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Comment by omarhaneef | Hacker News Reader

There are lots of people for who Xmas isn’t a thing — different background etc.

I always thought it would make sense to let us handle Xmas duty so others — people for whom it really, really matters - can do their Xmas stuff.

I used to try to volunteer for this when it was relevant (really, it’s not a thing for me), but I rarely saw a systematic opportunity to do so.

I think it gets harder as time goes because the replacement day (say a random day in Jun) isn’t as quiet because the rest of the economy is not turned off.

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When I worked in Amazon retail many of the India and China immigrants happily and proactively traded Christmas and New Years oncall for black Friday/Cyber Monday. Or many other holidays. Heck the kids who were spending their first holidays away from home did it to have something to do.

Pre pandemic there was always a cool feel of working a chill holiday day with just a few others, compared to the insanity of those massive scale days. You also got to work on whatever you wanted as managers didn't plan anything.

> “the India and China immigrants”

While factually correct, a more elegant wording to express this would be “colleagues from India and China”.

Thanks, I didn't know how to phrase it, too late to go back now tho :(

No problem; I think my own comment could be better by being more appreciative of the interesting info you shared, before focusing on the area of improvement straightaway. Thanks!

I prefer the direct and succinct feedback than a shit sandwich, or in this case a shit flatbread. Thanks again. Happy holidays to you!

Happy holidays!

That seems like an ok sentiment when it’s opt-in. At a former place of work, I would be assigned all holidays and hours people didn’t want to work because “I’m a single guy with no kids/fiancé”. I’d almost exclusively work those shifts alone, too. It was absolutely based on who stroked who’s ego the most. This was for little more than minimum wage in a tech department and no such thing as differentials.

Glad that’s over.

There is a difference between assuming single people don’t care about holidays and realizing that not everyone celebrates the same holidays.

It works a bit like this in Swiss hospitals. Or at least used to. Might have gotten LEANed away.

I have fond memories of christmas dinner as a child/teenager, not because of any religious affiliation but because it was one of the few times a year the family of six, three of which work in hospitals, spent a day or so together. There were few overlaps of free time otherwise.

I don't remember the exact mechanics how it worked, but I think work schedules get set about 6 months in advance with some employee input about their preferences, and employees can to a degree swap shifts with each other. So e.g. it was quite common for people with kids to take christmas off, whereas young singles or from different backgrounds took new years or any other day.

I try to do this as well, and in exchange they usually are good about me taking my holidays off(in my case Eid). To me it's just another Saturday, so why not-- I see how much it means to people who celebrate it. Getting time and a half is nice too

I wish we could do this for most holidays. There’s a lot of US holidays I really don’t care about (like thanks giving). Just give me PTO instead! My first manager allowed me to do that, I thought that was really cool.

Exactly. I volunteered (along with 2 others) yesterday to relieve & go home 4 hours early (paid). I would get those 4 hours anytime next month.

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