I just woke up, and all the news is talking about parades and turkeys and all that. It doesn’t matter to me. I’m spending tonight in a cold, dark hotel front lobby all alone raking in that minimum wage. I’m hoping some friends bring me food, or else it’s leftovers from the continental breakfast for me.
I know it’s not a big deal, but it just kind of sucks. I wish I could see my family and get the things that normal people get. But I desperately need the money. It looks like I’m also going to be working twenty-four hours days the entire Christmas season, and will only get a few hours for Christmas day to run up to Sacramento and back. I miss having holidays. I miss my family. I miss the kind of “life” so many people take for granted.
Bummer. Is it any comfort to know that, by staffing the hotel, you’re helping other people to be able to travel and see their families on Thanksgiving?
No, it’s probably not any comfort. Especially when those people are all pissy about something not being just exactly so, because it’s the holidays and their family gathering has to be just perfect. That line really makes you want to put a foot up somebody’s ass. The year I was waiting tables on Thanksgiving, I got all kinds of pissing and moaning about big family parties having to wait for a table. It was their family dinner, after all, and they ought to have what they want the way they want it, right when they want it. That year I was 200 miles from my family, 100 miles from Dr.J’s family, and working an 11-hour shift that cut off any possibility of lunch ordinner with my roommate. I was in no mood to hear it, frankly.
I wasn’t in the mood to hear it last Christmas when people were bitching about how long it was taking for us to see their pet, because they have a family at home and don’t want to spend all day at the ER. Yeah, and we’re just back there standing around with our thumbs up our asses, spending the day at work for shits and giggles, because none of us have families at home we want to be with.
Some people are extra nice at the holidays, but some of them are just even bigger assholes than usual.
I’m not too worried about being the kindly inkeeper giving wary travellers a place to stay- the hotel is going to be practically empty. I am glad to give my wonderful bosses the night off (they have a very important society wedding to go to) and I’ll be glad for the fifty-four bucks. I’m just happy to have some work right now. But I’ve worked just about every holiday since last Janurary, and it’s hard not to feel bummed out.
As for the trip to India- even with airfare, I saved money by going there! You can get an all-you-can-eat meal for fifty cents, a hotel room for a buck fifty, and a thirty five hour train ride for ten dollars. I gained ten pounds because I had all the access to food I could ever want. I was able to see the eye doctor, get new glasses, have dessert every day…it was great. But once I came back here, I started hemmoraging money. Unfortunately, I can’t get a second job right now because nobody wants to hire me if I won’t work Christmas day.
If you go to a movie, or eat out, or otherwise do business on major holidays (especially Christmas) please remember that the people working there are often hundreds of miles from their families, getting paid (even at time and a half) just over ten bucks and hour and would probably lose their job if they refused to work the holiday. Have a bit of sympathy and recognition for those that have to sacrifice so much of their own lives to make a couple bucks and make you life just the smallest bit better.
Don’t you get paid extra for working on a holiday? Sheesh, I wish I could work on Thanksgiving; at my line of work, hardly anyone would show up, I’d get pay and a half for working on a holiday, get a little more progress paying off my credit card, and get a bit more experience getting me that much closer to the next promotion. A day off is another day I’m not getting paid.
For the past 3 consecutive Christmas Eves, I missed out on celebrations because I had to work retail that day. I’ve been there.
One thing I’ve always appriciated about my deeply pragmatic family is that they’ve always been flexible about dates–there’s no romance attached to celebrating Thankgiving on Thursday, or Christmas on the 25th. Is there any way you can talk your family into shifting your Christmas celebration to that week right after Xmas? Sometimes it is easier to get that time off, especitally if you have always been a trooper about the holidays. If you go home and the holiday meal is the same and the traditions are still there, the fact that the earth isn’t in the exact same place in it’s orbit is not really all that important.
Another possibility is to really do up New Years. This is what my friends and I did during the college years and the few years after that when most people worked retail. We always did gifts on New Years, both because retail people have no time to SHOP until after Xmas and because celebrating the end of the holiday shopping season made more sense to us than any other cause for celebration.
Ah yes, like a loving SO, 2.5 kids and a white picket fence and paid holidays and a christmas bonus and parents that are happy and giving, and communities that are safe, and…
…
…
… oh wait, that’s not normal at all.
I’ve been stuck working weekends, holidays, and other assorted important days for 15 years. It’s just the way it goes.
Would I like to spend normal holidays, at the normal times, with the normal people? Sure, but people don’t stop needing my help because it’s Xmas, or New Years. In fact, I spent the first three hours of this very year cutting a dead mother of two out of the mangled wreckage of the vehicle she was riding in on the expressway. She had a REALLY bad holiday.
Yeah, working the holidays sucks ass, but things, could be worse.
Happy belated Thanksgiving.
Well, my bosses left my some Thanksgiving curry and chapatis, and some friends stopped by with a package of Thanksgiving food. We watched television and ate and made some merry. The great thing about this job is that I don’t actually have to do anything- it’s the mythical customer service job without customers.
Now I just have to struggle to wake up. They came in at midnight last night, I they’re leaving again at eight this morning. yawn.
Before i went to college, and when i was in college, i worked in various parts of the hospitality industry—bars, restaurants, hotels, catering, etc. For about eight years in a row i never had a New Year’s Eve off, and i worked most Christmas days too. To tell you the truth, it never worried me a great deal, because i’ve never been really concerned about these big holidays.
Still it is nice to be sitting around with family and/or friends, eazting and drinking and making merry. Sorry that you had to work!
And i’ll second Incubus’s question: do you get paid extra for working Thanksgiving? I certainly hope so.
When i was working in catering during my college degree in Australia, our Christmas jobs often involved going to a rich person’s house and serving dinner to the family. This was usually a four-hour job, and we never got less than $200 for the four hours. But then again, it was a small company with great bosses who were happy to charge the customers high rates on days like Christmas.
There was also a huge demand for waiters in Sydney on New Year’s Eve, 2000, and my friends and i all got paid $1000 cash for that night.
Is it any comfort to know that, by staffing the hotel, you’re helping other people to be able to travel and see their families on Thanksgiving?
.