Hey! That was one of my jobs, and I agree it was fun…our regular shift was 2-11, but like you midnight on holidays. Plus for a couple of years I fried doughnuts in the back of the bakery, which may be the most fun job I ever had for the reasons you cited (except the drinking, we didn’t do much of that).
At every job I have worked in the last 20 years, Thanksgiving and the day after are paid holidays. So you get the holiday pay. If you have to work the day, you get time and a half on top of the holiday pay.
So I always volunteer. 
I worked in hospitals for about 20 years – we had our choice of Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year’s Day off. Now I’m a librarian and union member, and we have all these paid days off that I didn’t even know existed before – Veteran’s Day, Memorial Day, etc. Half the time I would rather be working than taking a forced day off, but them’s the breaks.
How could it possibly be unfair? No one’s making you work a particular job (unless you are a slave, in which case getting a certain day off wouldn’t help much). If you don’t like the terms of your employment, that’s your clue to seek employment elsewhere.
I don’t think it’s “unfair”. It is what it is.
I can’t imagine that having to go into work at 8pm or whatever time in the evening is going to ruin Thanksgiving dinner. It might get you out of having to clean up after, though.
I’ve worked Thanksgiving, not ideal, but whatever. My mom (a nurse) and my brother (works at help desk call center) usually have to work one of either Thanksgiving or Christmas every single year. We deal. We gather on a different day or them come by for a bit before or after their shift.
In all the entry-level jobs I’ve had working on Thanksgiving (or Christmas) was handled in a reasonably sensible manner, either they ran on a skeleton shift and scheduled people for half-shifts so they didn’t blow the whole day at work, or they asked for volunteers, paid double or triple-time, given the next day off, etc. At one place if you worked Christmas Day you were given New Years Eve and NY Day off. A lot of times supervisors or managers were sort of expected to step up and fill in for the PT people too. For the most part no one was really “forced” to give up their holidays.
I have an office job, but one that is open 24/7/365. We get comp days for working holidays. I make the schedule for my department, which consists of four people. We usually have two of us working Thanksgiving, the other two working Christmas. We’re all pretty cool with it and the hours are flexible enough where the people who do have to work those days won’t have to miss out on family gatherings or anything like that.
I generally think people should be encouraged into laziness on the holidays. It’s a time to eat, drink and be merry. I don’t understand this common mentality in America that everything comes before work. I don’t worship at the altar of work. I love my job, I do my job, but I want holidays off and think others should have them off too - assuming that’s what they want.
I’m pretty used to it; I work in the entertainment industry, so we’re likely to work on other peoples’ days off. I pretty well knew this when I decided to move into the industry. It’s hard to coordinate with family, but it sure does make it easy to get together with work friends.
I wish I were working on Thanksgiving, fuck. Instead I have to see my family and hear for the eightieth time how Jesus must be coming back soon because of gay people and Obama and stuff.
I think this must vary by province - I went to the mall on Thanksgiving and everything was open. X-mas day things tend to be closed though.
totally agree. the biggest grocery chain in this area closes for thanksgiving too, and as you say, good for them. the holidays occur at the same time every year, and the grocery store is open roughly 15 hours a day every other day of the year. deal with it. the black friday bullshit is just ridiculous. i agree with the idea upthread to have the corporate bigwigs that are deciding to open their stores earlier every year come in and work if they want to open so badly. retail is a demanding and often thankless job, especially during the holidays(and most retail workers are not getting any extra holiday pay for working). let them have one fucking day for themselves, or with their families, or whatever, and go shopping the day after.
Where are they gonna go shopping the day after if you’ve already given all retail workers the day off?
It’s not like people are working straight through the other 363 days of the year, so “let them have one day for themselves” is just childish melodrama. Retail jobs are generally considered to be unpleasant and do not pay particularly well, so if you hate working on holidays and hate your job, do yourself a favor and try to find something you prefer. There is nothing “unfair” about an employer requiring employees to work on particular days.
I don’t think it’s terribly unfair, but I don’t travel for the holidays because we all live in the same town, and I don’t really understand the point of Thanksgiving though I do like eating turkey. My Thanksgiving stuff is done by 5pm, so if I had to work that night, I don’t think I’d be too fussed about it. Beats the hell out of working Christmas day, anyway.
I’ve worked Thanksgiving in retail, and I think it’s a little unnecessary. I do very much respect companies that take the little financial hit to allow their workers to be with their families on a major holiday.
A company that takes financial hits may end up closing its doors, leaving you out of a job. Then you can stay home all the time – like every day is Christmas!
APPLAUSE!
Really, Thanksgiving (also Christmas and any other holiday) doesn’t just randomly pop up. You know it’s coming. Get ready for it, use a little time to plan, and you won’t need to go shopping. That’s how things go here, not just on holidays but on almost every Sunday. That’s how it was in much of the US only a generation ago.
Obviously there’s never going to be a day, in a modern society, when no one has to work. Certain jobs are simply necessary 24/7, to protect lives and keep civilization humming around. A firefighter has such a job. So does a hospital nurse, or certain utility workers. A clerk at Big Box Mart doesn’t, just because some higher-ups who damn sure will be spending Thanksgiving with their families want a bigger share of the Black Friday profits.
Apologies if I sound like a grumpy old coot. My mother worked retail for years (department manager in a local department store in Pennsylvania) and I remember that every year Thanksgiving was spoiled for her because she was dreading the next day. I hate Black Friday and I don’t care who knows it.
Oh, as for me? It’s a bit funny, because this is the third year I’ve been on an every-other-Thursday-off schedule and the third year I’ve coincidentally had to work on Thanksgiving. But, well, if you choose to spend your adulthood in a country that isn’t the one you grew up in, these things will happen. I’m planning to have a Thanksgiving-themed lesson for my classes, and here at home we’ll do Turkey Day the following Saturday, as we usually do.
Not only do I have to work on Thanksgiving, but I’m expected to give a brilliant, engaging, and dynamic lecture (or I have to give a lecture) and meet with my boss about my promotion.
Damn these British and not letting me have my holiday. But my thanks to those in the 17th century who had the foresight to pack off the dismal old trouts to inflict 8am classes and the grind of publish-or-perish tenure system on the New World instead of here. So maybe it’s Thanksgiving after all!
(Actually, I didn’t even realise it was next week, and I have to admit it was never much of a holiday in my family, just another excuse for misery from my dad and sister. I don’t teach on Friday, but we live too far from Plymouth to make any sort of little pilgrimage - har - out of it. Maybe we’ll go look at the big boats down in Portsmouth Harbour as they really are lovely.)
I’m in the journalism biz. You learn pretty early on that you’re mostly likely going to be in the office on most holidays. After all, people want their newspapers on the day after Christmas, day after Thanksgiving, etc. If I thought that it was so unfair, I have had all the time in the world to secure employment in a profession that is a little more holiday-friendly.