Best working-on-a-holiday stories

What's your funniest/most depressing/most ridiculous/most whatever having-to-work-on-a-holiday story?

I have to admit, I've been lucky - unless you don't count always having to work damn near every single holiday for 12 years (before I got out) as some form of good fortune. But I never had anything disastrous happen.

I figure, though, there are some great stories around here.

 

Had an all-timer cop brief. Woman is preparing Thanksgiving dinner when she leaves to pick up her son. She arrives home with the kid, finds that her boyfriend has picked all the skin off the turkey - her son and boyfriend fight and the brawl ends with the turkey on the floor. When I asked the cop what people could take away from this incident he says "There's no amount of turkey worth fighting over."

 

My first job out of college was on a three-person sports staff. The other two sports staffers were brothers, which meant they always took vacations together.

I had Christmas and the week leading up to it off, but had to be back on the 26th because they left town through New Year's to go to a BCS bowl game on which their mom was a committee member.

So that meant I was alone to put out the paper every day by myself while they were gone.

In the middle of my New Year's Eve shift, I had a gall stone attack.

Went to the emergency room and got treated (which took about two hours), then went back to work and made deadline.

 

Years ago I had to cover a murder on Thanksgiving. A teen stabbed his mother to death because she gave him a few dollars and told him to walk to the store and get a turkey TV dinner for Thanksgiving.

On a somewhat lighter note...

I've worked a lot of Thanksgivings at my current shop. They provide a traditional turkey dinner to the crew working every year. It's very nice... but twice (!) over the years they've ordered it from a supermarket, and were surprised to find out when they picked it up that all the food was frozen. How you make that mistake a second time I have no idea. One year people tried hacking off bits of frozen turkey and microwaving it. At least one person ended up in the hospital after that.

 

It's Christmas Day 1987. I am second Patriots beat guy at the Herald, and therefore was assigned to go down to Dodgertown in Vero where the Pats were practicing for a Monday night game in Miami. Christmas morning I go up to head coach and devout Christian Raymond Berry and wish him Merry Christmas. He gives me a short blank stare then admits he's forgotten everything about the day but the practice and meeting schedule. Pats have a massive Christmas dinner for traveling party to which I and sole Globe reporter Mark Blaudschun were not invited. We dined at the Vero Beach Holiday Inn Christmas buffet, where we were the youngest diners by at least 30 years.

 

I've this holiday season will mark the 28th consecutive I work Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

No whining, here. It is what it is. I have a job and for that, I am thankful.

A (non-fanboi) looser, though? Probably...

 

New Years Eve: I was working in TV when the morning producer tells me at around 11:30 pm that he wanted me to head out to a local bar and shoot people counting down to midnight so he'll have that to open the morning news. He suggests a place we've been to for stories before and I ask if he called to tell them we were coming and he said "Sure, it's all set."
I drive out in what was quickly becoming a horrendous blizzard and slide and skid my way to the bar, a three mile trip that took me about 20 minutes. I get there a few minutes before midnight and. . . the place is locked with a note on the door saying "We will be closed New Years Eve to let our employees celebrate. Join us for football New Years Day"
It's all set my ass.
I get back to the station where the producer has cracked open a bottle of champaigne and he's pissed at me for not going to another bar.

Easter: Covering a church service at a church that had been evicted for its building. Well, that's as much of the story as we knew when I headed out the door. Turns out some folks in the congregation didn't like the new minister and brought about the eviction as a way to force him out. The unpopular minister begins his sermon to his 20-25 followers on the sidewalk when some of his opponents walk up and begin yelling about how he's a false prophet. This turns into a lot of shouting back and forth and eventually the cops are called.

Christmas: Working in TV I wind up in our aging, rusted out, ready to fall apart at a moment's notice live truck to cover a dinner at a homeless shelter. A homeless guy walks up to me and tells me my truck looks bad and I should ask the boss for a new one.

 

Years ago, writers also filled in on the desk at our shop. The full-time deskers and writers with seniority always had the holidays off. I was young and single, so it didn't matter to me.

One Christmas, one of my roommates and I were on desk. We had 12 pages between the two of us and had forgotten to stock up on food. We had beer at our house and that was about it. This was 1997 or so and restaurants in that town were still closed on Christmas night. The only place we found open was a Chinese place in a rough part of town. We walked in and it was packed ... with Hispanics. Who were singing karaoke and draining beer after beer.

 

Best? The staff at my last paper for Christmas was me in sports, a news reporter and a editor.
We brought a grill and made a Bacon Bomb for dinner. (You can see how to make one on YouTube)
<img src="http://www.bbqaddicts.com/blog/images/bacon-12.jpg">
BEST. CHRISTMAS. MEAL. EVAR!

 

Holy shit! My second-to-last Thanksgiving in the business, we had the exact same thing happen. The bosses buy (trade for) a beautiful Thanksgiving dinner from a supermarket/advertiser. It arrives about 3 p.m. and is set up in a big conference room for the 4 people who are working the holiday. The supermarket people leave and we go to load up. The food was all cooked, then frozen solid and brought straight to us from the freezer. No one ate a bite, just put it in the fridge to thaw out for others to enjoy over the weekend. On Monday, the bosses called us in and told the (overworked) people who worked Thursday were very rude about not willing drop everything and spend time to get keys to the kitchen area upstarts, and heat up this big Thansgiving dinner - apparently while work wasn't getting done.

The next year, same people, same Thanksgiving setup, When the food was delivered, we had them put it straight in the fridge (frozen again) - no one expected anything different, so one of the people had a Thanksgiving dinner packed from home, two people went to Steak and Shake, and a fourth hit Taco Bell. Everyone had their Thanksgiving dinners set up at their desks before the grocery store dinner even arrived.

No slap on the wrists from the bosses this time.

 

Farararararararahhhh
<img src="http://i.ytimg.com/vi/l5YZ62mgWyE/mqdefault.jpg">

 

In all honesty, I didn't mind working holidays. Wouldn't want to work every one or anything, but the shifts were usually easy, not a ton happened and there was usually a lot of sitting around. It's funny some of the talk about food. The best I got was an email about what fast food joints were still open and when they closed so we could make sure we planned accordingly for our dinner breaks.