14 ms·

I'm currently working for a company that forces office staff to work a half day on christmas eve with the additional stipulation, of course, that you must burn

I'm currently working for a company that forces office staff to work a half day on christmas eve with the additional stipulation, of course, that you must burn a full day of vacation to skip it. This despite the fact that no one in the company can ever remember a customer calling on christmas eve. So I'm very skeptical that this trend will grow. It took the IWW to get us the concepts of The Weekend and Sick Days, and I expect it will take nothing less extreme to claw back any more of our time from the corporate slave-driving overlords. Absent a few easily-dismissed outliers, of course.

teawrecks 5y ago
Sure would be a shame if the employees collectively bargained with the company for more reasonable policies...
- azinman2 5y ago
  Yup… because their jobs may then go abroad as has been the trend for the past 20 years…
  - halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
    An ultimately the company will suffer in quality, be bought by private equity and gutted in the next twenty years.
    - RexM 5y ago
      Unfortunately, most companies aren't looking past the next few quarters.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    You can't ship pretty much any service industry job abroad.
    - klipklop 5y ago
      That’s why they are working so hard on AI, drones and robots.
      - yardie 5y ago
        They are perpetually 3-5 years away. This is why there is a shortage now. We've told an entire generation not to take those jobs, they're going to be automated anyway. 2021 arrives and still no FSD trucks, no robotized fast food, and no last mile drone delivery. Not only did these companies convince investors labor wasn't necessary, they also managed to convince labor labor wasn't necessary.
  - willheis 5y ago
    This happened to everything it could at least 10 years ago. It turns out that if you want software that works (at all), you need to pay people well, regardless of where they are in the world. Stop reenforcing this notion that leads to massive overwork and burnout in the US (+ Canada). Germany, the UK, Sweden, etc all have much, much better working conditions for software devs and their jobs aren't going away
    - giantg2 5y ago
      I hear that many of the European countries have lower dev salaries than the US. So maybe better conditions, but possibly lower pay. Our company just started outsourcing IT 5 years ago. It's still expanding that policy.
      - dukeyukey 5y ago
        > I hear that many of the European countries have lower dev salaries than the US. So maybe better conditions, but possibly lower pay. While arguably true, it's almost definitely not better conditions to blame. A more likely source is the massive and relatively homogenous US market, a culture open to immigration, and the huge reserves of capital sloshing about the country.
        skeeter2020 5y ago
        the significantly higher direct and indirect taxes are definitely related though
        dukeyukey 5y ago
        You'd be surprised. Like, if we take taxes as a percentage of GDP as a figure, the US scores pretty well at about 27%. But Australia is at 28%, Canada at 32%, and even the UK at 33%. The differences aren't massive here. He'll, Ireland comes in at 23%.
        Manouchehri 5y ago
  - yupper32 5y ago
    If they could they would. I remember being told over 10 years ago as I was entering the field of software that I shouldn't bother: my job is going to be outsourced soon enough. This is just a scare tactic with little teeth. Not to say it doesn't happen, but it doesn't happen enough for it to be a consideration.
  - cultofmetatron 5y ago
    Some of my best (ie: most profitable per hour jobs) were rescuing projects that were sent abroad.
    - nickff 5y ago
      This seems like it could be survivor-ship bias; i.e. your highest margin jobs weren't those that had been sent abroad, they were the ones that failed after having been sent abroad.
willheis 5y ago
Obviously on-call has to cover holidays but Christmas eve is a work day for everyone (in an office) at your company? Why stay? That is simply barbaric
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  As with all things, it's about trade-offs. As much as I dislike this company for its policies towards time off and butts-in-seats[0], I am not on-call and am never obligated to answer my phone outside of work, no one bats an eye at me taking a few hours to make an appointment every now and then, I don't hate my manager or coworkers, and generally little is expected of me which suits me fine because I haven't found IT work fulfilling for at least 5 years. [0] Which is directly responsible for infecting my household with COVID. Literally everyone in the company has had it.
  - devin 5y ago
    As they wrote, barbaric.
  - datavirtue 5y ago
    Ahhh....the plantation still lives.
    - satyrnein 5y ago
      He was literally talking about how it was his choice to stay, and you're calling him a slave. Over only getting half a day off on Christmas Eve, which is not even a holiday. I honestly cannot tell what is sarcasm anymore.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  Christmas eve is usually a work day for the vast majority of the world, even the out-of-touch white collar minority. We benefit from the fact that (a) the work is easy, (b) not much of it gets done and (c) you go home 1/2 way through the day. You sound even more out of touch than the rest of us if you think this is "barbaric".
mlyle 5y ago
I personally believe that the government should focus on a shorter workweek rather than minimum wage increases in the near term. If we shorten the nominal workweek to 36 hours before overtime is required (and encourage this to be in the form of 4x9 or 9/2 * 8): * Supply of labor will fall, increasing equilibrium pay for everyone * Everyone's quality of life goes up * Traffic and environmental impacts from commuting should improve (a little). * It's a better hedge against automation and outsourcing than artificially increasing the minimum price of labor.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  You need both: A minimum wage ensures a wage of enough income someone can pay for basic needs (housing, food, health, etc) and ratcheting down the work week distributes productivity gains of capital to workers in aggregate. The former is, arguably, more tenable politically at the moment ("Fight for $15" and so on), the latter likely in the future as the electorate (and the beliefs around work and its contribution to someone's identity) evolves. Increasing the minimum wage would also lift ~20 million people out of poverty (at the cost of about 1.4 million jobs) per the US CBO [1] [2] [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_Sta... [2] https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2021-02/56975-Minimum-Wage.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2021-02/56975-Minimum-Wage.... [3] https://www.npr.org/2021/02/08/965483266/-15-minimum-wage-would-reduce-poverty-but-cost-jobs-cbo-says https://www.npr.org/2021/02/08/965483266/-15-minimum-wage-wo...
  - mlyle 5y ago
    I agree that one needs both and that they serve complementary purposes. But a minimum wage is useful to the extent that there are jobs for your lowest skill, least desirable workers. And ensuring that may take reducing the work week.
    - xupybd 5y ago
      Higher minimum wage laws do hurt low skilled workers. We have two great big machines at work each will pay for it's self in under a year at current minimum wage rates. There is no choice but to replace the people for machines if we want to remain competitive.
austinl 5y ago
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the company I work for shuts our offices down from the 24th to the 2nd. Engineers submit availability for on-call schedules, and get a gift card for each on-call day they're responsible for. I feel very spoiled, but I think this is generally a trend amongst west-coast tech companies? I've had a similar experience at previous places, and it seemed like the rationale for the holiday shutdown was "we don't want to risk any downtime while lots of engineers are out and potentially unreachable if something breaks". All that is to say, if it's within your power to leave, the grass is potentially much greener elsewhere.
- twalla 5y ago
  The real rationale is to remove a metric shitton of accrued PTO from their books if paying out PTO on employee departure is something the company does.
  - woobar 5y ago
    Hmm... in a few companies I've worked holiday shutdown was not coming out of PTO budget.
  - a_c_s 5y ago
    How does shutting down the office remove PTO obligations? I worked at a company where we had 10 days of vacation + the office shut down for the last week of the year. Nobody had to use vacation time during that 1-week shutdown. If anything, it increased PTO accrued obligations because nobody had to use their PTO for time off during that week.
    - nradov 5y ago
      It varies by company. Accrued PTO is carried on the balance sheet as a liability, since it's owned to employees and would generally have to be paid out in cash if the employee is terminated. Reducing that liability makes several financial metrics look better. Some companies shut down for a week and require employees to use up their accrued PTO (or take unpaid leave). Other companies give it "free" essentially as company holidays. There's no right or wrong here, it's just one of many factors you have to consider when deciding where to work.
skeeter2020 5y ago
>> forces office staff to work a half day on christmas eve ...or that traditionally lets people go home at lunch? This is pretty common but you frame it pretty negatively.
driverdan 5y ago
Why would you expect to get Christmas eve off? It's not a holiday and not everyone celebrates Christmas.
- stronglikedan 5y ago
  I don't see where OP expected to get it off because it was a holiday. They expect to get it off because no work gets done, and they're annoyed because the company requires double the vacation time for those that do want it off for the holiday. Finally, Christmas Eve is definitely as much of a holiday as Christmas Day, for those who celebrate it.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  I think the question is framed such as it already assumes the employer perspective: you should only get off on federal holidays, or at least religious ones. But if you want some justifications: christmas is the biggest holiday in the (once?) christian-dominated west, and in the US in particular it is quite common for family to be separated by hundreds or even thousands of miles of travel. It is also common practice for people to celebrate christmas eve with one side of the family and christmas day with the other, if they live closely enough to each. All that aside, it is less about not getting christmas eve off than it is about there being absolutely no reason for us to be there at all. The company recognizes that there is some importance to the day for its employees by cutting the day in half in the first place, yet even though all evidence shows that there is no reason whatsoever to be there and it's costing the company more to have people there than it will ever make from it, they still insist that people show up. It's not even rational slave-driving.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  Not American celebrates Christmas as a religious holiday, but most everyone observes it as a secular time of rest, travel, and/or family before the start of the new year. Schools are off during this time. And many professions take a break during this time as well, not just office workers, but factories often use this down time for maintenance, and trades use it as reprieve from working in the cold.
hvgk 5y ago
I tend to attempt to ruin asshat companies like that, usually because it’s only the tip of the iceberg of abuse. I’ve taken out two so far, one by quitting as the sole engineer when their only client went down and i wasn’t paid properly and secondly by scaring all the permanent staff off after getting a bailiff appointed to take kit away from their office because they didn’t pay my invoice. I don’t shed an ounce of guilt for this.
hnarn 5y ago
There's power in a union.
missedthecue 5y ago
According to The Atlantic, religion started the weekend/5 day workweek, not the IWW. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/08/where-the-five-day-workweek-came-from/378870/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/08/where-t... In fact, I cannot find any source at all that says the IWW caused the weekend.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  You are probably right, I am also unable to find a credible source saying that.

teawrecks 5y ago

Sure would be a shame if the employees collectively bargained with the company for more reasonable policies...

azinman2 5y ago
Yup… because their jobs may then go abroad as has been the trend for the past 20 years…
- halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
  An ultimately the company will suffer in quality, be bought by private equity and gutted in the next twenty years.
  - RexM 5y ago
    Unfortunately, most companies aren't looking past the next few quarters.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  You can't ship pretty much any service industry job abroad.
  - klipklop 5y ago
    That’s why they are working so hard on AI, drones and robots.
    - yardie 5y ago
      They are perpetually 3-5 years away. This is why there is a shortage now. We've told an entire generation not to take those jobs, they're going to be automated anyway. 2021 arrives and still no FSD trucks, no robotized fast food, and no last mile drone delivery. Not only did these companies convince investors labor wasn't necessary, they also managed to convince labor labor wasn't necessary.
- willheis 5y ago
  This happened to everything it could at least 10 years ago. It turns out that if you want software that works (at all), you need to pay people well, regardless of where they are in the world. Stop reenforcing this notion that leads to massive overwork and burnout in the US (+ Canada). Germany, the UK, Sweden, etc all have much, much better working conditions for software devs and their jobs aren't going away
  - giantg2 5y ago
    I hear that many of the European countries have lower dev salaries than the US. So maybe better conditions, but possibly lower pay. Our company just started outsourcing IT 5 years ago. It's still expanding that policy.
    - dukeyukey 5y ago
      > I hear that many of the European countries have lower dev salaries than the US. So maybe better conditions, but possibly lower pay. While arguably true, it's almost definitely not better conditions to blame. A more likely source is the massive and relatively homogenous US market, a culture open to immigration, and the huge reserves of capital sloshing about the country.
      - skeeter2020 5y ago
        the significantly higher direct and indirect taxes are definitely related though
        dukeyukey 5y ago
        You'd be surprised. Like, if we take taxes as a percentage of GDP as a figure, the US scores pretty well at about 27%. But Australia is at 28%, Canada at 32%, and even the UK at 33%. The differences aren't massive here. He'll, Ireland comes in at 23%.
        Manouchehri 5y ago
- yupper32 5y ago
  If they could they would. I remember being told over 10 years ago as I was entering the field of software that I shouldn't bother: my job is going to be outsourced soon enough. This is just a scare tactic with little teeth. Not to say it doesn't happen, but it doesn't happen enough for it to be a consideration.
- cultofmetatron 5y ago
  Some of my best (ie: most profitable per hour jobs) were rescuing projects that were sent abroad.
  - nickff 5y ago
    This seems like it could be survivor-ship bias; i.e. your highest margin jobs weren't those that had been sent abroad, they were the ones that failed after having been sent abroad.

willheis 5y ago

Obviously on-call has to cover holidays but Christmas eve is a work day for everyone (in an office) at your company? Why stay? That is simply barbaric

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
As with all things, it's about trade-offs. As much as I dislike this company for its policies towards time off and butts-in-seats[0], I am not on-call and am never obligated to answer my phone outside of work, no one bats an eye at me taking a few hours to make an appointment every now and then, I don't hate my manager or coworkers, and generally little is expected of me which suits me fine because I haven't found IT work fulfilling for at least 5 years. [0] Which is directly responsible for infecting my household with COVID. Literally everyone in the company has had it.
- devin 5y ago
  As they wrote, barbaric.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  Ahhh....the plantation still lives.
  - satyrnein 5y ago
    He was literally talking about how it was his choice to stay, and you're calling him a slave. Over only getting half a day off on Christmas Eve, which is not even a holiday. I honestly cannot tell what is sarcasm anymore.
skeeter2020 5y ago
Christmas eve is usually a work day for the vast majority of the world, even the out-of-touch white collar minority. We benefit from the fact that (a) the work is easy, (b) not much of it gets done and (c) you go home 1/2 way through the day. You sound even more out of touch than the rest of us if you think this is "barbaric".

mlyle 5y ago

I personally believe that the government should focus on a shorter workweek rather than minimum wage increases in the near term. If we shorten the nominal workweek to 36 hours before overtime is required (and encourage this to be in the form of 4x9 or 9/2 * 8): * Supply of labor will fall, increasing equilibrium pay for everyone * Everyone's quality of life goes up * Traffic and environmental impacts from commuting should improve (a little). * It's a better hedge against automation and outsourcing than artificially increasing the minimum price of labor.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
You need both: A minimum wage ensures a wage of enough income someone can pay for basic needs (housing, food, health, etc) and ratcheting down the work week distributes productivity gains of capital to workers in aggregate. The former is, arguably, more tenable politically at the moment ("Fight for $15" and so on), the latter likely in the future as the electorate (and the beliefs around work and its contribution to someone's identity) evolves. Increasing the minimum wage would also lift ~20 million people out of poverty (at the cost of about 1.4 million jobs) per the US CBO [1] [2] [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_Sta... [2] https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2021-02/56975-Minimum-Wage.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2021-02/56975-Minimum-Wage.... [3] https://www.npr.org/2021/02/08/965483266/-15-minimum-wage-would-reduce-poverty-but-cost-jobs-cbo-says https://www.npr.org/2021/02/08/965483266/-15-minimum-wage-wo...
- mlyle 5y ago
  I agree that one needs both and that they serve complementary purposes. But a minimum wage is useful to the extent that there are jobs for your lowest skill, least desirable workers. And ensuring that may take reducing the work week.
  - xupybd 5y ago
    Higher minimum wage laws do hurt low skilled workers. We have two great big machines at work each will pay for it's self in under a year at current minimum wage rates. There is no choice but to replace the people for machines if we want to remain competitive.

austinl 5y ago

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the company I work for shuts our offices down from the 24th to the 2nd. Engineers submit availability for on-call schedules, and get a gift card for each on-call day they're responsible for. I feel very spoiled, but I think this is generally a trend amongst west-coast tech companies? I've had a similar experience at previous places, and it seemed like the rationale for the holiday shutdown was "we don't want to risk any downtime while lots of engineers are out and potentially unreachable if something breaks". All that is to say, if it's within your power to leave, the grass is potentially much greener elsewhere.

twalla 5y ago
The real rationale is to remove a metric shitton of accrued PTO from their books if paying out PTO on employee departure is something the company does.
- woobar 5y ago
  Hmm... in a few companies I've worked holiday shutdown was not coming out of PTO budget.
- a_c_s 5y ago
  How does shutting down the office remove PTO obligations? I worked at a company where we had 10 days of vacation + the office shut down for the last week of the year. Nobody had to use vacation time during that 1-week shutdown. If anything, it increased PTO accrued obligations because nobody had to use their PTO for time off during that week.
  - nradov 5y ago
    It varies by company. Accrued PTO is carried on the balance sheet as a liability, since it's owned to employees and would generally have to be paid out in cash if the employee is terminated. Reducing that liability makes several financial metrics look better. Some companies shut down for a week and require employees to use up their accrued PTO (or take unpaid leave). Other companies give it "free" essentially as company holidays. There's no right or wrong here, it's just one of many factors you have to consider when deciding where to work.

skeeter2020 5y ago

>> forces office staff to work a half day on christmas eve ...or that traditionally lets people go home at lunch? This is pretty common but you frame it pretty negatively.

driverdan 5y ago

Why would you expect to get Christmas eve off? It's not a holiday and not everyone celebrates Christmas.

stronglikedan 5y ago
I don't see where OP expected to get it off because it was a holiday. They expect to get it off because no work gets done, and they're annoyed because the company requires double the vacation time for those that do want it off for the holiday. Finally, Christmas Eve is definitely as much of a holiday as Christmas Day, for those who celebrate it.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
I think the question is framed such as it already assumes the employer perspective: you should only get off on federal holidays, or at least religious ones. But if you want some justifications: christmas is the biggest holiday in the (once?) christian-dominated west, and in the US in particular it is quite common for family to be separated by hundreds or even thousands of miles of travel. It is also common practice for people to celebrate christmas eve with one side of the family and christmas day with the other, if they live closely enough to each. All that aside, it is less about not getting christmas eve off than it is about there being absolutely no reason for us to be there at all. The company recognizes that there is some importance to the day for its employees by cutting the day in half in the first place, yet even though all evidence shows that there is no reason whatsoever to be there and it's costing the company more to have people there than it will ever make from it, they still insist that people show up. It's not even rational slave-driving.
mywittyname 5y ago
Not American celebrates Christmas as a religious holiday, but most everyone observes it as a secular time of rest, travel, and/or family before the start of the new year. Schools are off during this time. And many professions take a break during this time as well, not just office workers, but factories often use this down time for maintenance, and trades use it as reprieve from working in the cold.

hvgk 5y ago

I tend to attempt to ruin asshat companies like that, usually because it’s only the tip of the iceberg of abuse. I’ve taken out two so far, one by quitting as the sole engineer when their only client went down and i wasn’t paid properly and secondly by scaring all the permanent staff off after getting a bailiff appointed to take kit away from their office because they didn’t pay my invoice. I don’t shed an ounce of guilt for this.

hnarn 5y ago

There's power in a union.

missedthecue 5y ago

According to The Atlantic, religion started the weekend/5 day workweek, not the IWW. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/08/where-the-five-day-workweek-came-from/378870/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/08/where-t... In fact, I cannot find any source at all that says the IWW caused the weekend.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
You are probably right, I am also unable to find a credible source saying that.