Daily Dose of Sultnpapper 09/03/18> Why on a Monday?
Labor Day USA...
I am off today from work as today is a federal holiday known as Labor Day here in the USA. Do any other countries celebrate labor by taking the day off?
Sounds like an oxymoron thing to do if I ever heard of one. If you really truly wanted to celebrate labor then it should be a work day and the last three hours of the day should be a company event like a BBQ or some other sort of party to celebrate labor with those you labor with.
Are we really off...
But are we really off when we say we are off? You know as well as I do that the answer to that question is “no”. Even when we aren’t at work that doesn’t stop customers or the boss from calling you at all hours to ask you a question that for some reason they just have to have the answer too; like right that minute. Don’t think I am kidding when I say “all hours” either, I had a customer call me once at 3:00 AM on a weekday night.
The conversation started like this...
Me: “Hello.”, as I am trying to wake up.
Customer: “Sult, what are you doing answering the phone at 3 in the morning?”
Me: “The better question is, why are you calling me at 3 in the morning?”
So, when I tell you “all hours”, I damn sure mean all hours. The customer went on to tell me that he didn’t expect me to answer and that he intended just to leave me a message.
That is when I started to get just a little ticked off with him. I tell all my customers that I keep my phone on 24/7 and if they ever have an emergency feel free to call me and I will answer. I told them that the only time my phone isn’t on me is when I am in church on Sunday mornings, which Sunday’s mornings are now open as well while the church boycott is in place.
This customer knew it and said he remembered me telling him that years ago when he first started doing business with me but he thought I was just saying that to get his business.
We continue with the conversation…
Me: “Really, you think that I am a guzbucking liar or something?”
Customer:”No.”
Me: “Sure the guzbuck sounds like that to me.”
Customer: “I think I will hang up and call you back around 10:00”
Me: “Good. Good bye.”
Not everyone gets off...
That was over ten years ago and that customers is still a customer today and it won’t surprise me if I even get a call from him today. Even though this is a federal holiday it doesn’t mean everything shuts down or stops, not everyone gets off today from working.
Why is it always...
Which leads to another question, why are the federal holidays that don’t commemorate a particular event that took place on a specific date, like July 4th, always on a Monday?
Monday is the worst day for a holiday in my opinion. Monday is the normal start of the work week for most people; my guess is most people don’t look forward to Mondays. I know I sure as hell don’t look forward to them.
Least productive day...
My guess is that federal employees don’t get much done at their work on Mondays. I don’t know that they get much done on any day but I suspect that Monday is the least productive day of the week for them.
I have on occasion had to visit some government offices on Mondays and, while not first thing in the morning it was mid morning or early afternoon, you could see the employees standing around visiting with each other about how their weekend was, what they did, who they did it with, and where they went to do it.
Get acquainted day...
So, for government office workers it seems like Monday is nothing more than a get acquainted and get caught up on the gossip kind of day. Lots and lots of water cooler type conversations like they show in the cartoons that used to be in the newspapers back when I read those rags like the Houston Comical Chronicle. Do any of you remember that cartoon strip that always took place around the water cooler? I can’t think of the name of it right now to save my soul.
Pretty safe to say...
But the reality is most people don’t look forward to starting a work week but it is pretty safe to say most people look damn forward to it ending. People can’t wait for Friday to get there, especially if they get paid on Fridays. Friday pay days is a whole another subject, and direct deposit took the joy of payday away.
Why not Friday...
There is surely more anticipation of finishing a work week than starting one; so it would make sense to have all federal holidays be on a Friday from my way of thinking. People might be more inclined on Monday morning to get something done knowing that they had a short week ahead of them. The thing is; I look at things from a common sense point of view and common sense rarely has a place in government thinking.
Who is with me on getting the federal holidays moved to Fridays?
Until next time,
@sultnpapper
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Here, they want Friday as well as Monday holidays! Doesn't matter what day of the week or what time of day, service is always the same. Slow and surly. Holidays don't mean much to me unless I get to spend them with the family. I worked as a community health nurse for more than 30 years. I was on call 24/7. I did get called at all hours of the day and night, for things that could have waited until morning. When I retired, that was the happiest day of my life when I knew I would be on call 24/7 for weird guzbucked stuff! Happy Labour Day to you, @sultnpapper!
I planned on doing some cooking outside but it raining and is expected to rain all day here so that is going to be a wash out. Looks like a lazy day and maybe a poker game or two online and at the table with the kids.
Shortie is really getting a good poker face, I think she will end up being a really good live game poker player if wants to be, her expression doesn't change if she has junk cards or four of kind.
Your job you had and those type hours would surely make a person happy to be able to retire away from. I don't think I could do thirty years of that type of schedule. I commend you for sticking with it and serving others.
Thanks, @sultnpapper. I enjoyed a lot of other aspects of the job, just didn't like the on call part.
In my experience, Mondays are better to have off for the workplace because then you have four productive days when you get back. If Friday is the day off, then you will treat Thursday like Friday and start dreaming of the holiday around lunch time, making the afternoon useless. If instead you have Monday off, when you get in on Tuesday, you will feel like you skipped the "drudgery" from traditional Mondays and get right into work. It is pretty ingenious, if you ask me!
Well I did ask, so thanks for your reply.
I have found that no matter what day a holiday falls on or even with no holiday and just a regular weekend the first day back to work people in offices seem to want to visit about what the did the prior few days off.
Almost like a competition to discuss who had the best time off. So in offices on Tuesday here in the USA it will be just like any other Monday, except for one thing, the workers will have an extra day that they will need to talk about.
i agree with u 100%! if that friday is an off day, ppl start slacking on thursday. whereas if monday is a day off, they wont day dream on tuesday since u still need to work the next day. i think its has to do with the way our brains work. lol.
And I thought Labour Day was on the same day all over the world, how wrong am I... Hahaha... Anyway, here Labour Day everyone are given a public holiday, means no work, no call, no anything!! We love our public holidays... :D
Well that's good we are both learning something new today. So your whole country shuts down completely? No businesses are open and no government workers work?
Private sectors and government offices ALL closed!
That is amazing. Here all the government is closed and some private businesses but most retail stores are open.
Only the big malls (contain retails stores, hypermarket) and F&B open as we still need to eat and shop! Hahaha
Okay , I got it now. Pretty much the same as here,
I get you with this one. My mom had the day off for days like Labor Day too, but we'd always go out to the store or to get food or something and all those places were open and full of employees and it never seemed fair to me that they didn't get the day off as well. As an adult I realize it's because really only that stuff that isn't 100% customer service such as hotels, retail and food get the day off because we don't value those employees as much as those 'above' them.
Same thing with the phone calls. My mom had a work phone that she kept on 24/7 in case a customer, or more likely a co-worker, had some kind of emergency. She stopped doing that after several repeated late-night calls along the same lines of "Oh I don't expect she'll answer and I'll just leave a voice mail for the morning" type of stuff happening that really pissed her off >.>
I don't get many calls like that one, it was for sure the most odd timed one. Most of my customers and even coworkers won't call between 7 at night and 7 in the morning. I don]t have a problem with those hours and I don't have a problem with 3 in the morning if it is truly an emergency.
Thanks for dropping by and visiting, very much appreciated.
I never minded working Monday, at least after I quit drinking. Truth is, I didn't mind working Friday, either. If I didn't like my job for almost any reason I moved on. It helped that I had a pretty good history and reputation. I also had a couple of skills that would allow me to take 'something' until the 'real thing showed up.
I guarded my phone number jealously, but the pagers. We carried a pager on a rotating basis in most of the shops I worked. A lot of our equipment was used when the normal folks weren't working, so there was some 'overnight' work to be done.
Had a guy I worked with a lot, that did a lot of 'cold iron' refits. Take a long weekend when the plant was shut down and do some critical job or another. I mostly volunteered for holiday weekends unless we were going to be out of town (rarely, we tended to avoid crowds). The pay when you were called out Thanksgiving weekend was staggering. Anyway, my guy would stop at the shop a day or two before and see if I was carrying the pager. If I was he'd give it a call even if everything was working perfectly just to give me the half day of triple time. You can bet if he called at 0300 I was on it, too.
There were the other extreme, too, of course. We had a long term project (a new electrical substation for a major manufacturing plant) where the employees just couldn't be bothered to follow procedures for starting some of the equipment. After about the third 'dead battery' call I just started my day at his job site. I would start and run every piece of equipment on the site so that they would be warmed up and ready for the crew. For a couple of years. It was a monster contract for the company I worked for so everybody was happy. Especially me. I got an hour or better on the clock with coffee cup in hand...
So, I don't think I have a dog in this fight. I do agree that a company picnic or something should be mandatory on Labor Day. On the clock, of course :)
That pager you carried was almost like having your own cash machine at triple time pay for half day minimum hours. The guy that would check to see if you had the pager must have really thought very highly of you and how you took care of him and his company he worked for that he would make sure you got the opportunity to make some extra cash like that, says a lot about how you treated your customers.
I used to be least productive as a teacher on Fridays, because, it's Friday and we are almost done! Well, I guess I used to do tests or quizzes on Fridays, so they were usually nice and quiet for me. I can't imagine teaching now in a public school. My last year of teaching was in 2008 right before every student had a cell phone. I didn't even regularly text on mine at that time. It would be such a distraction these days for students and teachers I would think! And so easy to cheat. Anyway, have a happy day off and hopefully you don't get too many business calls!! No labor day here but apparently it's something like Spring Break week for all of Panama...and my in-laws are coming today for the week. Should be interesting.
My day has been real relaxed and with all the rain today even my customers are staying at home so the phone has been really quiet. I hope your father in law secured his passport this time. So you don't end up waiting at the border for a couple days.
Friday is a much better day off in my opinion.Glad to know another Texan sees it the same way.
It's the same in the UK (we call it Bank Holidays), but I think it's just so people can have a long weekend. More and more people seem to go home early on Friday - rush hour is around 3pm on a Friday where I live - and all public workers seem to get Friday afternoon off when there's a Bank Holiday. If Fridays were Bank Hols, I think people would get off early on Thursdays too.
I admire you for having your phone on all the time. My phone goes on silent mode from 11pm to 8am. I started doing that when I had a part-time job looking after flats that were rented out on Airbnb, and I used to get messages pinging through at all hours of the night from people in different countries. I have a friend who used to work on a glossy magazine that was based in Spain (she lived in London). She was often expected to do video conference calls at 2am. She didn't stay long in that job.
We try not to refer to them as "bank holidays", the last time there was an official bank holiday was in 1933 when the government confiscated all the gold coins in circulation from the people and made it a crime to have any gold coins.
People were and rightfully so, pretty upset when all the got in return for their gold was fiat paper currency. Which we have been stuck with ever sense.
Is there that big a time difference between London and Spain? My geography skills are not the good for that area but I though they were relatively close as far as an east / west relationship along the time line.
No - there's only an hour difference. Her boss was just a workaholic. If you make yourself available for work 24 hours a day via phones, internet etc, employers just take advantage - in my experience!
I've heard about that gold "confiscation" - in other words, theft! Shocking.
I hate to admit it but now when I get a call from the office or a call from a coworker I let it go to voicemail and then get the message and can be better equipped to answer what they need.
The reason I do it is because I heard the owner of the company saying that is exactly what he does with all of his calls, he doesn't like to blindsided.
Well nobody does, but I figure if that is how management wants to operate, who am I to argue? I'll just do like him and if someone ever says anything I'll just tell them it is part of my "management in training" I am conducting on my own.
I will still take customer calls on the ring, but not company calls.
It is a shame some people have no other life but their work and try to drag others into that boat.
That sounds like great customer service, and I think it's great that you leave workplace calls to ring, though you might need to get your boss's words in writing before you argue the point!
Well, the short time I worked for the government a Monday off meant you also take Friday, lol Like you said, that's another topic for another time.... love your post, puts a smile on my face @sultnpapper!
Pleased to know that you enjoy the Daily Dose, smiles are a good thing.