(December 24, 2015 at 7:16 pm)Kitan Wrote: Having worked in retail my entire life, it is continually disheartening to encounter customers who are the epitome of the me-me-me phenomenon. Selfish people who are standing at the counter, waiting for sliced meats and cheeses on Christmas Eve literally five minutes before the store is about to close. Goodness forbid that they go without sliced cold cuts so that others can get home early for the holiday. Goddammit, people, stop being so damn selfish.
Holiday work stories . . . meh.
I spent early morning last Christmas boarding a ship in near freezing weather to witness the removal of a corpse, some poor guy who flew to Jamaica from the Philippines to work as an engineer on the vessel for a six-month stint, but was found dead in his bunk two days out of port on his way to New Orleans. The body had been kept in the galley walk-in freezer during the four days' transit, and the Master informed me that several members of his crew were so seriously creeped out by the man's death that they would take insanely out-of-the-way routes around the ship just to avoid walking past his room. Needless to say, I'd have rather been home.
I spent years working in the bar/restaurant business with damn few holidays off. Christmas? Seldom. New Year's? Forget it.
In '92 I managed a group home for developmentally disabled adults and spent painstaking hours creating a house-of-cards work schedule that managed to indulge every employee's stated wishes for days off and days to work over the holidays. Then I drove through a snow storm to be with my children on Christmas day. I got there at 3:00 am, looking forward to seeing my girls after a few hours of sleep, only to be awakened at 5:00 am by my mother because I had a long distance call from work: none of the scheduled employees had shown up for work (or even bothered to call in), and the other group homes had no extra staff to spare to take care of the residents in mine. So I drove back the 140 miles (it was still storming like a motherfucker) to work on Christmas Day. My kids never did see me that holiday.
The moral? It's your job. Nut up and do it.
