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mrlolloran t1_j39rsbq wrote

These studies hardly ever take into account that some jobs just can’t accommodate the flexible scheduling championed by the study.

Always reminds me of somebody I heard talking about how much time they thought people should have off. They were really adamant about not overworking people and included not making people work hours that would disrupt their circadian rhythm for better sleep and everything which is admirable. But at the end they justified by saying what they thought people should be able to do with their time off. This person said they should be able to go out to eat in a nice restaurant with friends and family.

Who would have served them in the restaurant though? According to them nobody should have to work that kind of shift, including the restaurant staff

Want your father to have a doctor see him when they have a heart attack on Christmas? What about the fire department when your house is on fire during Thanksgiving? Of course for the jobs where it’s possible we should be flexible and reduce hours if possible, but headlines like this gloss over that and in my experience the articles do too.

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Negan1995 t1_j3a1qaq wrote

Jobs that can't be flexible should pay the most to accommodate for that, and the rest of the jobs should be open and flexed. The way things are now is fucked, out dated and wrong.

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mrlolloran t1_j3a29nd wrote

Oh I absolutely agree, just when I hear “flexibility” I think “holidays off” and a place like a hospital just can’t do that. Even if you cut hours by half and doubled or even tripled staff some of them would have to work on Christmas, a portion of whom would likely rather be celebrating.

I really don’t care about the downvotes I got, my only real point is that there will never be a perfect system where everybody gets what they want until we can automate literally everything.

Edit: actually tbh I had two points. The anecdote about “who would be working the restaurant?” Was just a slight warning about people not getting carried away with sentiment. There will still be overnight jobs. There will still be manual labor. Customer service jobs will always suck because of the customers. Et cetera

Edit 2: spelling on first edit, “restaurant” is hard

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Negan1995 t1_j3a5cpn wrote

If walmart is open on Christmas their employees should be making at least a middle class wage. Not lower class. People should get paid based on what they sacrifice. And low wage people sacrifice alot, and they deserve so much more than they get.

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mrlolloran t1_j3a6ba4 wrote

Again, agreed. Are Walmarts open for nonessential stuff too that day? Despite there being one in the next town over from me they’re not very popular where I am. We have the density to support several and I think we do but I’ve been to once of them one and had to use google maps to get there.

Edit: “one” to “once”

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Negan1995 t1_j3a7mw8 wrote

I was using Walmart as an example of a business people don't respect. It applys to most service work

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mrlolloran t1_j3aaup3 wrote

I used to work events. I’ve been asked to work every holiday, not every year, but at some point I was asked to work every one. That was kinda wild.

But this is sort of a good example. It was unfair of them to beg me to work on the 4th of July and make it seem like I was letting them down because I was told that was one of the days I’d never even be asked to work. But I also almost never got New Year’s Eve off and had to work a really long shift.

But thing is we were an events company that did weddings, corporate events, concerts/shows and more. We always had multiple of all three that night. I was told when I “signed up” to not expect to have NYE off. Ever. That didn’t mean it couldn’t happen (and it happen more than once) but it was not something to be counted on.

Btw I’m not surprised by how many assholes there out there. My boss would tell them it cost the same amount of money for me to leave and come back after setting up a “concealed” confetti cannon for a midnight pop-off as it was to stay and 99.9% of the time they made me stay on site for no reason. Complete waste of time.

Admittedly a lot of jobs don’t have something so dramatic but there’s always something. Tax season. Flu season. End of the quarter. Going back to school. People repairing damage from storms such as linemen restoring power, snow plows making roads passable, aid workers responding to a catastrophe or contractors of all sorts fixing damage to various aspect of residential and commercial buildings.

Just something I think people should keep in mind as they think of how actual policy would/should work.

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ffxivfanboi t1_j3astii wrote

It might vary by area and region and the workload.

Usually the only day we get off in the Walmart warehouse I work in is Xmas day. But this year, we got Thanksgiving off and overnights didn’t have to work New Year’s Eve and mornings didn’t have to work New Years Day.

…We still don’t get paid for those holidays, so fat lot of good being forced not to be paid did me. We used to get 10 hours of holiday pay for all the major holidays, but that all changed about… 7ish years ago now.

Walmart as a company fucking blows, but it’s basically all I have right now.

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