cause rude customers, but then again the cheer and joy of the moment may cause more understanding customers... it could be a wash).

2) A job at a wearhouse or major department store.

This is a job I do not envy at all. I know a guy who works at Sears. People go there and buy large items for their families (usually sons or daughters) but pick them up later. Of course, Sears oversells all of these products, so on Christmas Eve when these customers come back to pick up the product they already paid for, its HIS job to tell them "oops ... we oversold that item, sorry. Oh yeah, there's no more left in the district." He told me that one guy actually brought the Sears worker over to his son and said "See him Son? He ruined Christmas for us."

That's some messed up shit.