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That's what professional soldiers are paid to do and they should have no expectation of spending holidays at home. One can't compare the trade of soldiering with working at McDonalds.
I'm not, I realize they are different occupations. I was more expressing sympathy for them than anything.
But working retail/food service/customer service does come with the expectation of working holidays. Christmas and Thanksgiving were really the only days you could say everyone was closed (maybe new year's day too). It's not surprising to me that this is going away. I expect this trend to continue, actually. After all, those who are working at McDonald's those days are also getting paid, right?
...like I said, if it were totally optional, I wouldn't see the problem. I bet there are a lot of people with nothing else to do on Christmas Day (like me), however I realize that in the world of retail nothing is truly optional and there would be people forced to come in and work. And that really sucks. I guess I don't really have a firm stand
If they pay double time and don't work the people too hard, thats okay. I'd say just have the drive thru open since they probably will get a fair amount of oddballs showing up.
Isn't every company in business to make money? Maybe we should make EVERYONE work thanksgiving and Christmas, that seems to be the way things are going.
And maybe we should make everyone work 24/7, and drop the minimum working age (and minimum wage), etc.
The funny thing is, about 50 years ago or so the idea of opening on Thanksgiving or Christmas would've been considered "un-American"; indeed, some would've even accused it of being a "Commie plot to threaten our way of life". Ironically, in many cases this would've been said by people of the same political ilk that now seem to advocate forcing retail and fast food workers to work on those holidays.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Dissenter
Me: Hold the onions!
If this is kept on a STRICTLY volunteer basis and there are no negative consqeuences of declining I don't see the problem.
I agree, but you know, the problem is, it never really happens that way. Maybe a law that says you can't FORCE people to work on those holidays, but I don't see that happening (again, see "same political ilk" above).
When I was in college I worked as a server. People would come in to eat after church on Sunday afternoon and tell us how it was wrong for us to be working on Sunday.
When I was in college I worked as a server. People would come in to eat after church on Sunday afternoon and tell us how it was wrong for us to be working on Sunday.
I could understand opening on Sunday as that is every week (and companies started doing that back at a time when there was enough respect for workers that it didn't mean they were scheduling people 7 days per week as a result, they just carefully "shifted" people and you just got a different day or 2 off each week). But it's nice for there to be a couple of days or so per year where we really "close" as a society and take a breather for all.
Even my parents who owned a chain of convenience stores in the 1970s and 80s knew this and closed for Thanksgiving, Christmas (and we're Jewish!) and New Year's thinking there'd be little business (and others did the same). I can't imagine those kinds of stores doing that anymore......sad!
I understand you need a few "first responders" to work on those days as illness, crime and death do not take a holiday, but because those industries ALWAYS had the "open on Xmas" issue, etc. they have been pretty fair in making it volunteers or having extreme incentives (thanks to unions?) like double pay, or even double comp time off.
They should be open. They are in business to make money, so if they can make more money by being open on holidays, then they should. I will be driving 5 1/2 hours on Christmas day, so if I see a McDonald's open, I will stop and get a Filet O' Fish.
If I had my way I would force you to fix your own nasty fish sandwich, Scrooge.
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