Black Friday, for retailers, is being discussed elsewhere. The weekend before Christmas is also a rough time, of course. And I would imagine that specific stores have their full-court-press times, like early February for jewelers, or back-to-school for variety stores.
Then there’s:
Restaurants: Mother’s Day.
Post office: April 15th and late December.
Tax offices: Early April.
Bars: St. Patrick’s Day, New Year’s Eve, Hallowe’en.
Grocery stores: Days before Thanksgiving and Christmas.
What else?
Professessessing-- first week of classes, the two days before any exam, and the week after handing back exams.
In prison, it’s right around the last 3 weeks of December. The county jails are pushing to empty everyone out, and ship 'em off to us. The staff is taking maximum allowable vacation, sick leave is up (seasonal illness? Shopping? Just not feeling like working? All of those and more!), the incoming inmates are more depressed than usual, as are the ones that are already there, and it’s dark when I get to work, and dark when I leave, and my office has no windows.
End of the month/First of next month. That’s when I’m expecting payments to come in from invoices I’ve previously sent. Some folks are good about paying in 30 days, but most take 60 to 90 days to pay up. ATM I’m trying to get paid for a job where the owner and engineer are bickering about who owes the bill. :rolleyes: So split it, already!!
The uncertainty is quite stressful.
From two of my jobs:
Travel agency call center (where I work now)- January and February as a lot of people are booking for spring break travel. September and October are also busy times as people are booking for Thanksgiving and Christmas (glad that half of it is behind us now).
Office supply store- August, as everyone is shopping for school supplies.
**Transportation Director **for a large, suburban school district:
The last 4-6 weeks before the start of school, and then the first couple weeks itself.
In my last full-time job, the days just before and after holidays were the busiest. The company had a policy that employees weren’t paid for holidays unless they worked the day before and the day after. Exceptions were made for authorized leaves, vacation, FMLA, etc.
The time to figure out who gets paid and who doesn’t was much shortened.
When I worked at a pizza delivery joint our busiest days were the day before Thanksgiving and any day with a major sporting event on. Monday Night Football, playoff baseball, etc.
At the post office, yeah it’s December (as mentioned in the OP). I wouldn’t say stressful so much as exhausting. I go home and just fall into bed ( and family wonders why I’m not feeling all Christmassy…).
I work for a freight forwarder; we deal a lot with shipping agents in the Middle East. Mondays are a storm. Most of the Middle East agencies are closed on Fridays for their Sabbath. Given the time difference, it can be difficult to communicate with them starting late Thursday afternoon. However, they are open and working on Saturday and Sunday. Come Monday morning we have all of the accumulated email, with orders, questions, problems, requests for quotes, from three days. Add to that, that almost all American ports have not been accepting freight since the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and the day after tomorrow (Monday) we will be deluged.
Whenever one of our clients changes from our COBOL/Powerhouse system to our Oracle system. It’s not hard at all to train brand-new clients - they expect change - but our old clients expect the new system to be identical to the old. L- J— ISD, I’m looking at you!
Journalists seem to universally hate Election Day.
Those newspeople involved in sports also tend to be stressed over late and/or big games.
I don’t do it anymore, but in greenhouse work these are the busy times:
Valentine’s Day (The biggie for cut roses, also potted plants)
Easter (Lilies, bulbs)
Spring (bedding plants and stuff, this goes on for WEEKS)
Mother’s Day (everything - this is the biggie, it’s just a madhouse)
Christmas (Poinsettias)
As a software developer it is always just before a release.
I’m a student, but I can answer for my father–November and the beginning of December (just before lobster season starts; everyone wants their gear ready for dumping day), and the beginning of fishing season is similarly busy. I’m sure he can’t wait for the season to start, this year has been extra bad.
Conference Week: the week before major projects in freshman comp are due, in which I have to meet with the whole class in the office, read all their drafts beforehand, and try to distill as much sensible advice as possible into fifteen minutes. The ones who need it the most generally miss their appointments and e-mail me in a panic to reschedule, and I’m a soft touch so I generally let them.
The one at the end of the semester is the worst, because everybody’s burnt out and exhausted and my literature class is also gearing up for a major paper.
When I was a Hot Wing Mobile Forward Deployment Engineer (AKA “Delivery Driver”), the busy time was Finals Week and “Dead Week”, the week before Finals.
At my current job in a school library, the busiest times tend to be right before mid-terms and will probably also be busy before finals in a few weeks.
I work at a hospital blood bank, and it’s usually busiest on Mondays, because we get all the outpatients coming in for their pre-surgical or prenatal testing. Then again, the very busiest times are when someone’s bleeding in the OR, and that happens anytime.
In my job (which is not seasonal like the rest of you have posted) it’s the two weeks after the boss or Office Manager try to institute a new rule or work procedure (which they do every now and again just to improve productivity and make us toe-the-line).
It takes about two weeks of concerted and organised disobedience by us workers before they wring their hands in despair and give up. It takes a LOT of effort and committment to show them the folly of their efforts, I tell’s ya.
For wineries in this area it’s the harvest season or Crush - Usually runs from about the middle of August to the middle or end of October.