Holiday work schedules

Just had lunch with my brother-in-law, whose annual 12-day Christmas/New Year's hiatus began today. He's a sales executive for a large company and the office simply shuts down every year for the holidays. This is in addition to his four weeks of vacation and five personal days annually. When he complains about his job, which he often does, I tell him to zip it.

At any rate, given that we have a thread about work celebrations, bonuses, etc., I'm curious about how the holiday scheduling goes in your workplace. Are you able to get a holiday or two off? Is vacation time allowed over the next week or so?

I'll start with my workplace. Nobody is taking vacation time between now and the end of the year, and I'm not sure anyone even requested it because it probably would have been shot down. But the boss usually does ask us in October to rate our preferences for holidays/eves off (including Thanksgiving), and he's generally able to accommodate our top two choices. We also have a few people who don't mind working every holiday because it means extra pay (and the company hasn't cracked down on that -- yet).

 

Another reason I'm glad I'm out of newspapers ... we're shutting down after today until Tuesday, so we get Friday and Monday off, along with the Monday after New Year's. And I'm taking two PTO days at the end of next week. So I'm basically off nine of the next 11 days.

 

My shop has gotten quite lenient in recent years towards holiday working as they don't mind people not running up overtime hours on holidays. I'm working Christmas day, but beginning with the end of my duties this evening around 8 p.m., I'm off seven of the next eight days with a couple of paid vacation days during the week after Christmas. I've done this for at least the last five or six years.

 

Had a boss once who was very organized, very accommodating, very fair. In September he asked all of us to rank the five holidays in order of importance to us. He was hoping everybody could get their top two off. When it was done, everybody got their top THREE off. The only exception was, two of the layout guys both had Thanksgiving at No. 3. He went to both, explained the situation, and said, "One of you is off this Thanksgiving, the other is off next Thanksgiving. Figure it out and let me know what you decide."

 

One of the former sports editors of the Herald for whom I worked was a veteran of the New York Post. He said there Christmas was no sweat. The gentiles (about 60 percent) of the staff worked the High Holy Days and in return the Jews worked on Christmas Eve and Christmas.

 

We are asked in the spring to rank the holidays in order that we want them off. We have a skeleton staff (one or two reporters, one editor) the next two Sundays and Mondays.

Vacation requests were due in September and they are pretty accommodating.

I volunteered to work Christmas because I'm Jewish and even through my wife's not, none of her family is local. The scheduling editor asked me if I got mixed up when I put that Christmas was my first choice to work and Memorial Day was my last (it was the weekend my son graduated from high school).

 

In late October/early November, they send a sheet around the copy desk in order of seniority in which each person marks (of Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day) two they want not to work, two they are willing to work and one in which they don't care. I'm second-from-the-bottom on the totem pole but somehow managed to get both Saturday and Sunday off this year (ostensibly at the price of working Thanksgiving, which isn't the worst because I'm too far from my folks to be able to make that trip without having to take multiple PTO days for travel.)

I hate New Year's Eve, so I'm kind of glad to be working that one, and enough people said they'd do New Year's Day that I get my regular (albeit Sunday-Monday) weekend for that one plus eight free holiday hours.

Of course, the copy desk is joining a (virtual) hub two days later, so who knows what the hell is going on next year.

 

Almost all of it is from home until after Jan. 1.

 

And then the Muslims got pissed off, stormed in and blew up the whole schedule.

 

I'm a one-man desk at the moment and used up all my vacation days back in the summer, so I'm working.
Fortunately, some years ago a former SE and I had a stroke of genius to run our all-county football team over three days at Christmas instead of blowing it all out in a Sunday section earlier in December. With a little elbow grease during the week, that allows us to get the holiday sections done a couple of days early and get a couple of days off.
Saturday's section is just about done already. Sunday's will be done by early Friday afternoon. If I'm feeling really frisky, a good chunk of Monday's might even be done by the end of Friday.
Next week we have some holiday basketball tournaments during the day and little office time. It could be worse.

 

Sounds like the sheet they give to us, except that ours covers all holidays, and we are expected to work at least three total (including one of the "Winter" holidays (Thanksgiving, Xmas, NYD).

I hate working 6-day weeks (and almost never do) but like working holidays. Hard to beat 6.5 days' pay for 5 days of work.

 

That's basically my schedule, too. High five dude.