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Working on Holidays

Working on holidays can be brutal or fun or something in between. When I worked at the movie theater, holidays were our busiest days of the year. Not many people know that Christmas is the biggest day in sales for movie theaters, followed by Thanksgiving, which meant that I always had to work on those days. It would not have been that bad if I hadn’t lived over a two hour drive away. That meant I couldn’t go home to be with my family. To this day, I will not go to a movie theater on a major holiday. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why a family gets together for the holidays and then goes to the movies. Maybe it’s just because that’s not what my family did. It was horrible having customers say, “Merry Christmas!” with a big smile as they were with their families, and I couldn’t be with mine that day.

On Thanksgiving, we would order turkey sandwiches from a nearby pizza and sandwich shop. That’s about all we did to celebrate when we worked on a holiday. In a way, it was kind of nice not to have the whole crazy family thing, but I definitely missed my family. I couldn’t have gone too many years not getting to see my family on the major holidays.

But when I worked close to where my family lived, it wasn’t as big of a deal. The grocery store where I worked was only closed on Christmas Day, and I worked Thanksgiving twice. Honestly, it was boring, and I could never figure out why the deli counter had to be open on Thanksgiving Day. If someone burned the turkey, would they buy turkey lunchmeat instead? Regardless, I used that day to write out my Christmas cards. Those two years, I was the earliest in my family to send out greeting cards, and everyone acted impressed with my organizational skills. Truthfully, I had nothing else to do that day at work! One year, though, we sold Thanksgiving meals that could be cooked at the store and the customer would pick it up at their convenience. I was so unbelievably worried that I was going to ruin someone’s Thanksgiving dinner that year! It all worked out, though.

Summer holidays never bothered me. I’ve never really been into celebrating the fourth of July or Memorial Day or Labor Day, so working those days just meant working another day (that happened to pay extra if I was lucky enough to work at a job that paid extra for holidays), but when I started working full time in an office, I truly appreciated those days off.