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I used to work Christmas pretty often.

One job, PC support could be brutally busy.

The other, tech support for some high end networking equipment was very quiet. I loved working holidays there. Mostly just played video games.

Always strange how the jobs that pay less often are more work / tiresome.

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Much of that depends on corporate culture. Often it is the lower-paid and more junior people who get the bad shifts. But in my organization (military) it is normal for the more senior people to work those shifts. Responsibility for mission-critical tasks falls upwards. If you are only going to have one person on shift, then that person cannot be a trainee. So all the people I interacted with this morning were relatively senior within their team.

“ But in my organization (military) it is normal for the more senior people to work those shifts.”

I remember reading a story about Jim Mattis (back before he was famous). A fellow general showed up, found Gen. Mattis was the duty officer on Christmas Day, and asked him how he got stuck with that.

Gen. Mattis told him, “Well, the young man who was scheduled for duty today has a family, and I decided it was more important for him to spend the time with them. So I took his place.”

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