Holiday Rant

24 October 2010

The Holiday Schedule is out. Notice how I capitalized the schedule like it is a proper noun.  Oh yeah, this schedule is no laughing matter, it determines what holiday you are giving up.  It's a lose-lose situation.  You either work Christmas or Thanksgiving (or if you are extremely lucky, you work only New Years, and if you are extremely unlucky, you get to work some combination of the three).

The Schedule Gods smite me every year, and then I get to call my family, who in turn curse the Schedule Gods (and perhaps me a little for working in a job that requires working on holidays).  It's been this way the last three years.  I call home and my siblings go on and on about how they have to postpone Christmas and their holidays end up lame because of me.

I hope you readers (I write with plural in the hopes that I have more readers than just my dad), if ever you should be unfortunate enough to be in the hospital on a holiday (or have a friend or relative suck inside it's antiseptic walls) that you remember to thank the people who care for you and are giving up (however unwillingly) their holiday, their family, their lives.

So back to this year's Holiday Schedule.  It was released to the greater public this past week and I had the opportunity to examine my fate this past Thursday.  For some reason I got excited.  Because of my history of being smited year after year, I, like many in any abusive relationship, hoped that this year would be different.  That this year I would perhaps work New Years (a sham of a holiday really) and have Thanksgiving and Christmas off.

I was promptly disillusioned. You'd think I would have learned my lesson.  Talk about putting you in a mood.  I took one look and was ready to quit my job and work somewhere else, anywhere else.

So here's the outlook (bleak as it may be): I am working Thanksgiving eve and subsequently Thanksgiving day (and the following weekend).  Then, praise be to the almighty, I have Christmas Day off, but there is the whole working Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas.  Did I mention that my family lives a good three hours away, which means going home for Christmas is a a six hour drive!  My first exclamation point, feel free to read it faster and louder, as that is how I meant it.

I worked Christmas last year.  And the year before that, for that matter.  I hate that I can't go home and see my family, my sisters that are strewn thither and yon, my brother growing up faster than I can keep track of, my parents who desperately want "all the kids home."

And there is really nothing to be done but pout and whine (it just comes naturally).  The holiday season will come and go, I will be irritated, my family will be irritated, and the coming year will arrive and I will most likely forget how annoying this whole business is, until next year when I the Holiday Schedule returns to scorn and spurn me again.

Bah Humbug.