I work for the state of Pennsylvania. I do get the day after Thanksgiving off but most of the people have to take leave (my bargaining unit gets that day but not managers and some other unions). We do not get Christmas Eve off but do get New Year’s day off (not New year’s eve unless it’s a weekend).
Party at Mean Old Lady’s office!
Booze required, pants optional.
This was me. At my current job, we get Christmas Eve and Day After Thanksgiving off, which is nice I guess, but in turn we get fewer personal days than I got at my old job. I used to specifically volunteer to work these two days year after year because I knew I’d basically just get to screw around all day and probably go home early. And I’d save my personal days for when the weather was nice. Win-win!
Here are the 10 U.S. Federal holidays:
New Year’s Day
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
Washington’s Birthday
Memorial Day
Independence Day
Labor Day
Columbus Day
Veterans Day
Thanskgiving Day
Christmas Day
Obviously not all employers follow this list, but it’s certainly possible to get 10 days without including the Friday after Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve. Federal Holidays that fall on Sunday are typically observed on Monday, those that fall on Saturday become floating holidays.
Heck, we–like about half the companies in the US–get no sick days. If you’re out sick, you lose one of your 12 vacations days. So of course everyone comes in sick and gets everyone else sick (and no one can ever save up enough vacation days to actually *go *anywhere).
My five years in State government we always got off Thanksgiving Day / Black Friday. The Christmas issue was very complicated if I recall. If Christmas was on Sunday, you got Monday off, and that was it.
If Christmas was on a Saturday you got Friday off (Christmas Eve), but you still came in on Monday.
If Christmas was on a Sunday you got Monday off, but still worked the Friday before that.
In both of those scenarios you only got 1 day for Christmas.
If Christmas was on a Friday, you got Christmas off, but not Christmas Eve.
The weird situation was, if Christmas was on a Tues, Weds, or Thursday you could get Christmas Eve as a half day. So if Christmas fell on Tuesday you came in for .5 day on Monday and went home at noon, and came back on Weds. Obviously everyone used a vacation or personal day for that .5 day so they ended up with a 4 day weekend. FWIW I think 1 day for Christmas (wherever it falls) and 2 days for Thanksgiving is pretty standard. At the State I believe they even only had 1 day for Thanksgiving for a long time, but in some agreement State employees voted or something (long before my time) to get two days off for Thanksgiving and they lost another holiday (Easter I think.)
Yeah, those are such stupid policies. I think that’s one of those things, all the managers that know anything know that even 5 days a year of sick leave is huge in productivity because you have less instances of people getting the whole office sick and everyone working at lowered productivity.
However the top management and financial people view those 5 days as being really bad because of “how they look” on the financial statements. Basically it’s easy to quantify how much those 5 sick days cost the company but very difficult to quantify how much having no sick leave costs the company, so sick leave is a common thing to get axed.
Same here, though we usually close at 2 or 3. Never had the day after thanksgiving off either. It would never have occured to me to be mad about it.
I do have just under 10 weeks of time off saved though so I’m not about to complain.
Same with me - the usual pattern at a place I worked at was to get a call telling you to go home at around noon on Christmas Eve. (my boss was off-site) One year everyone was heading off until the entire building was empty. There was nothing to do - nobody was there. I waited. Finally at 3:30, the phone rang, and the boss said: “just calling to make sure that you know this is a regular workday, and you’re expected to be at your desk until 5:00. I could call back at any time.”
That particular boss only lasted another few months before they were canned.
We have six holidays a year. Some years we get Black Friday off, some not, depending on what day other holidays fall on. We are usually given at least one extra floating holiday to account for stuff like that. We also don’t officially close early on the day before holidays, but come on, everybody knows we leave early. I’m typing this from home right now.
This is the corporate office of a major American retailer.
*"You’ll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?’’ said Scrooge.
"If quite convenient, Sir.’’
"It’s not convenient,’’ said Scrooge, "and it’s not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you’d think yourself ill-used, I’ll be bound?’’
The clerk smiled faintly.
"And yet,’’ said Scrooge, "you don’t think me ill-used, when I pay a day’s wages for no work.’’
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
"A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December!’’ said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. "But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning!’’ *
Whoa whoa WHOA!
They didn’t get you a plant? Those fuckers!
Look, while it’s certainly polite for your office to collect money together and buy you something because of a tragedy that befalls you, it’s hardly expected. In fact, expecting it and getting mad your expectations weren’t met is at least equally as rude (if not more so) than them not doing it.
And you missed work, so you were asked to make up that time. I’m sure you could have docked the time from your PTO or something as an alternative, right? You were supposed to be working and you weren’t, so you had to address that. The computer thing is kind of a dick move, though I can see reminding an employee of that, just so you don’t forget in the future.
Generally, me neither. And frankly, a company can’t win. Give people two days off for Christmas and the Jews, Muslims, Hindus and atheists say “why!”
I just switched jobs so I have no vacation. Which means to get paid, I get to be at the office, doing a job I don’t have a clue how to do yet, every day except Thanksgiving, Christmas (or the Monday thereafter) and January 2nd.
My last company sucked. You had to take the week between Christmas and New Years off. But you had to take vacation to do it. And the week of the 4th of July as well. When you started, you got two weeks of vacation, and they picked the weeks. Which was great for all those people who had family off. I had kids in daycare and a husband working for a retail company.
The guy’s father died. It’s dickish to whine about him taking time off or not paying attention to a work detail during that time.
One of my asshole employers asked us to work Turkey Day. No mention of extra pay or a thank you. They’re just treating it like another Thursday.
Fuckers. The only reason I’m getting a few hours of overtime that day is because I’ve worked six and half out of seven of the last days. They send me my paycheck today early because of the holiday. Sounds nice, right? No. Not only is it an hour’s pay short, it’s not direct deposit. Worse, because it it isn’t direct deposit it went through the mail. There’s a corner of it missing. I have no idea if my bank will take the beraggled thing.
So many employers are petty assholes. They know this economy sucks and they take advantage of it by attempting to screw over employees at every turn just because they can.
Dio. I’ve had 3 tragedies come across since I’ve been there. Sister brain tumor and both parents passed. Not one single word of concern. Next month they are going to get up in front of their 11 employees at the holiday lunch and tell us we are all family. I call bullshit. They don’t care about me or the rest of us. My point in the Op was simply how do they do that. It just seems so mean. If I ran the zoo I wouldnt treat my people like that. I wouldnt have even mentioned the 3.5 hours I missed. Don’t feel like family.
Sometimes it’s the little things that go a long way towards improving employee morale. At the firm I used to work for, there is almost nothing to do between Christmas and New Year’s. One year as it worked out, that work week would only have been 3 days. They offered us the time off but only if it came out of our vacation allotment. As salaried employees we got paid whether there was work to do or not, so of course we all came in and did nothing and took our full 2 or 3 weeks in the summer.
Of course there’s no rule that says they had to give us the time off but considering how hard everyone worked at tax deadlines and client year ends, that little reward would have paid off big time for the employer in employee satisfaction.
I don’t work there any more but apparently the employees were offered the week off b/w Christmas and New Year’s or a staff Christmas party. Guess which one they picked and guess who gets a nice holiday in return for all the extra (unpaid) overtime worked the rest of the year.
Sometimes it’s nice when your employer’s not a dick.
Dude, I work for the Government. Despite all the Pubbie lies about us “evil lazy guvmint workers’ we have never got the day after Thanksgiving or more than Christmas day off. Once in a while, they will let us go home a little early Christmas eve. My Bro works for a very very large company, and they don’t get those “obvious, historical days off” either.
Those are hardly “obvious, historical days off”.
I hear you and sympathize. It’s all the worse when this sort of crap happens in a small office and you really DO know everyone closely. If it were a big firm with lots of people in the same shitty boat it would be easier to take.
Do you work for a partnership? I did for a while and the three partners had VERY different approaches to this sort of thing. I was lucky–the partner who brought me in had made me certain promises the other partners couldn’t break, but I saw the way they treated their other employees. Over time they saw that the way I was treated resulted in my being more effective, productive, happier, and generally a better employee. I would frequently be requested by our clients because of my better attitude and willingness to help them through some particularly knotty customer-service problem.
By the time I left that firm they had revised their policies and now treat all their admin employees with respect. There’s no question that treating people like drones is utterly counterproductive, and it amazes me that small employers especially don’t see that.
I understand about Black Friday not being an obvious day off but since Christmas Day falls on a Sunday, don’t you get a lieu day off in the work week following? Since Boxing Day is on the Monday, I would have expected the Tuesday off in lieu of Christmas Day…but that might be an old practice and not a rule.
Of those day, most reasonable private employers give you:
New Years
Memorial Day
Independence Day
Labor Day
Thanksgiving Day
Christmas Day
and typically one floating holiday.
As Dave Barry said, it is easy to tell whether you work in the public sector or private sector. If you get Groundhog Day off, you work in the public sector. Otherwise, private sector.