With the hate of a thousand suns. Can’t walk away, I’m in the middle of the highest unemployment in Illinois.
Work in a very small office 10 people. Not retail, no contact with customers. It’s bad enough that we have to work the day after Thanksgiving (personally I’m doing enough today so I can claim to have accomplished something Friday, actually I’m bringing my Kindle, there will be 4 people in the office and I’m rather isolated), I found out today that while the Xmas holidays are on the weekend, we are only going to get the Monday off after Christmas.
Question that keeps going thru my mind is Why? Why do this to your employees, why do you hate us? What does it accomplish making people come to work on obvious, historical days off? Does it in the long run hurt your company? Hurt morale and loyalty?
I have many other complaints, I could go on and on. I’ve just always got the idea that they really don’t like their employees, that employees are a necessary evil.
I’m not asking for sympathy, give me insight on how to keep putting up with this. I just hit my 4 year anniversary with no other job opportunities in sight. I’m upset, I’ve never been made to feel so small on a consistant basis by an employer.
I’ve worked at places like this. The last office job I had didn’t give us the day after Thanksgiving off - I don’t think I’ve EVER not had that day off as a holiday in my entire career. One year we hired a new guy, and he took off for Thanksgiving, completely assuming we had Friday off. He only found out we didn’t on Monday, when the boss confronted him about why he didn’t show up for work on Friday without calling.
At the same place, the CEO once told us we all had to work every weekend between early November and Christmas because we had a big project due in early January. He then promptly took 2 weeks off for deer season himself, leaving us to work.
I felt the same as you do - completely taken for granted, unappreciated, not liked. Luckily I was able to quit once I realized just how bad it was. Now I work with people who bend over backwards to tell me how appreciated and valued I am; I get whatever days off I want, and I never have to ask myself why I keep this job. It makes a huge difference.
This seems reasonable to me – Christmas is on Sunday, so they’re giving you Monday instead. What were you expecting to have off?
I say this as someone who works for an institution that has the 10 Federal holidays off every year, and sees them as the “obvious, historical days off.” Plenty of people take the day after Thanksgiving as a vacation day, but it’s not a holiday as far as I’m aware.
Hmmm, you are getting the same days off that I am getting off and it didn’t even occur to me to be upset about it. I run critical systems for a body parts factory. People do stupid stuff during the holidays just like they do every day and they get injured. They need new parts so we make them and ship them same day if we have to. I am also on call 15 hours a day for any problems and 24/7 365 for big problems. I like my job and I didn’t even think to bitch about it let alone start a Pit thread. The day after Thanksgiving isn’t a holiday and you said you are getting the Monday after Christmas off. What more do you want? This isn’t Europe.
Until my current employer* I never once received a raise or bonus. Ok that’s not true. I received a raise ONCE because I threatened to quit. I also was ‘promoted’ twice with no increase in pay (which I don’t count as a ‘promotion’). I also received an ice scrapper once as a bonus when I was a teacher and it was so flimsy it broke the first time I used it. I also once received a package of bacon worth about $4 at the grocery store one Christmas.
I get the feeling most businesses are like that…
who I have worked at past 10 years and have NO complaints about their time off/bonuses
Oh hai! I think we work at the same place. I’ll be here on Friday too. Let’s wear jeans that day (Screw you office with no Casual Friday!) and sneak in some booze.
Normal office type environment would have Xmas eve and Xmas day off. They are on weekend this year but I figured we would still get 2 holidays. Body shop guy, you job is critical and I appreciate what you do but i will literally be sitting and staring for no good reason. No customer contact. No incoming calls. No dealing with general public. And you’re right. No raise or bonus in 4 years. That means I’m making less than when I started. No 401k benefits either.
You are SO freaking working for the company I used to work for. Hey, remember that year when the CEO sent out an email saying we could take a half day off for Christmas Eve? Even though that’s a company holiday?
Obviously there are some jobs that need to be staffed every day. If you’re in retail sales, or you’re a cop, or an EMT, or the guy who makes sure the furnace doesn’t explode, then there’s a point to working on the day after. But if your employees are just office cubicle drones? How much work are you really going to get from that extra Friday? Or are your employees just going to sit around all day and collect a day’s pay for no work? You know they aren’t going to get any work done, they know they aren’t going to get any work done, the American people know they aren’t going to get any work done. So send them home and stop treating number of hours people are at the office as a metric of how much they are getting done.
When I was a sales rep, those “should be holidays but not for us” days ( Friday after Thanksgiving, MLK B-day, Columbus Day ) were my favorite days ever. I always had a good client or two who also refused to close on those days, so I would come into their office and order in a bunch of pizzas and I usually got their undivided attention in a relaxed atmosphere for as long as I needed.
The first few times I made these sales calls I was in the same boat as my clients, I had an idiot employer that refused to close shop on those days but once I realized how productive those days had become for me ( especially given that it was enjoyable work ) I insisted on working them.
This is the only funny thing that has ever been said on The Drew Carey show. Still, it’s one thing to hate your job and to work for a particularly malevolent employer.
Every job I’ve ever had required the use of a vacation day for the day after Thanksgiving. Same with Christmas Eve, however usually the boss would stroll around at 11am and if nothing pressing was going on, he would tell you just to go home after lunch.
Like other posters, there may be things you hate about your job, but I can’t see the outrage with this one.
OP’s got every right to dislike their job, but frankly based on what’s described in the OP, it really doesn’t seem all that malevolent to me.
So they don’t automatically get Black Friday off. Boo hoo, it’s not a holiday; frankly we’re lucky Thanksgiving is one.
Hasn’t gotten a raise in 4 years? Waah, waah! I work on a federal contract, I will never get a raise, ever.
Only 1 day off for Xmas? It’s on the weekend so you’re already off, you’re complaining about getting a free day?
So you have to go to work with nothing to do and no one else is going to be there? Sounds fantastic to me! You’re getting paid to do nothing. Beats the crap out of having NO days off and working your ass off on holidays, every single one, like when I worked at Safeway.
Apparently some people more examples of their asshattery. We used to work half day saturday per month. I arrived at 730, got call at 830 my father had just passed. I left to rush home. Did not get sympathy card or plant at funeral. When I got back boss had to talk to me about making up half day I missed. And bigger boss sent me email reminding me that I hadn’t left my computer on for weekly upgrade. While I was on bereavement.
Sure, and I’ve experienced the good, the bad and the ugly of employment, and worse things have happened than being one of few people without the day off, but goddamn, it strikes me as a special brand of mean-spiritedness to not just close the office for a such a small company whose employees will have no customer interaction. It says to me “I’m being a dickhead because I can.” I work in a tiny office too, and nearly everyone will be out on Friday. The ones who are not will enjoy a day of twiddling their thumbs, which is not as exciting as it seems. The other companies who it is our business to work with --much larger companies, mind you-- will be closed. There will be absolutely nothing to do, and yet three people will be here likely gossiping all day and taking three hour lunches.
I’m going to get paid to do nothing on Friday no matter how you slice it, so I can either put on some pants and sit here wasting the office electricity so you can make some bullshit point about me being here, jerk boss, or I can just skip this pointless charade altogether. No matter where I am this Friday, the company will be paying me to shop at Anthropologie. Point made, employer! Whatever it was. There’s absolutely no good reason to have the office open so that three people can sit around with their eyes glazed over except dickery.
Really? Hell, I worked in a soul-crushing call center job, and even they considered it a holiday. We were open, but if you had to work that day, you got holiday pay for the day plus time and a half (if it took you over 40 hours, including the 8 hrs not-worked holiday pay). Worked out fine. For double time and half, we generally always had enough volunteers to work holidays.
All the places I’ve worked since college usually had ~10 or so holidays per year. If you had to work them, you got either bonus pay or a floating holiday to use another time, depending on the company and your position. If you’re not doing Friday after Thanksgiving and only one day at Christmas, I wonder how many holidays you get per year? I mean, I’d be pissed if I had like three holidays a year, since that’d be like losing a whole week of vacation.
