What in Christ's Name are you doing here?

The BBQ Pit
121

I’m Jewish and observant, and yes, it can make my professional life crazy. I leave early on Friday afternoons in the winter time so that I have enough time to bathe children, shave, shower, change, and walk to services. Is it disruptive? Of course - I need to make up the time during the rest of the week.

I lose vacation time because I need days off for religious holidays. Is this disruptive? Yes, especially since I can’t go on week long vacation over the summer. I can manage a few days here and there.

When I interview for jobs, I make sure the employer knows about the arrangements I need. If he/she says fine, then we work things out ahead of time. If he/she says the firm can’t comply with these arrangements, then I thank him/her for his/her time and leave.

If you really want to have days off for religious reasons, it’s up to you to spend the time looking for a job situation that’s accomidating. Is it easy? No. Is it worth it? Well, if it’s important enough to you, it is.

122

yosemitebabe, this paragraph made my jaw drop. So if an employer or business owner can get enough people to volunteer to work he can stay open, but if people are unhappy and don’t want to work he should close? That’s possibly the most ridiculous assertion that’s been made in this thread. Hard-hearted? Do you think the boss doesn’t know about his employees’ feelings? Do you think he likes to be thought of as a Scrooge, etc.? While some do, I imagine that the majority don’t - they’re just making a business decision that it makes more sense to stay open on Christmas day than to close. I thought pldennison was a bit strident during some of the earlier exchanges on this thread, but I have to say that faced with this attitude I fully agree with him.

123

Dinsdale, for whom I used to have some respect, ranted:

No, the [retail] employer [since that’s what we’ve been discussing here] is not “in the business to make money” – if he were, he could probably think of far more profitable means of producing an income. He is in business to serve the public at the greatest possible profit to himself. This includes presenting a “front” to them that makes them want to continue dealing with him. Otherwise retail would be a mass of fly-by-night businesses who take your money and run.

One of the greatest advantages to any retailer is to have a sales force of highly motivated employees who make the customer’s shopping experience a pleasure rather than a chore. Oodles of books have been written on how to motivate employees, but the obvious steps of making them feel that they are part of a team, cared about as people who contribute to the business, and so on are primary to this goal. Appropriate rewards, which are often non-monetary in nature, are particularly valuable.

One branch of the firm I work for includes a travel agency, largely for sending our consultants to the clients’ places of business. On the rare occasions that free or deep-discounted vacations become available, the company uses them as rewards to staff who have done particularly valuable work. The company furnishes free coffee, pays for a monthly celebration of staff birthdays during that month, has two social events per year in high-end country clubs and such. A wide variety of staff support activities are in place. Not because they’re charitable. Far from it. They’re hard-nosed businessmen with a heart to be sure, but with an eye on the bottom line. But they’ve found that they get far more in production by treating their employees as valuable people than as replaceable cogs. And we honor them for this decision and respond in kind. If they need me to stay and get the XYZ report out, no problem. They treat me good and I want to respond in kind. Granted this is not retail, the parallel works. Something as simple as having the burger flipper who got the most “super-size” orders get a $10 gift certificate at the mall, for example, will increase sales at your fast foodery by 15%.

Yeah, and you could choose to post your attitudes on the Left Behind board rather than here. Why should she have to? Granted if the store has three employees out with the flu and is short-handed, the employer might have a case, but I suspect yo’babe would not be bitching about that. I would venture to guess that in almost any situation where a business plans to be open over a major holiday, scheduling can be worked out to accommodate the desires of a majority of staff who are willing to cooperate and compromise. If Hilda, who normally works days, is cooking a big Christmas dinner for her five married kids and their families, then she may need to cover the Christmas Eve shift so Frank, who works evenings and is a sincere Catholic, can attend Midnight Mass and then work Hilda’s normal shift on the 25th to give her the day with her family.

Right. First, read Joseph Campbell on the value and meaning of myth. Then look into mysticism. There are good sources East and West on it. Rumi’s poetry may be a good starting place. Bullshit you clearly already have a handle on, so I won’t make any recommendations there. And Orthodoxy is an interesting faith, but not in general one that recommends itself to any Western-outlook Christian. The ‘style’ is far different from either Catholicism or any sort of Protestantism. (FWIW, Antiochan Orthodox is quite a bit different from the other national churches, and a bit more like Anglican/Lutheran practice.)

And I don’t know about others, but my wife and I celebrate January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany on Catholic and Protestant church calendars, as something quite important to us. Last I knew, it was still a RCC holy day of obligation. So yeah, she’s gonna get some competition there too.

124

Um, Poly, you clicked on into the Pit here, bud. Not GD. Sorry I purposefully phrased my rant as I did because of where this thread is taking place.

Or, am I to interpret your remarks as, while you used to have only “some” respect for me, you now have an overpowerful, all-consuming respect for me? Yeah, that’s the interpretation I’ll choose.

Alternatively, better to have fleetingly enjoyed “some” respect from the great Polycarp and subsequently have lost that respect, than to never have enjoyed any respect from him at all.

Regarding your response:

I must be mistaken in recalling thhat the OP concerned casinos, and other posts concerned entertainment/hospitality industries. But if you wish to restrict things to retail, fine. Bottom line, if having Christmas off is all that important to you, you go out and get yourself a job where you will be assured of that day off. “Oh darn. I might have to take a cut in pay? Well, that won’t matter, because my religious expression is that important to me.” BTW, how come priests aren’t given Christmas off?

Behind my original comment was a reaction to the whining in some previous posts that, “if only my boss were nice to me…” Having happy employees an employer’s concern only to the extent it creates happy clents/customers, and does not adversely affect the bottom-line. And there are a lot of people who either do not practice organized religion, or are not as devout in their practice as some posters here, who like to go out to eat, gamble, go on vacation, or even shop on X-mas. For myself, I figure X-mas day and Easter are just about the only 2 days most stores shut down. Either they stay shut or close early. And I get along fine.

You make some nice points about what a “good” employer will do for his employees. I agree with many of them, but I consider them of relatively little relevance to this particular Pit thread. Given current employment conditions, most reasonably qualified employees enjoy some degree of employment options. And, unfortunately, many employers are reduced to accepting just about any warm body. Again, if you wish to start a GD thread on the attributes of a good employer, I’m there, bro!

But, doesn’t it seem yosemitebabe’s and thea’s co-workers are unwilling to cooperate? Those nasty people with seniorty went and chose all the good days to have off. Well, what the hell is supposed to be the benefit of seniority? Are their preferences less legitimate because they don’t concern going to a certain building and performing certain rituals? I have no disagreement that it is a desirable situation for possible accommadations to be made and encouraged. But if the choice is between the business being open or not, I don’t see there being much of an issue.

Thanks for the education. Of course, I would never dream of debating such specifics with you (and I think I have consistently refrained from doing so.) Most theological debates over in GD seem to quickly get over my head. (Although I feel at times advocates on either side opt to focus on minutiae to oobscure matters with the aim of tripping up a less erudite opponent, instead of fostering productive debate.) Again, I chose certain words for a brief response in a Pit thread.

I must admit I’m a little surprised my brief “rant” elicited such a lengthy diatribe in response from you. Slow day at work? I think the length of your reply allowed you to recharacterize things in a way you desire, rather than in a way I intended and others may interpret. That’s fine. Just wanted to point out that possibility.

To close, a minor example to suggest some of the reason I’m essentially unfavorably disposed towards much of Christianity and most of the Christians I have the pleasure of meeting. On X-mas day, we were at a friends’s house. Her mom was over. Their family are practicing Lutherans. We were having a pleasant conversation. Of course you know, and my friend and her family know, that the Dinsdales ae devout (but not evangelical) atheists. The discussion came to what celebrating Christmas means. Wanting to contribute to the conversation, I said someting along the lines of: “What I like about Christmas is the way everyone, whatever their beliefs, show a little more love and caring at that time of year.” I forget my exact words, but I was very pleased at the sentiment that crossed my generaly profane lips. You know how once in a while you actually phrase things well? This one one of thse few times for me. Well, my friend’s mom immediately followed my inclusive and positively worded comment with a terse staement, “Well, just so long as everyone realizes that the only reason for Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Christ.” Uh, sorry, but no.

125

Just reread my second “rant” and realized I omitted something I had intended to say.

Regarding this paragraph of Poly’s

I view this as semantic quibbling well out of proportion to the particular word choice in my initial brief remarks. This paragraph, as well as the ones that follow, could make for an interesting discussion, but not one I chose to pursue in this Pit thread. Is it your desire now to hijjack this thread into a discussion of the true function or retailers in a capitalist society? If so, I request to retract and rephrase my original “to make money.” If not, I’ll let that description stand for purposes of responding to the whining, self indulgent OP.

Sorry for the typos as well.

126

Damn! “…function OF retailers…”
It’s the new keyboard. Really!

127

You guys are apparently not reading my posts very well.

Where did I say I practiced any “religious ritual” on Christmas? Where did I specifically “whine” about not being able to go to church? I have tried to make my rant as generic (and non-religious) as possible. I am really talking about people who want to congregate with their families for a “special” holiday. As you know, many people treat Christmas as a secular holiday, and look forward to it as that. So, I am leaving “religious ritual” out of it. Pick that bone with someone else.

I think Poly pretty much covered what I was trying to get across, and far better than I would. I am talking about morale. About an employer at least giving the illusion that they are mindful that their employees have lives outside of work. In Thea’s case, (if memory serves) her employers didn’t even let anyone try to make arrangements for the holidays. No considerations at all. Poly is suggesting that employers try to do that, at the very least. I agree. It is good for morale. I can see why a few establishments might feel the need to be open for Christmas, in such a case they should try to “work it out”, in a way that Poly has described. I also believe that some establishments might want to consider the damage to morale they would cause by insisting that their workers come in on Christmas. Perhaps the “cons” would outweigh the “pros” in many cases.

As far as my Super Bowl analogy goes, it is an analogy. To take any religious element out of this debate, and get to what I believe is the essence of this issue. In my view, this is about employers (and the public) realizing that their employees have lives outside of work. And for morale’s sake, perhaps it would be a good idea to remember that, when a “big holiday event” is coming up. (Whatever that “big holiday event” is, religious or not.)

One last thing - I really get it that some of you don’t give a damn about the “religious ritual” thing. Got it. Really. We all figured that out - you don’t care. And I don’t give a damn about football. But I do not begrudge other people enjoying it. Even if that meant that many stores were closed for one day a year because of it. (Note: One day.)

128

yosemitebabe, you said

Then you said

Let’s use your Super Bowl analogy. Let’s say you’re forced to work on Super Bowl Sunday, and you are an ardent Super Bowl fan. (Of course, you watch it for the commercials. ;)) “Most everyone around” you is getting the day off, but not you. People with more seniority got to choose the day off, but your hard-hearted employer would not let you have off. You come to the SDMB to rant:

“Who the hell are you people who come to my place of business on Super Bowl Sunday? That’s a day you should be spending at home with you beer-guzzling buddies, yelling at the TV and generally having a great time. How dare you take advantage of the fact that my employer decided to stay open by coming to my place of business and availing yourself of our services?”

How much sympathy do you get? I’ll take a WAG and say none.

Well duh! But those lives have to wait until work is over. Sometimes those lives will be more important (e.g., my wife was just diagnosed with recurrent lymphoma, and I expect to miss a substantial period of work in the near future). Sometimes they won’t (a day off because “most everyone around” has the day off). Needing to be with one’s family because of circumstance is one thing, and I would quit if my employer did not make appropriate accomodations; wanting to be at religious service (or parked in front of the tube watching beer bottles fight for dominance) is something else.

While I get your point (really), at the same time I cannot believe your effrontery. Employees have a JOB, for pity’s sake. Division of labor works well - the employer worries about his/her business, and the employee worries about his/her life. (The employer worries about the employee’s outside life to the extent that it maximizes his/her productivity as an employee.) If the non-work life is more important than the job, the employee is free to make that decision. If the job wins in the employee’s cost/benefit analysis, SUCK IT THE FUCK UP AND STOP BLAMING EVERYONE ELSE FOR THAT CHOICE.

Sorry, I’m not in a great frame of mind right now.

129

Ah, well. I never said I was any good at Pit ranting, and this clearly proves it. I’ve shot down a fairly good poster with a blunderbuss, and he tears apart my post to make sensible rejoinders to it in the way I usually do to those who post lamebrain unthought-out assertions over in GD.

I accept your “to make money” as a good generic. But consider the direction that I only semi-advertently hijacked the thread into – is not employee morale and its consequent effects on the “climate” of a business a legitimate concern of the employer? For good economic reasons as well as any humanitarian ones that he may or may not have? I think Y’Babe has spoken well to that aspect of things.

I would have to differ in one extremely minor detail, though. It would be my considered opinion that when a person of faith (any faith) desires to take time off for a major religious holiday of his faith, he has a certain priority of need over he/she who may have been a loyal employee for several years and garnered seniority but simply wants time off “at the holiday season.” (I worked in an office of sixteen at one time, and the keeping of the office open during normal business hours was a priority of the boss. The office manager had been there so long that there was serious speculation they’d built the building around her. And she always scheduled her days off first, before circulating the sheet to her three subordinates, including me. Guess who got Christmas Eve and New Years Eve, Thanksgiving Friday, Good Friday, and a few other choice days (e.g., the Monday before a Tuesday holiday or the Friday after a Thursday one if there happened to be such days that year)? And guess who had to work them?

This sort of morale depleter is what I was ranting about, and what Dinsdale seemed not to take into account. Certainly it is within the scope of an employer’s rights to insist that his employees work the times and days he finds it necessary to schedule them for in order to run a successful business. But it is well within his rightful scope of consideration to take into account that the sum that he, located at the entry of an office/professional complex, may turn little enough business during this period that employee salaries may cause a net loss for the day.

And yes, I had forgotten that the initial post was relative to a resort area; several posters had discussed retail. And that’s a very specialized sort of operation. There are people who enjoy taking their holiday time off and vacationing at a resort (doesn’t matter whether it’s Aspen, Vegas, or Hottuna Beach for this purpose). Such situations need to be taken into account in taking the job originally. But even in Vegas and the Florida resort cities there are jobs not connected with tourism, quite a lot of them. A job shift is at least possible. And the resort owner is particularly required to be sensible to employee morale; his staff must be on their toes and smiling for the guests who are throwing their hard-earned money at him and his staff, or they may decide to stop throwing.

130

Just thought I’d comment on this:

I would like to repeat, once again, that since my job is in the “life sustaining” category, I am not expecting to get holidays (like Christmas) off. I am not “whining” for myself - holidays are screwed for me, and I knew that coming in to this job. And since I have a “life sustaining” job, I completely understand the necessity of it. However, it wasn’t too long ago that most employees of dead-end/retail jobs could count on at least a few holidays that were “off limits”. Their employers somehow managed to survive, while still allowing their employees these few scant holidays. Usually, just Thanksgiving and Christmas. But, as I have mentioned before, this trend seems to be changing. I think this is a shame.

It is true that the people with seniority will get the prime holidays off at my current job. That’s a reality for everyone. However, my employers are motivated to keep us happy. (It is not the most glamorous job, and when they treat employees like shit, they leave in droves.) I have had supervisors shuffle schedules around to accomodate someone’s request to have a certain day off. I have changed my schedule/days off to help out someone who needed a specific day off.

I contrast this with other employment experiences, and I see why morale was low at these other places. When you treat your employees like they are worthless, replaceable drones who are not entitled to feelings, you don’t get much back.

131

:confused: It might be appropriate to bring this up to me, had I been the one making comments about who should be home, and who should be doing what. But since I have never done that, I fail to understand your reasoning in mentioning it to me.

Fine. So when a whole store-full of employees feel like shit because their boss gives off the definite attitude of “too bad, tough shit” about holidays, the morale goes down. And employees with poor morale do what? Look for other jobs? Don’t give it “their all”? And a million other things. What do you think it did for my morale when my boss expected me to leave my disabled sister on the day of the Northridge quake to come to work? My boss was thinking about business, business, business. I was scheduled to work, and she expected me to be there. It’s business, after all, right? It’s her job to get me in there, to do my job. Do you think she made the right decision in insisting I come in?

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Shame on you, Poly. Religious beliefs take preferences over seniority? I think not. If seniority can simply be trumped by religious wants, everynody will simply claim to be members of one religion or another (whichever will most benefit them). Need, schmeed–your religion is, after all, your religion, and if I’ve got the seniority and I want some time off, I think I’ve earned it.

133

yosemitebabe, the debate, as posted by Thea and as it has evolved, has been that customers shouldn’t take advantage of businesses that remain open on “special” days and that employers are mean bastards for refusing to close on those days. We had been talking about religious holidays, and you thought using the Super Bowl would take the religion out of the debate. Fine - that’s what I did, and Thea’s rant (as distilled by me) is even less convincing. Your point seems to be that employers should put their employees’ welfare ahead of their businesses; I just don’t think that’s how it is. As far as taking care of your sister, you made the choice and stayed home. What happened? If your boss yelled at you, I’m sure you handled it well. Were you fired? demoted? As I said, there are times when an employee’s non-work life takes precedence over work, but that’s a decision for the employee to make. It’s not up to the employer to say, “Most of my employees don’t want to work today, so I’ll close my store.” There are other ways (double time-and-a-half, extra days off at other times) to inspire employee behavior than closing the business.

134

Well, you take that up with Thea, then.

I don’t think I said that. I’m not expecting or asking a business to go under in an effort to make their employees happy. But as I have mentioned before, for many years, most businesses have managed to keep afloat, while allowing their mindless drones a few scant holidays. Don’t expect the mindless drones to understand why now, all of a sudden, it’s just not possible to keep afloat unless all holidays are removed. (Which seems to be where this trend is heading.) The employees can take this (if it’s handled in a certain “tough shit” kind of way) as a message that their employer doesn’t give a damn. Morale goes down.

I’ll agree with you there - if the employer can manage to soften the blow, sweeten the deal for the staff, so they don’t take working a holiday so hard, great. I think Poly has already covered this. But, who says an employer can’t decide to close the store to accomodate his staff? Earlier in this thread, someone mentioned a guy who did this exact thing. (I remember hearing it on the news, too.) If the employer feels like the increased morale is worth it, there’s no reason why he can’t do it. I’m sure the guy I heard about in the news is not bankrupt now because of his decision. And he has a lot of employees who will probably bend over backwards to do their best for him. And this is bad business, how?

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I’ll pipe in here. Sure, you have seniority, you’re entitled. But when everyone knows that you are choosing certain holidays because you’re entitled, and not because they mean a whole lot to you (and they mean *a lot *to someone else) expect people to think you are acting like a dog in the manger.

An example from my job: I had an opportunity to get some prime days off (we all have to have weird weekends - right now I have Sun/Mon, at the time of this tale I had Mon/Tues - which sucked.) I had the chance to get Fri/Sat off. I had the seniority. But it was brought to my attention that a new employee really wanted those days off, so she could visit with her handicapped son on Fridays. (I guess it was the best time to see him.) So, even though I was entitled, I didn’t apply for the days, and let her have them. She is still working with us, and is a valuable employee. A few times she’s covered my butt on the schedule. If she hadn’t been able to get those days off, she might not have stayed at this job. Do I regret giving her my days off? Hell no.

136

Y-babe, sorry to the extent I may have conflated your and thea’s comments. The thread was long and I have no doubt my recollection got jumbled.

Poly, not sure I can go along with your limited proposal. Not sure my co-worker’s devout worship gets precedence over my wanton debauchery. And since x-mas has been so secularized, it can be VERY important to folks for reasons far removed from religion. Further, how do you judge between 2 churchgoers, one more junior but devout, the other senior but casual in their beliefs and practices. In practice, I think some combination of first-come, first served, mixed with seniority, and perhaps rotation for major holidays may be appropriate.

Wow! From “some respect” to “fairly good” in the space of a day.

Yours aspiring to adequacy,
Dinsdale

137

Thes did not say she had to work Christmas Day anywhere in her OP. She said:

Then she went on to pontificate:

She did not say she had to work Christmas Day.

Basically, she complained because she did not get off work until 10 o’ clock Christmas Eve, and that there were a whole lot of sad, sad yokels (couples and all!) gambling at that time Christmas Eve.

To answer her original questions, yes we have lost the spirit of the holiday, yes I see it as ONE day off (with pay), and yes I see it as a day to party with my family.

Not everyone follows your religion, Thea. Therefore not everyone wants to stay at home Christmas Day.

Not everyone has families. I have several friends who live by themselves, who could not afford to travel home for the holidays, who spent the holiday alone. If I lived alone, near a casino, and it was open, I might go and gamble.

If you don’t like it, find another job. :rolleyes:

138

I find it ironic that you mention how secularized Christmas has become. That’s been one of my main points all along!!! Some of you have been so busy frothing at the mouth about “subsidising someone’s religion”, and “religious rituals”, but it often isn’t the case. True, others here have talked about attending church, but I have been trying to drive the point home that for many people, Christmas is a family day and a much-anticipated holiday.

As far as who would be more “worthy” to take the holiday, the person who is looking forward to a big family gathering, and a great party, or the person who will spend the whole time in church being devout - I would never dare decide that. I think the person who has seniority would prevail, and should. Both people are anticipating the holiday with approximately the same amount of enthusiasm, I presume.

Agreed. Completely.

However, in the case of PL, he has made it pretty clear (as far as I can tell) that these holidays are “just another day” to him. So I can assume that he feels no special anticipation of them, and has nothing grand planned. If he were to insist on taking off Christmas (even though he is doing nothing special), while his co-workers miss out on big family or church events, I daresay his co-workers would use words like “prick” to describe him. (IF he were to do this - have no clue if he would be so inclined.)

139

Yosemitebabe, you appear to have missed or disregarded) pl’s original point. A brief and selective chronology of events, if I may; Thea came in with a rant about having to work Christmas Eve, and miss her Vespers Services as a consequence. She then went on to excoriate her customers for their impiety in being in a gambling hall instead of observing the special day in some way that would have not interfered with her attendance at the Vespers Service. pl objected to her excoriation of those customers, on the grounds that she seemed to be demanding that other people cherish the same values that she cherishes viv-a-vis Christmas, or at least to give precedence to hers, to the extent of forgoing their own amusement for the duration. His responses did not (in my perception) take her to task for her dissatisfaction with her agenda for December the twenty-fourth (pl, please accept my apology if I have in any way misrepresented you). Then you came to support Thea’s position on the basis of employer/employee relations, and to a significant extent, on the ideal that a considerate populace should take into account the personal needs of the work force when planning the use of their leisure time.

Now, of course, the whole argument has degeneratd to an almost unrecognizable (regarding the OP) debate over who has experienced (or is experiencing) the worst working conditions, and what the boss shoulda done.

pl, howzabout you and the family come over here on Super Bowl Sunday? I’ve got The Sound of Music, Dark Victory, three Shirly Temple flicks and Black Beauty, starring Mark Lester. C’mon, it’ll be fun! :smiley:

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I have never completely supported Thea’s original points, and have been specific about what my rant has been about, all along. It is a seperate, but related rant to the OP. As far as suggesting that the populace “take into account the personal needs of the work force when planning the use of their leisure time” - Huh? At the most, the “populace” would not be able to shop at some stores on a few scant holidays, because some of the workforce would have the day off. Pl has said - “stores are closed all the time” - so how does this change the use of the “polulace’s leisure time”? I guess at the most I have suggested that people not bitch because they cannot get fresh citrus every damn day of the year. I do not bitch because since I work nights, many stores I’d like to shop at are not open when I am out and about. Would you consider me entitled to bitch about this attempt of the workforce to change “the planning of the use of my leisure time”? They are not staying open late to accomodate me, after all!

Yes, Poly and I, and several others have successfully hijacked this thread. Try to keep up with the current rants, OK? :smiley: