Boxing day isn’t typically celebrated in the US. The Canadian employees at my company get Tuesday off in addition to the Monday, but the US employees don’t.
FTR, the US employees are getting Friday off.
He never gives me any paid holidays, sick days or anything. If I take time off, it’s completely unpaid, and I generally have to make up the work at night after the kids are in bed. He won’t hire anyone to back me up, so I’m on call 24/7. With international clients, there aren’t any days which aren’t holidays somewhere in the world.
No 401k, either.
The guy is a grouch in the morning until he gets his coffee. He makes me wash the toilets in addition to negotiating business contracts. He makes me do everything. No assistants, no help.
But working for yourself does have its benefits.
I get the follwing days off over Christmas:
Thursday 22/12 - Half day, full pay (Workplace Christmas lunch, knock off at 1400)
Friday 23/12 - Half day, full pay (Christmas Eve early shutdown, knock off at 1230)
Monday 26/12 - Friday 30/12 - Public Holidays on Monday/Tuesday (Christmas and Boxing Day public holidays), mandatory workplace shutdown Wednesday-Friday. Full pay.
Monday 2/1/12 - New Year’s day public holiday, full pay.
Not a single day of this comes out of my PTO allowance 
Is this cute little anecdote supposed to be funny? I’m a public employee and I work hard to facilitate affordable higher learning for a school that serves mainly underpriveleged young people to hopefully make a decent living and be productive members of society. I take pride in working to make my state a better place (and in fact by a lot of metrics my state does very well nation-wide…which can’t be said for the idiotic red states that constantly destroy government with their minimum wage jobs at best and near third world health standards).
But keep insinuating I am lazy and don’t often work, I really appreciate it.
Don’t forget that if you’re running a zoo, the same work needs to be done every day, all day, no exceptions. There are no holidays at zoos.
I chose a profession that requires work on holidays. My employers are good enough to allow floating holidays, so everyone gets a day off during the week of the holiday, just not necessarily the actual holiday day. I have Friday off, but only because I’m working Thursday.
When I did work in an office, I was in banking and banks have to be open for business the day after Thanksgiving. I never had Black Friday off until I changed careers. I guess I’m also not the sort to really care.
Pish posh and balderdash. Just open the cages for a day. They’ll be fine.
Well, some of them anyway.
Just think of all the new exhibits!
Maybe if you’re a clerk at the DMV, or something like that.
My husband works for the FAA. Until the past couple of years, he not only didn’t get holidays like Groundhog Day off, he usually had to work during the big holidays, too. That is, he’d usually have to work Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve AND Christmas Day, New Year’s, whatever. He worked rotating shifts, which meant that we’d always have to consult a calendar to find out whether he was working a particular Thursday, and if so, if he’d be working first, second, or graveyard shift.
Nowadays Bill DOES get the major holidays off, and he works straight day shifts, for the most part. This is because he got promoted. However, he still has to work graveyard shifts during the last week of the month, and if the dadblamed system goes down at 10 PM, he gets called in to fix it, even if he is supposed to be on day shift and is getting ready to go to bed.
So I guess that the FAA is really private sector, by Dave Barry’s standards.
That’s always on of the joys of working retail or food service. No sick leave (or somthing like an hour or two per month), no vacation pay, no health insurance (or at least no health insurance anyone can actually afford on their pay), then corporate sends emails out during flu season reminding everyone of their “resonsiblity” to stay home if they sick “for the sake of our customers as well as you coworkers”.:rolleyes: Double joy if it’s somewhere were said employees are handling foodstuffs.
Yeah, it’s a trade-off, isn’t it?
I don’t know about you, but if I don’t work I don’t get paid. Some days I’d rather have the money and others I’d rather have the time…
Among many, many, many other wrongs done, my ex-employer had us work on the 4th of July. Not too horrible, except I was teaching summer school at a public (government, civics, history!) high school.
Even better, half the kids didn’t show up, so they added time to the end of the session. Guess how many people already had plans for that time?
No plant is a crappy move. My bosses? Three employees, with over a hundred years of service combined, were retiring and didn’t get even a mention at the staff mtg. One of the teacher’s students threw a small party-- the principal found out and made them throw out the food and read. Sweet Jeebus.
The best I can figure is TPTB simply don’t think and once caught, stick to their guns in order to save face.
All I hear is blah blah, my husband suckles at the teet of government, any private sector employee would work approximately 800x harder for 1/10,000th the pay. GOVERNMENT LARGESSE!!! :mad::mad::mad:
I’m glad there are people like your husband. 
Yes, like I said, we get one day off for Christmas day.
Look, the govt gives 10 days. My Bro’s Large employers gives about the same (less actual holidays but extra floating holidays so it comes to 10). Even my friend who works retail gets 9 holidays but sometimes she has to work one, but gets extra pay, so it’s OK. Ten days is pretty standard.
On Black Friday, all the banks, government, restaurants, and retail are open, and retail is working double overtime.
My basic point is just why would an employer go out of their way to treat employees less than well. My examples so far, the days off and the death in the family, how was the employer’s reaction (or non-reaction) beneficial to the company? You end up with more turnover and bitter employees. In the long run your company suffers because of your control issues. Nobody I know in my office is happy in their job and nobody, if the economy was better, wouldn’t jump at a lateral move just to get out.
It’s the company’s choice how to treat their employees and since they pay the bills, they earned that choice. I just don’t see why anybody would choose unhappy employees over happy ones.
I didn’t mean it as an insult. I understand that there are many government workers who must work odd shifts. However, it is well known that generally public sector employees are paid less, but have much better benefits (better health care, more time off, etc.) while private sector employees are generally paid more but have fewer benefits such as days off.
Take MLK day, for example. Banks and government offices are closed, but go to any other private business. It will be a rare business that is closed on that day. I would say the same about this Friday or the Friday before Christmas which is what the OP was complaining about.
Bitching because you didn’t leave your computer on when you rushed out after hearing of your father’s passing=assholishness on employer’s part.
Not getting black Friday and the Friday before Christmas off=par for the course in the private sector.
Its a small company. Perhaps this isn’t the company, but a personal issue of the guy who runs it - he isn’t comfortable with death. Not everyone is and a lot of people, not knowing what to say and not wanting to say something wrong or be exposed to an outflow of emotion just choose to pretend it doesn’t exist. It isn’t well mannered, but its human.
And turnover isn’t bad if its at a reasonable rate. Reasonable is going to depend on the business. Turnover of non-skilled or low-skilled labor keeps costs down. With higher skilled labor, it brings in new ideas. In some ways no turnover is as bad as high turnover - you don’t bring in new people, new personalities. You run your business the same way because the people are the same and people are creatures of habit who don’t necessarily question why you do something the way you do it.
I work in a call center, and that’s what we get: plus the day after Thanksgiving, our choice of an extra day around Christmas, and a day in our birthday month for our birthday holiday. This year, Christmas is on Sunday, so we get the usual Monday off: but we get our choice of Friday or Tuesday in addition. This keeps enough staff on generally two of the slowest days of the year.
We also have a small crew that works day after Thanksgiving for emergency orders only. It’s an all volunteer crew, and we still get holiday pay in addition to the hours we work. Plus the company provides breakfast and lunch. This is my first year working as a supervisor: since I’m on salary, I don’t get the extra pay, but I got another day off in exchange. I’m extremely fortunate: I’ve spent 7 years working for a great company.
You know, every time I read these threads I boggle at what’s considered ‘normal’ in the US as far as work goes.
It makes me sad for you folks that live there. I mean, Canada certainly has it’s flaws, but at least we seem to make an effort to take care of our employees. 
No kidding - I was thinking that too.
Please don’t interpret this as bragging, but at my company (and many more downtown) we even get the days between Christmas and New Year’s off. The company calls them “fixed personal days off” but no matter what they’re called they are still days I don’t need to come into work, nor is there any pressure to because the whole office is closed.
Yep - the University calls them ‘Christmas Floaters’ so the entire week between x-mas a new years is paid holiday. Plus another 10 federal holidays, plus another provincial holiday, plus 5 weeks vacation, plus 2 personal days, plus 3 ‘flex’ days, plus 180 sick leave days at 100% salary and another 120 days at 70% salary. Now, I do think that my benefit plan is generous, but it’s not really out of line for other folks in other companys doing similar jobs to me.
I hear about 12 days vacation and no sick days after working at a place for X years and I just feel sad.
What’s worse is I was reading an article a while ago about the percentage of vacation days that are left on the table every year. I had a discussion with some friends around it and there was the perception by them that their employers frowned on people using all of their available vacation and that there was a penalty associated with that, usually related to raises or promotions.