Here I sit all alone in my office building (ok there is one guy downstairs but for all I know he’s asleep) while everyone else is at home getting prepared for Santa’s big ride. Why? Because I work the IT help desk for a health care group, and if the systems go down, it’ll bring the hospitals to a halt, so I need to be here in order to notify the IT teams in case of emergency. I also figure I’ll get my regular bunch of (L)users who can’t figure out their own passwords. So far, it’s been quiet, and I hope it’ll stay that way. I brought Christmas cd’s, books, even my Game Boy, in hopes that I can kick back and coast through this day till 4pm when I get to go home, walk the dog, and then meet my family at my mom’s place.
So is anyone else out there stuck at work today? C’mon folks, misery loves company. Tell me, why are you on the job today?
Applif*ckingcation support. If reports don’t meet their deadlines, there will be a slight drop in the stock price (.0000000001). It’s very critical shit.
Tragically, I’m in retail. The world will end (end, I say, end) if there isn’t someone around to dispense last-minute stocking stuffers. It’s a dreadful responsibility, but I’m willing to take it upon myself.
Is making sure a nuclear power plant doesn’t break itself a good reason?
The kind of ironic thing is they sent me home early. Of course we’ve been trying to schedule it so there wouldn’t be anything to do today or tomorrow, so it would have been a lot of hurry up and wait if they’d kept me. Good deal.
I’m the barn manager/equine therapist at a residential facility. Someone’s gotta feed the horses, plus I have a group to run this afternoon. I’ll be here tomorrow too. And New Year’s. Just like I was here for Memorial Day, and 4th of July.
I’m supervising a customer service call center. I have no idea why we’re open today, anyway – our warehouse is closed until January so it’s not like we can ship anything. However, we only close on Christmas Day.
I’m working on a proposal to win work. The kindly government put out the RFP mid december, due mid january–limit of 400 pages, which means we are aiming for 400 pages. Just a bit grinchy, don’t you think? Did I mention it was originally scheduled to come out last July? And they couldn’t have waited until after the New Year, huh.
However, it is potentially a pretty big one, and if we win it, it will mean honest work for the people I work with, so here I am. Here I am all next week, too. Oh, well, it is easier to get this done with everyone else gone.
But there is definitely a part of me that wants to shout at my upper management (all at home today, thank you very much), thank you for having so much faith in my abilities that you are willing to RUIN MY HOLIDAYS.
I don’t know if I count for purposes of the thread, as 1) Nobody’s making me work today and 2) Nobody’s paying me to do this, but I am at work and I would like someone, somewhere to pity me.
I service Hallmark departments. I have to point morons to the last three Christmas cards on the rack, then listen to them have a hissy fit because they have to give their wife a Christmas card with the word “Nephew” crossed out on it. :rolleyes: These are the same morons who had thousands of cards to choose from in November, but chose to berate me about commercialism or something at the time.
I don’t have to work today, but I have to go in before 8AM on Christmas morning to change tapes at the local Community Access TV channel. Several churches will be submitting special programs and someone has to set them up.
At least I get paid double time and it will probably be 10 minutes of work paid as a minimum 3 hours, so it ain’t all bad. Just as long as I don’t bump into Santa on his way home with an empty sleigh.
I am at work, but not actually working, because I have no electricity at home. It has been out since 3am yesterday when a bunch of lines were knocked down by an ice storm.
Been off since noon Wed. Actually, I took my crew out for an “off-site meeting” at noon wednesday which basically consisted of eating and drinking all afternoon. So officially, we were working, but unofficially we just shot the breeze until about 7:30ish.
The world won’t come to an end if people don’t know of Lena Aragon Barret’s death, or the road conditions on I-40 are icy but sanded, read that the local hospital has a new administrator, or read that Sunday is the annual all-city church service at the local convention center or that starting Jan. 1 the food tax will end, but they have the right to know it and it is my job to let them know it.
They also get to read my editorial on the wonderful feelings that the Christmas season can foster or read my column about how my looking like Santa Claus has created some embarassing situations in the past.
They can also look at the photos I took of a local elementary school holiday program, or see a photo of a fellow digging his car out of a snow bank or see a pic of the Christmas concert last night.
If they are looking for a job, or a car, or a place to rent, they might appreciate us.
Is it “so important”? Probably not - not in the grand scheme of things I suppose, but some of the people in a small community will have a slightly more pleasant Christmas because I put in a handful of hours today.
I am the on call engineer for the Well Construction side of our district - we pump cement into the ground after the rig has drilled the gas well and no they don’t stop for holidays!
Well I am sat at work the only one here today - no dispatch, no phones as they are on the answering service however I get to send crews out on jobs today & tomorrow, get to read logs, talk to company men, drag the bulk plant in and force them to load cement, drag other crews in to haul it to location as our haulers shut down for Christmas, drag the lab in so they can test the damn stuff, finish off a job design that someone else could have finished yesterday but didn’t as they had to “leave early” to bake cookies or something.
Oh yes I am bitter - I was supposed to be on vacation right now to see my family in the UK but had it cancelled as apparently I am the only one that works around here and I worked last Christmas & New Years & Memorial day & Labor Day!!!
Bah Humbug!
(Feeling a little upset can you tell? I normally love the holidays but this year it is a none event)
Like **Max C. ** and 1010011010, I’m here doing the IT support bit and making sure the ATM network doesn’t eat itself for breakfast. Not that it ever does. Those things run on Tandem servers that are pretty near as reliable as gravity. A much higher chance exists of the ATMs running out of cash, but that responsibility is on the guys in the armored trucks that service the machines.
I’m an ER nurse. And even though I don’t have to work today, I’ll be there at 7 on Christmas morning (and New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day). I can’t complain too much – unlike some of my patients, I will get to go home at the end of my shift, instead of upstairs to a hospital room.
