Quit Whining and Go to Work (on Thanksgiving or Whenever)!

What is going on with this culture and the anti-working-on-holidays nonsense? I am completely confused. Last I checked, unemployment still sucks. There are stories everywhere about families taking to GoFundMe so they don’t lose their homes. It’s bad out there, people. It’s really bad. (Especially if you live in a state controlled by Democrats, like Illinois, where the government can’t even pay out Lotto winnings even when it has confiscated the homes of the elderly in the name of “property taxes.” For real.)

I don’t know if the people complaining about working on Thanksgiving or Black Friday (or any other holiday) are media anchors on their third $8 latte (whining prettily about all the upset working people…somewhere) or if they are New York Times columnists typing from their $6 million Upper East Side condos about the poor, oppressed working folk or what, but this @$!? is bananas. Nobody who has a family to feed is upset about working on any day, and if they are, they should quit that job and open up a position for someone who will appreciate the work. Forced labor is still not a thing here (yet).

My dad had a grocery store that was open every day of the year back in the ’80s. The girls who worked there would fight over who got to work holidays because they got holiday pay and my dad would always give them a bonus at the end of their shift as well as a big, fat bag of groceries that usually included a turkey or something else equally awesome. One year he bought a ton of toys that I got to wrap and give to one of the girls who was having a particularly rough year. Her boys had an awesome Christmas that year and she left in happy tears. Most employers appreciate employees who are willing to work on holidays.

This is no season for wimps. Times are tough. Why is it that no one rallies for nurses or doctors to stay home on Thanksgiving instead of ministering to countless loved ones languishing in hospitals across the fruited plains? Why doesn’t anyone care that police and firemen never have holidays off? What about telephone repairmen and those guys who work on power lines? Why do only store clerks and waitresses get special attention? The world does not stop turning because America is eating turkey on a Thursday! This may come as a shock to you, but it is not illegal to have Thanksgiving dinner on a Monday or any other day your schedule permits. (If it really is about family, then yours will accommodate your schedule.) We are celebrating Christmas on the 26th this year because my sister-in-law is a nurse and will be on call taking care of her patients on the 25th. She’s not posting passive-aggressive memes on Facebook demanding that others change their plans and sit on their hands on Christmas just because she has to work.

What you should do is put on your big kid pants and go to work on Saturdays or Sundays — or even holidays — to make ends meet. But don’t you dare make everyone else feel guilty because they forgot a can of cranberry sauce or they want to take advantage of Black Friday sales. Some people wait all year for those sales so they can give their kids a nice Christmas, not to mention that stores have been waiting all year for their chance to claw their way out of the red (hence the “black” in Black Friday).

There is entirely too much whining in this country and I’m sick of it. Be thankful you have a job this year and walk it off, rub some dirt on it, and get back to work! Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving!