Who Works During the Holidays? 451
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?
Ski Resorts (Score:3, Funny)
We are the location that some people take their vacations. So, I'm at work.
People who enjoy their jobs (Score:2, Interesting)
Amen! (Score:3, Insightful)
I wish everyone would enjoy their jobs as much as I enjoy mine.
I work at Copper! (Score:2, Funny)
I'm in the same boat - I work at Copper Mtn in Colorado doing telecom/datacom/misc IS stuff. I've always wondered what kind of a freak family gets together to ski on Christmas, but there seems to be enough to fill all of our lodging.
I heard Little Cottonwood canyon got dumped on, how's the snow? What resort are you at?
PS. Wanna trade comp passes?
Re:I work at Copper! (Score:2)
depends... (Score:2, Funny)
(my thesis project never sleeps)
Heh..students...heh (Score:1)
Re:Heh..students...heh (Score:1)
Money (Score:4, Funny)
I just did... (Score:1)
Banks/Credit Unions (Score:1)
Re:Banks/Credit Unions (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Of course I'm at work... (Score:4, Funny)
Euro (Score:2, Interesting)
token jew at the ISP (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a physician (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are traditionally covered by our Jewish colleagues.
-ccm
Re:I'm a physician (Score:2)
And the fun starts too, everyone gets thier new wireless device on xmas, and we see that everyone and thier brother decided to use the service. Humm, no cpu at max alarms, good good.
But on the good side, we are just on call, nothing we cant fix remotely. God I love unix and vpn.
I can happily say that.... (Score:1)
Been a long time since I actually did that on a holiday.
Cn U Rd Ths? (Score:1)
I'm at a national ISP call center, waiting for any of the phone agents to tell me they can't figure out what's wrong with a caller's connection. Should that happen, I will swing into action, with advice, references and, if necessary, escalation to a higher tech level.
Been waiting 4 hours for something to happen....shift is half-done.
Work at home: work all the time (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not so bad, though. My fellow staff members are kind of like members of the family, always right there in IRC, every day.
Tina
news editor / reporter
newsforge.com
Holidays.... (Score:4, Funny)
# man -k holiday
holiday: nothing appropriate.
Hmmm.....
Unsure what else to do! (Score:2)
I just don't know what else to do with my time. Everyone else is off with their families, or out of town on holiday. I enjoy my work for the most part, especially when I can do it without interruption, which is tougher during the week. If I were at home, I'd just be banging away on the computer.
The alternative is to go home and celebrate Christmas with mom and the sibs, but Christmas is pretty much ruined for me. I don't like the commercial aspect of it, and I don't like that mom would expect me to attend church if I went back there. I'd rather just visit on a few non-holidays, get together because we want to get together, not because it's been prescribed by the churches and every shop with lights in the window.
Net/Sys Admin now was Water Plant Operator (Score:1)
Since graduating college I have worked my way up to a network/system admin for the local community college (the one I attendded). Even though we are on Christmas break, I worked and extra day into the break for system maintenance and went in briefly on Christmas Eve to tend to a slight emergency.
kernel hacking (Score:2, Funny)
Not me! (Score:3, Funny)
Bastards...
Im Santa (Score:1)
Re:Im Santa (Score:4, Funny)
Damn you Santa!
Work during holidays? (Score:2)
Happy Holidays, and God Jul og Godt Nytt Aar.
I used to work at Kinkos (Score:1)
Holidays are useful resources (Score:5, Insightful)
As I result I've done a LOT of server and network upgrades over Thanksgivings, Labor Days, Memorial Days, etc.
I'm sure lots of others have too.
Holidays are just usually too useful to let pass by without getting something done. In the end, the headaches saved (in lieu of turkey and mashed potatoes) are usually my own.
Re:Holidays are useful resources (Score:2)
Even when you're at work during the holidays, it doesn't feel like it. Most of the people are out of town, and those who are there aren't really there to work like they normally do, so it's a lot of fun.
Re:Holidays are useful resources (Score:4, Funny)
Agreed. Typical vacation times really do make wonderful times to update machines or make other drastic changes to systems.
Here where I am, though, the department morons spent all last week reconfiguring the web server, mail server, and department firewall. They were nice and didn't commit the changes until 5:00pm on Friday. Then they left. The firewall is blocking access to all critical systems, the web server is rejecting requests randomly, and the mail server simly won't accept or transport mail--period. The guys resposible haven't answered phone calls, e-mails, or knocks on their doors. They all seem to have left for the holidays and who knows when they will be back.
Sigh....
Re:Holidays are useful resources (Score:4, Interesting)
Whoa! Working for a phone/wireless data company, I can tell you that is the WORST time to do work. We have black out periods where we cant even touch the hardware/software. And every major holiday is a black out period.
We have police, fire departments, public saftey, delivery services, etc all counting on reliable communications for these critical times.
The best time for us, is late, really late, like 3am eastern time. You can only do so much with clustering, if you have to patch or fix a service/service, its either customer or convenance, and customers pay the bills.
Re:Holidays are useful resources (Score:2)
Phone networks are a special case; I know that I have practically zero chance of making a call on my mobile phone between midnight and around 2am on New Year's Day morning, simply due to the network being swamped.
Re:Holidays are useful resources (Score:4, Funny)
Heck, back in May of 2000 we worked the entire month because they were trying to fix one of our UPS'es. Come in Saturday at 2am, shutdown all 2500 servers. Come back Sunday at 6am, and start em back up.
Thats a month I never wish to relivev again, unless I'm hourly then!
Re:Holidays are useful resources (Score:2)
But if you're talking about remotely keeping tracks of things from home, and checking email a few times a day, even on Christmas... guilty as charged. :)
Re:Holidays are useful resources (Score:2)
Old job: O/S, Software, Major maintenance, rewiring networks, etc. Fun stuff. Usually involved pizza and playing lots of video games when there wasn't anything to do.
Past job: Work on stuff, but slowly since most people you need to interact with are out of the office
Current: Take off Thanksgiving week because Xmas/NY will be end of year adjustments and closings. In two days it's gotta be done or people will be really sore. Fiddle around with VB or review projects for next year for a couple days.
I miss the old days.
The Professors Are In (Score:2, Interesting)
For those of us in academia, especially on the tenure-track, "holidays" often mean "when you're not teaching and can get around to writing up your papers or grant proposals", although I'm pleased to say that I'm also getting to travel to see my family (hooray for the laptop and the spread of home broadband).
- Alan, Asst Professor of Clinical Decision Making
ISP employees... (Score:2)
I've been at work since 8am, and will be here for another hour (it's 7pm here..)
//Phizzy
Re:ISP employees... (Score:2)
Same here, but I'm just on cover from home, and I volunteered for it.
Christmas is always very quiet, except the last couple of years where we had some pretty ugly weather and it knocked out power to a few places, but that's about it. My boss is fond of quoting that 80pc of network outages are caused by network engineers doing things. At Christmas, when no one's doing anything, everything's stable!
So I spend Christmas with my family, logging on occasionally, unlikely to get called in. And I get to take off out of the country for New Year while someone else takes the reins.
Not a peep so far, and I fly to Scotland on the 27th...
Dave
who's working? (Score:5, Insightful)
police personnel
fire sqads
paramedics, doctors and nurses
lots of personnel in the transport industry
lots of people in the IT/comms industry (yes, average/. user, that probably means you, among others)
people in charge of basic supplies (water, electricitiy,...)
If you compare all these groups you might find that this easy brainy job IT job in front of a keyboard yields best pay and comfort and the smallest risk. So stop whining if you have to work over the holidays - others are doing for you all the time.
Re:who's working? (Score:2)
This is the first of any Christmas/Thanksgiving/New Years/July 4th/Easter I've had off in 14 years. Think about that for a minute. And a majority of those were 13 hour rotating shifts.
Not whining, I chose this career, but it does get old at times.
Re:who's working? (Score:3, Funny)
My favorite was the lady who walked in on Christmas day with a sore throat she'd had for two weeks. While I was checking her in, she told me, "I can't believe they make you guys work on Christmas." I refrained from answering, "Well, I guess you'd be pretty upset if you came to the E.R. and we had a 'Closed for the holidays' sign on the door
Re:who's working? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:who's working? (Score:2, Funny)
well shit, then we might as well add angels, unicorns, cyborgs, and other mythical creatures.
Plug plug pluggin away... (Score:2)
And this morning? Went in and installed a brand new switch chassis, by myself. Nearly broke my hand when it slipped while I was trying to install it in the rack. But it's installed and running.
And for the record, I do celebrate Xmas too.
Bullshit (Score:2, Interesting)
A lot of Asian restaurants are opened... (Score:2)
T'is the season to be JORRY (Score:2, Funny)
Disney World, fire fighters and police officers... (Score:3, Interesting)
By the time my father was senior enough to regularly have the holidays off, I was working at Disney World and low enough on the pecking order (seasonal, HS or college age) that I always worked during the peak holiday hours.
I've always found it interesting how indifferent people are to this. I'm not sure if it's a defense mechanism (against guilt), or something else. The Duke University book on Disney World even mentioned this - one researcher visited on Thanksgiving Day and noted just how disconnected most people were between their holiday and the way they treated the people who had to work.
My girlfriend, making sure you stay warm.. (Score:2, Interesting)
(She works as a Radio / Helicopter landing officer)
I was lucky and just cought the last chopper to the beach from another rig
And us non-christians... (Score:3, Interesting)
Blessed Be, and Brigit Bless
Farrell McGovern,Druid.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:And us non-christians... (Score:2)
Lemme ask with your gal though, is there any work to be done *on* christmas ? My employer is shut down the 25th - 2nd so no work could be done if I wanted to go in, and we're about 90% Asian/hindu religions.
and is she cute?
dan
Re: (Score:2)
Re:And us non-christians... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, cute girls are exempt from all your complaints.
Re:And us non-christians... (Score:2)
Never have truer words been spoken!
Re:And us non-christians... (Score:3, Interesting)
I however would take off for Rosh Hashana (2 days), Yom Kippor (1 day), Sukkot (2 days), Shimini Azzert and Simcas Torah (2 days), Passover (2 days at least) Shavous (2 days) and leave early on Fridays to be home by sundown during the winter. Thankfully I got to Brandeis where they give you all those off anyway. When I start working again it will cut into my vacations rather a lot I would imagine.
And yes I did fast from sunup to sundown today.
Re:And us non-christians... (Score:2)
I had no idea! I thought it was all about the celebration of buying stuff. Word.
Re:And us non-christians... (Score:2)
the word blessed comes from the French word "blesse'" which means "wounded"... as in Christ's wounds. So, saying "bless" is itself a Christian reference.
Re:And us non-christians... (Score:2)
Re:And us non-christians... (Score:3, Interesting)
When I was a teenager, I always volunteered for Christmas -- it's the biggest sales day of the year for movie theatres, and one of the biggest in the restaurant business.
I'm just glad I don't have to deal with a holy month like my Muslim colleagues do.
I don't celebrate it (Score:2)
Re:I don't celebrate it (Score:2)
But seriously, the word "believe" (which I didn't use, BTW) is applicable not only to religious dogmas but mostly to everyday events. For example, "I believe you" or "Sir, I believe you forgot your newspaper" does not necessarily mean that I consider you to be a deity.
To be precise, I don't believe in (presence|absence) of a deity. I just don't know, and I even don't care. Nowadays there are much better reasons to believe in existence of little green men from Mars :-)
No Christmas Holiday In Japan (Score:5, Informative)
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-
Personality traits visible in writing style (Score:2, Interesting)
Unfortunately, basic personality traits come through in writing style quite clearly, and very quickly.
If these three A.C. postings were actually made by the same person, which seems likely since they're of the same style, you can be mostly assured that you would not in fact ever be an employee of mine.
Self confidence is a good trait, it leads to success. Arrogance overlayed on stupidity usually leads only to profanity.
Bob-
Well ... (Score:3, Funny)
I wish I had a choice... (Score:2, Interesting)
If I had a choice, I'd be home with my wife as its her first christmas away from her folks. Merry Christmas (and Happy Holidays) to all the other military personnel, netadmins, sysadmins, and every other *admin out there working on this time for joy.
Merry Chrstmas
ET3 William J Kenny III, USCG
Re:I wish I had a choice... (Score:2)
I betcha your rotation ain't 1in4 though.
look me up in the global.
ET3 Isaac Gorton
(Just put in my package for ET2)
Home Depot (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Home Depot (Score:2)
Waffle House (Score:2)
it's the only sane choice (Score:2)
Plus, most employers should give you a comp day, so you can take vacation when you actually want to.
What's worse? (Score:2, Interesting)
Euro (Score:4, Interesting)
It's funny how you don't appreciate how much work goes into changing a currency until you've got to update the software on tens of thousands of terminals across Europe.
Of course, this is a once-off. It'll never happen again. Just like the night of 31-12-99 that I spent in front of a bank of computers.
More and more international (Score:2)
So... although I do not mind working this day or any other day, I am going to sit back and enjoy a few days off, really off. I shall not even check my email, my blackberry, my cell phone. I'll work on my private web site instead. Happy holidays; everyone!
Mike
Apparently, HACKERS do! The Register Is Gone! (Score:4, Funny)
WHOIS query result:
________________________________________ The NIC.UK Registration Host contains ONLY information for domains
within co.uk, org.uk, net.uk, ltd.uk and plc.uk. Please use the whois
server at rs.internic.net for Internet Information or the whois server
at nic.ddn.mil for MILNET Information.
Is it only coincidence that this falls on the second anniversary of the Hotmail/Passport outage [slashdot.org] that gave Michael Chaney [slashdot.org] his fifteen minutes of Slashdot fame?
Sorry, I meant CRACKERS! (Score:2)
UPDATE: The Register's server is still up, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
So not only has the domain name [www.nic.uk] been detagged [www.nic.uk], it appears that the site itself has gone into hibernation as well. Does anyone have any other information about what's going on over there?
EXTRA: I found this excellent post on Usenet, and append it here for your edification:
From: Anthony Edwards (anthony@catfish.nildram.co.uk [mailto])
Subject: Re: some one does not like THEREGISTER.CO.UK
Newsgroups: uk.net
Date: 2001-12-25 14:04:27 PST
On Tue, 25 Dec 2001 20:09:06 +0000, in uk.net Rob Harvey <nospam@ukservers.net> wrote:
>
>What's also interesting is that the whois doesn't show a "Registered on" date
>which I believe means the name itself is pre-nominet and didn't have an expiry
>date.
>
The Register's first issue was Number 1, 25 July 1994 (Nominet began in 1996 I believe). In those days it was an email newsletter, the first issue can be viewed at:
http://194.159.40.109/reg1.txt
In fact, issues 1-37 can be viewed at the above site, simply by placing the relevant issue number in "reg*.txt".
However it appears that, at least up until 8 November 1996 (issue 37), the domain name theregister.co.uk was not in use. Indeed, the site was at http://www.hubcom.com/register/ , although it seems that John Lettice and Mike Magee also at that point owned the domain theregister.com (albeit they don't now).
One wonders what has happened to theregister.co.uk to cause the domain to become detagged. It is hard to believe that it is a simple financial matter, given the relatively small sums involved. I notice that the identity of the person who apparently requested the detagging (presumably via the Nominet Automaton) is an employee of uk.psi.com. Since all such detagging requests (from Nominet members to Nominet) have to be PGP signed, one imagines that request at least was genuine (but see below).
Up until around September 2001, The Register's hardware was co-located at one of Level 3's UK facilities. Following a variety of technical problems relating to Cisco load balancing equipment, the site was moved I believe, although I am unable to remember who the new hosting centre is. I have a sneaking suspicion that it *is* now PSI, in which case I imagine there will be much embarrassment all round.
On the other hand, there may be a little more to it. The Register have roundly slated the bulk email operation behind the recent Sainsbury's and Virgin Wines spam incidents, pointing out in no uncertain terms (and to Sainsbury's and Virgin Wines too, one imagines) that the email addresses used were definitely culled from Usenet.
However, consider this:
>Received: by jupiter (mbox topflite)
> (with Cubic Circle's cucipop (v1.31 1998/05/13) Sun Dec 16 13:34:37 2001)
>X-From_: root@peel.net Sun Dec 16 13:24:33 2001
>Return-Path: <root@peel.net>
>Received: from blaster1.peel.com ([216.52.138.23])
> by jupiter.nildram.co.uk (8.10.0-mysql/8.10.0) with ESMTP id fBGDOWC28607
> for <posthamster@catfish.nildram.co.uk>; Sun, 16 Dec 2001 13:24:32 GMT
>Delivered-To: <posthamster@catfish.nildram.co.uk>
>Received: by blaster1.peel.com (Postfix, from userid 0)
> id 6D65261DC; Sun, 16 Dec 2001 06:24:28 -0600 (CST)
>To: posthamster@catfish.nildram.co.uk
>From: "Virgin Wines" <virginwines1979@peel.net>
>Reply-To: notify@peel.net
>Mime-Version: 1.0
>Content-Type: text/plain
>Subject: Great Christmas wine at a bargain price
>Message-Id: <20011216122428.6D65261DC@blaster1.peel.com>
>Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001 06:24:28 -0600 (CST)
mail from: root@peel.net in the SMTP envelope, and a Reply-To address
of notify@peel.net. However:
Dig peel.net@NS1.PEEL.COM (216.52.138.3)
Authoritative Answer
Recursive queries supported by this server
Query for peel.net type=255 class=1
peel.net MX (Mail Exchanger) Priority: 10 returns.peel.net
peel.net A (Address) 216.52.138.9
peel.net NS (Nameserver) ns1.peel.com
peel.net NS (Nameserver) ns2.chi.pnap.net
peel.net SOA (Zone of Authority)
Primary NS: ns1.peel.com
Responsible person: root@peel.com
serial:2001092202
refresh:10800s (3 hours)
retry:3600s (60 minutes)
expire:604800s (7 days)
minimum-ttl:86400s (24 hours)
peel.net NS (Nameserver) ns1.peel.com
peel.net NS (Nameserver) ns2.chi.pnap.net
returns.peel.net A (Address) 216.52.138.24
ns1.peel.com A (Address) 216.52.138.3
ns2.chi.pnap.net A (Address) 216.52.129.33
One MX record, and when one tries to connect to it:
----begin telnet capture----
$ telnet returns.peel.net 25
Trying 216.52.138.24...
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused
----end telnet capture----
Other Usenet posters have reported a similar inability to connect to returns.peel.net (and the name of the MX itself is indicative of a rather interesting sense of humour):
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=9njtk0%24aa2
So, the owners and operators of peel.net have cunningly managed, it would appear, to not only convince two of the UK's largest and more respected companies to use their service for what Sainsbury's and Virgin Wines apparently genuinely believed was a true, genuine, opt-in email marketing operation, they have also managed (by technical means) to ensure that their own bandwidth will not be wasted by such trivial communications as "message undeliverable" bounce messages either.
One wonders if an alleged spam operation with such a fascinating mindset might attempt a little social engineering hack, against a news site which exposed their antics so comprehensively. On 24 December, I doubt whether many of PSINet's key UK staff were operating. A telephone call to support, followed by a fax request to "detag our domain as we won't be using it any more" might produce an interesting result, might it not? Especially since one imagines PSINet UK have a handy internal Web front end tool for support staff to use to register/modify/detag domains, and that support staff on 24 December might have had other things on their mind, and when one considers how easy faxes are to fake (which makes it hard to understand why so many UK ISPs insist on them for such requests, rather than an email originating from the customer concerned's netblock, or a PGP signed email from the admin contact of the domain concerned).
--
Anthony Edwards
anthony@catfish.nildram.co.uk
Our Men & Women in Afganastan (Score:2)
As an prior Security Force Marine I can't remember the number of holidays I spent in a guard shack. We used to draw little christmas trees and tape it to the bullet proof glass. It was against regulations but every year it seemed to get overlooked.
A few Years ago I remeber hearing the base commander had driven all over camp Pendelton on christmas eve and brought a mug of hot Chocolat to every Marine on guard duty. There were probably to many for him to get them all, but the fact he took time out of his holidays to do that was something many of the marines never forgot.
Semper Fi to all the Marines and other service men and women out there.
The big disaster (Score:2)
Farmers do not get days off (Score:2)
Same for doctors, cops, firemen, etc.
Oh wait, you meant only geek jobs that don't get the holidays off? Picky picky. :)
Not a holiday here (Score:2)
A few weeks ago was Ramadan, where observant folks fast during daylight hours. At the end of that was 3 days of Bayram, which is when people go around visiting family and friends. Bayram is a non-work holiday, but I work in a data center, so it was work as usual.
As a note, Muslim holidays are based on a lunar calendar, so they don't come at the same time every year - sometimes Ramadan is during the summer. So you can't really assume that December is a holiday pretty much everywhere.
Some of the worst jobs are active on Christmas (Score:2, Informative)
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
That's some messed up shit.
Once upon a time... (Score:2)
I worked at Price Club, then PriceCostco, then Costco.
XMas was a dark horrible time filled with dark horrible people who sucked the life from my weary, heavy heart.
Some of the bastards worked me like a rented mule even though was struggling through finals and others were hideous pod people sprouted from Hell to shop and bust balls. The rest was 'bicker without ceasing' family.
Now I actually have a job where the boss comes into my office on the 20th and says, "Jesus Christ Lou, go home, and don't come back until the third!"
Alas this year he and his marketing wife had their first baby a few days before X Mas so I have to work tomorrow.
That aside I really love the holidays now. Especially the part where my 2 year old boy hands me his homemade thing-a-ma-bob and says, "I _do_ love you daddy!"
I did! (Score:2, Interesting)
Merry Christmas! Be Safe!
Do not do this! (Score:2)
That's why I may have a halo at work, but sleep in the dog house. Oh, yeah, my wife is a programmer. You would figure she'd understand, right? Nah! Go figure.
My boss worse than Scrooge... (Score:2)
The conversation with my boss went something like this:
Boss: "We need you to come in on Tuesday -- we have to upgrade a customer system in Taiwan and we'll need you there if something goes wrong."
Me: "But I'm not customer service or support! I'm the Release Engineer! Besides, I haven't seen my family in a year! I'm flying out day after tomorrow!"
Boss: "Well, some of the developers are coming in."
Me: "Yeah? They're Chinese nationals on H1-B visas who are afraid you'll have them deported if they say no. Besides, I already cut short my Thanksgiving vacation for you!"
Boss: [waving hand] "You can can work on Christmas; you can always see your family later."
Me: "I can work on Christmas; I can always see my family later."
Pathetic, eh? The worst part is that this isn't even an emergency; my boss just decided that the 25th was as good a time as ever. So, I sat at work for 7 hours and they didn't even need me to be there. To cap it all off, my boss finished up the day by thanking us for coming in, telling us he'll "need us in all day tomorrow", and finished off with his morale-building "don't forget, the economy is bad and you won't find another job" speech.
I really, really miss the .com days where employers had to kiss your ass -- my girlfriend has been out of work for three months, and I'm fresh enough out of school that I'm not positive I could find another job right away (we'd be completely broke in two weeks with neither of us working). As soon as things recover a bit I'm out of this soulless excuse for a company.
And maybe I'll call Microsoft and tell 'em about the company's somewhat lax policy towards licensing all the software we include on our systems.
I'm at work. (Score:2)
Then it doesn't really matter anymore, I can just as well do some work-things...
Roger.
I was indifferent to Christmas... (Score:2)
This is the first time I've cared about christmas in probably 10 years. Of course, I'm also deleriously tired from being up till the wee hours assembling stuff christmas eve and being awakened at 7am, and having to stay up tonight assembling all the stuff she got from her grandparents. Oh well, every pleasure has it's price...
the holidays (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll give you the "in America" part but the "most in the world" part is incredibly wrong. While Christianity is the dominant religion in the world, it is no where near half. Most in the world today were working and trying to earn enough to feed their families like any other day.
Devon
Support Industry (Score:2)
And no, not everyone is India is a Hindu, there is a significant amount of Christian, Moslem and Jewish population here.
Who works on Christmas? Mom (Score:4, Insightful)
Merry Christmas to all.
WRONG (Score:2)
enjoying what most in the world (especially in America) would consider "the Holidays"
WRONG.
Most people in the world do not consider this time of year as 'the Holidays'. A minority do.
Mathematically speaking there are 1.8 billion Christians in the world: less than 1/3 of the global population. There are 1.1 billion Muslims, 800 million Hindus, 350 million Buddhists, nearly 1 billion 'others' and 1 billion people without a religion. Within 25 years, Islam is projected to be the largest religion in the world.
Religion is much more central to the daily lives of most people in the world outside of the secularized West, where the holidays are primarily a commercial event. Don't forget that the word 'holiday" is derived from 'holy day'.
Before making broad, sweeping pronouncements such as the one you made above, make sure that you don't have basic facts wrong. Travel the world and see how other people live. It's one of the best ways I know of to learn and to think outside of our Western-centric box
Re:Commercialism Has Me Bummed On Christmas... (Score:2)
What nonsense.
First, from what book did you get Dec 25 for Christ's Birthday?? Quote me the scripture/verse if you got this from the Bible.
Secondarily, if Christ wanted us to celebrate his birthday, *why* isn't it mentioned at ALL in the New Testament?
If you can't even do proper exegesis, don't even bother posting.
Re:Commercialism Has Me Bummed On Christmas... (Score:2)
What nonsense.
Yes, it ought to be perfectly obvious to anyone that it's to show off how affluent and spendthrift we are and how, at least once a year, we can wallow in material possessions with someone besides ourselves. Those who would claim that it's about a child being born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago are clearly delusional and taking advantage of our yearly celebaration of Mammon to spread dubious religious propaganda. Forget those barbarians - on with the potlatch!
Re:Commercialism Has Me Bummed On Christmas... (Score:2)
Of course it's not in there. It's well known that the date of Christmas was made roughly to coincide with the dates of pagan religious holidays which occurred in winter, like the Saturnalia. Modern neo-pagans celebrate the winter solstice, 21 or 22 December (I can never remember when exactly), and this possibly has some basis in ancient practice. Indeed, if the Four Gospels are taken as evidence, they do not support a winter date for the birth of Christ (q. v. Luke 2:8, which says that the shepherds were in the field tending their flocks, which isn't likely to have happened in winter.)
But that's really missing the point. Of course the date of Christmas is arbitrary, just as the dates of a number of our holidays are arbitrary (Thanksgiving and Memorial Day come to mind.) But Jesus was born at some time roundabout A.D. 1, and there happen to be people who think that the anniversary of his birth is an event worth celebrating. 25 December happens to be the date which tradition has set for that celebration, and that's what Christmas _used_ to be about.
"Secondarily, if Christ wanted us to celebrate his birthday, *why* isn't it mentioned at ALL in the New Testament?"
True, it isn't really. Someone else in this thread quotes some verses from chapter 2 of Luke, but I don't think they call for any sort of annual celebration of Christ's birth. Again, though, this is missing the point. Christian tradition comes from many other sources than the Bible. The lack of Biblical precedent hardly invalidates the tradition, I should think.
"If you can't even do proper exegesis, don't even bother posting."
Ooh, ten-cent word that, "exegesis". I think you're showing off.
Cheers,
hyacinthus.
Re:Commercialism Has Me Bummed On Christmas... (Score:2)
> But why wouldn't we? He never said that we should not, and Jesus is the basis of Christianity, which would makes his birth vital.
He clearly said to celebrate his death (and resurrection), not his birth. If he wanted us to do *both* don't you think he would of said so?!
Re:Commercialism Has Me Bummed On Christmas... (Score:2)
Re:Seperation of Church and State (Score:2)
You'll be glad to know though, that people on the Mass Pike from Springfield to Boston were not celebrating Christmas in any way, shape, or form. It was war as usual.