From the Children of Men thread - “Theaters are packed here on Christmas Day. It’s a family tradition of ours to go see a movie on Xmas, and we’re not the only ones.”
My family tried to pull this crap this year, and I put a halt to it. Christmas (and to a lesser extent, Thanksgiving) should be the one day of the year that everyone is allowed to just fucking relax and spend with their families. When you insist on going to the movies on those days, it makes you an asshole because you’re helping to create and maintain a demand for those low-paid workers to have to go to work instead of being able to be with their families.
As someone who worked a barrage of shitty and demeaning retail jobs as a teen and college student, and as a young post-graduate in a shitty post-9/11 job market, I can tell you firsthand that it completely sucks to have to go to work those days. In most cases - such as when I worked at a movie theater - we were required to work both Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, and to even ask for the day off was grounds for dismissal. It really sucked for me and the people my age, but it was terrible for the adults working those jobs, like my manager, a single mother who couldn’t spend Christmas with her children because all of the families with their cute “holiday tradition” of going to the movies instead of staying home for one fucking day out of 365.
When you go to the movies on one of those days, you’re saying that those workers don’t deserve to have the holiday, only you and yours. You’re saying that they should have to give up their time with their families to serve you on the one day that you should actually be content just staying home with everyone. to go to the movies on one of those days - and especially to make a cutesy “tradition” out of it - is such an active act of class warfare that you might as well go stomp some bums on the way home. It’s a tradition!
In summary, don’t be a fucking asshole, and go to the movies on one of the other 364 days of the year.
I’ve worked more than my share of holidays (CHristmas included), and ftr, even for minimum wage (no holiday pay). CHristmas doesn’t mean the same thing to every person ya know.
I agree- when working as a bagboy at a grocery store chain, when we would have to work holidays. Invariably some sympathetic soul would offer up the old “it sucks you have to work Thanksgiving” while buying their Ziplock bags and can of beets, to which I always wanted to reply “yeah, well if people like you would stay at home on the holidays and save this obviously very important purchase for tomorrow, the store would see it is not profitable to be open on a holiday and then I wouldn’t have to work”. I know, my fault for not being an attractive enough employee at 16 to have a job outside of retail.
I used to work at K-Mart and begged to work on Thanksgiving Day. Time-and-a-half, and we ate like maniacs in the evening, but I never did anything but sit on my ass in the morning and watch the parades.
It might be a big deal to you but for a lot of people who aren’t American/Westerners, or Christian, December 25 is just another day. Even for folks who are, some people go back to work and do what they gotta do. How do we decide what day is the day when everyone should stay at home? Should it be Rosh Hashanah? How about during Ramadan?
What about the police? Or the armed forces? Or the power company people? They work on Christmas Day as well.
Personally, I’m with you - I feel it’s a good day to stay at home doing family stuff, but I’m not going to go so far and tell other people what they should do. If Christmas and Thanksgiving are huge deals to you I think it makes sense to avoid jobs where you have to work those days. And don’t most places provide time-and-a-half, overtime, or some bonus for those shifts?
I don’t give a shit about families. There are lots and lots of single people and non-participaters in general who need something to do on holidays. Suck it up kid, and get back to your ticket-taking booth. Bitch.
I sometimes wish I worked somewhere where working on Christmas was an option, especially if I got overtime for doing so. I’m Jewish and don’t celebrate Christmas.
Some non-Christians do offer to work on Christmas, or get into volunteer programs that let them work on Christmas in place of someone who celebrates it. My MIL does this at the hospital she works at.
Not everyone does celebrate Christmas, or feel any obligation to do so, and those of us who treat it as just another day don’t appreciate being called assholes for doing so. I’d say the assholes were the people running the movie theater where you worked- asking for Thanksgiving or Christmas off was grounds for dismissal? Whatever happened to saying “no”, and only doing something drastic like dismissal if the person is told they can’t have the day off, and they take it off anyway?
I’ll back you on this one, and I’m single. Have your little movie-going tradition the day after, or another fucking week altogether.
SOME of you here must remember back when almost everything was closed EVERY SUNDAY, when stores and restaurants didn’t stay open 24/7. . . somehow, people survived. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to let ppl have that one day. . .and yes, I’m aware that some ppl don’t celebrate Christmas, but we are largely a nation that does celebrate it, with schools, post offices, and banks closing on that day, along with most everything else.
We are a nation of I WANT IT, AND I WANT IT RIGHT NOW. Perhaps stepping back from that, if only for one day, would not be a bad thing.
I kinda agree with you. My mother thinks we should all go to a nice restaurant next Christmas in lieu of presents, and my first thought was, “OMG! We’ll be making the waitress miss out on Christmas!”
But I also have to say it’s stupid for me to act on this guilt. The megaplex cinema is not going to close just because my family decides to stay home and watch reruns on TV. We would be staying home purely out of principal, which is just stupid. Also, things would suck if everything is closed. You couldn’t get gas to fill up your car on the way to Gramma’s house. You wouldn’t be able to pick up forgotten grocery-store items for Christmas dinner. You wouldn’t be able to grab those last minute gifts at the drug store. We wouldn’t know how to function.
The problem isn’t that people decide to have fun outside of home on the holidays. The problem is that workers do not get enough vacation time. I’m sure missing Christmas wouldn’t seem like a big loss if people could spend more time with their families. You are blaming the customers when you should be blaming the employers.
And what if they want to spend it by going to the movies together? Or if they need to buy last-minute groceries for that evening’s Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner? And that’s not even touching on the whole non-Christian/atheist/whatever issue.
Sorry, but no OP sympathy for me. I already get slightly peeved when I want to grab a quick hamburger lunch on December 25th and all the fast-food joints are closed. If you want the 25th off so you can spend it with your family (and more power to you), then take that day off.
My family are Jews, you brain-damaged fungus. Why the fuck should they stay home because it’s somebody else’s holiday? The only reason they go to the movies is that it’s Christmas, and everything else is closed to begin with!
Jesus died for your day off. :rolleyes:
I didn’t say that, you dipshit, the federal government did in its infinite wisdom.
This is stupid for a whole raft of reasons, not the least of which being that lots of businesses are open on Christmas. Why are you picking on movie patrons? Because you used to work at a movie theater? Like I give a shit about your employment history! Lots of people who have it way worse than teenagers (or even adults) working in movie theaters are also required to work on Christmas. And anyway, somebody has to tend the banks and the grocery stores and the restaurants that feed the people who aren’t working on Christmas who choose to eat out. Some of them are in situations that suck, others are getting higher wages than normal and doing zip because it’s a slow business day. SOrry your employer was a jerk, now grow up.
Nobody is forcing anyone to work on any day, every single person is there by choice. I worked Christmas and New Years days and i was glad for the extra money because i fucking needed it, not being able to work those days would have meant no fucking gifts for my family. We abolished slavery a long fucking time ago, we are all doing shitty jobs because we need to do shitty jobs in order to survive, you wouldn’t be doing anybody any favors by taking that away.
I can NOT believe this thread. A few minutes ago I was in a good mood, and now I’m fuming mad. So mad, I can’t even confront the OP. I haven’t a colorful enough vocabulary.
Y’all can take your Christian religion and shove it up your collective asses. It’s just another fucking day to me (and if “Jesus” existed, he wasn’t born on December 25 anyway, you dorks, it’s just a date someone pulled out of their ass) and if I feel like going to the movies, I damn well will go to the movies. I worked on Christmas and Thanksgiving many a year, and liked the extra money it brought in (thanks Christians).
If your family is so important, spend time with them EVERY DAY instead of using a stupid fucking holiday as an excuse.
Not that I don’t like some of the perks the holiday gives. I do love Christmas lights with a passion. Militant Christians who think we should ALL worship at the shrine of baby jesu though, can go to hell.
I agree. Christians should shut the fuck up about it.
That’s almost as much bullshit as the OP. Never mind the twerps who have to work at the 7-11’s, IHOP’s and Galaxy 5000 movie theaters. There also need to be the doctors and nurses who help you when you cut half your hand off during a drunken turkey-cutting episode, there needs to be military who are actually paying attention to whether there are missiles flying at us over the north pole, and there are cops who are supposed to care that your daughter failed to come home at 2 AM.
These people didn’t take these jobs because they want to work on holidays. They just accept that someone has to.
I for one would greatly fucking appreciate it if Christmas wasn’t such a big fucking deal for everyone. If it could de-matasticize down to normal holiday status (say Valentine’s Day, for instance). Then people who don’t give a shit about the religion or customs or symbology of the holiday can ignore it without being treated like assholes.