Guest Post by The Zman
When I first started working as a kid, one “bonus week” during the school year was Thanksgiving. I got to work on Friday and Saturday, rather than just Saturday. All businesses were open on the Friday after Thanksgiving, not just retailers. Almost everyone worked that day, because for hourly workers, you had to work the day before and day after a holiday to get paid for it. Companies that hired kids for part-time work would have set aside menial jobs just for the part-timers to do on that Friday.
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That’s not true today. I have no clients that open on Friday. Even my clients that do business internationally give their US people off the Friday after Thanksgiving. Many manufacturers that run two shifts will close Thursday and the first shift on Friday. It has become, for most Americans, a four day holiday. In fact, it is starting to become a five day weekend, as many people use their personal time to take Wednesday. This year, the traffic on the interstate was busiest Tuesday night rather than Wednesday.
Something similar is happening with Christmas. I’ve noticed this year that my e-mail traffic has slowed to a trickle and the commute to the office is light. The kids are still in school, but lots of people are using accumulated personal time to make a short week. Or, maybe two short weeks. Since Monday is the holiday, people are using two vacation days this week and three the next week. Christmas and New Year’s Day have made for a two week period where nothing much gets done, as many people are off on holiday.
When America had a manufacturing base, it was not unusual for employers to close the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, as that was when maintenance was performed, inventories were done and so forth. While the lines might have been idle, the office people were still working and many of the production staff were in doing other things. The line workers were forced to use their vacation time if they were not called in for inventory or maintenance. Otherwise, this time of years was business as usual.
Employers gave workers off for Christmas Day, but they were expected to work a full day on Christmas Eve. Again, as a kid, I had off from school at this time so it was a chance to earn some money. The years when Christmas was on a weekend, it was not a paid holiday, unless you normally worked on weekends. That day before and day after stuff applied to Christmas too. The really generous employers would send their office people home after lunch on Christmas Eve, often after a company paid-for lunch.
Holiday creep in America is mostly due to technology and leisure. Despite our troubles and our looming problems, we are a rich country by the standards of world history. The fact is, many people in offices today are performing nonsense work anyway. The amount of money spent on compliance with government regulations, industry quality standards and mitigation against litigation is substantial. The hens in the HR department could be replaced by robots if not for the need to police the ranks for multicultural violations.
Even nonsense takes a holiday. That’s another aspect of this. Around the Imperial Capital, they used announce on snow days that only essential personnel needed to report to work. Everyone chuckled because they knew it meant all government workers would be home, as none of them were essential. Now, they say “Federal workers are to use liberal leave or telecommute.” It’s not just the government though. Lots of work in the dreaded private sector is busy work, so giving people more time off is often a net benefit to business.
There’s also the fact that attitudes are changing. When America was run by white men, people were defined by what they did for a living. Not working meant you were not needed, which meant you were unimportant. In a world run by hormonal white women, everyone is defined by their latest autoethnographic postings on Faceborg. Quality time at home with the cats is now a sign of status. Personal time off, flexible work hours and the ability to “work” from home are the new status symbols of American society.
The reason this is possible is we are a post-scarcity society. Even our poor people are fat and over indulged. Drive through the West Baltimore ghetto next Monday and you will see empty cartons for game consoles, big screen TV’s and other luxury items. Jamal may be headed to court next week, but he is going to get a season of NBA 2K18 in before he has to report to prison. We are a society where work is less and less important, because we have an excess of everything. There is a limit to how much stuff people want to buy.
Whether or not the creeping holiday phenomenon is a good thing is hard to know. Some things are both good and bad or neither. Most people reading this were trained to think hard work built character so a desire to work was a sign of good character. That’s a perfectly sensible belief in a world of scarcity. In a post-scarcity society, one where automation is increasing taking over human labor, maybe those sentiments about work are counter-productive. Maybe the way forward is self-actualizing leisure.
Regardless, it is a short day for me as I’m taking Friday off to have a four day weekend.
“When America was run by white men, people were defined by what they did for a living.”
I come from a day prior to that, and a part of the country, when men were defined by their character more than just their money or economic position.
I doubt we’ll ever see the return of those days.
I work in manufacturing, character and quality of work still count; on some occasions, its after after results are met.
I realized time was more valuable than money when I was about 20. I told my dad that, one day, and he gave me a blank stare. I understood I couldn’t be chained to a job or school, if the surf came up overnight. I still don’t have a Porsche, but I got 6 cars that appreciate every year, a dozen surfboards, and a bunch of other stuff with equity…..”not bad for a dumb surfer” as my Aunt once said…
Sounds blissful. I think of taking 3 months on the water in So. Cal. or North Shore as I sit in horrible traffic and freezing temps to head to the ol’ job. The ocean here will kill in a few minutes and a drysuit seems excessive to get some surfing in.
My father comes from the generation where who you were was defined by your job. He worked for over 30 years in a thankless job in the Department of Corrections. He was not lazy, or a taker, or faked illness or injury for time off.
He did his job correctly, and fairly, and often told me he was “not there to punish the prisoners more, just to make sure they follow the rules, stay in prison, and no one gets hurt”. If you broke the rules, you got demerits.
He hated people who stole his lunch from the employee fridge. He hated lazy, dangerous CO’s who didn’t do their jobs or fooled around. He didn’t brown-nose, so despite his longevity on the job and an impeccable job record, he never got promoted to Warden, or even Deputy Warden, which is what he should have been. He made it to Captain. He retired when the small facility he currently was working at was getting ready to close. He had had enough of driving, and transfers, and who knows where he would have ended up, and he definitely didn’t want to do Max anymore, or the Women’s prison.
So he ended up retired at a very young 50-something, which he then opened his own transportation company (we all worked and owned it at the time) until 9/11 happened and it meant more rules, more fees, more scrutiny just to pick up some poor slob at the airport. Insurance was up, gas was $4 a gallon. So he sold and moved to SC. I see a lost man now, who is still young in body and mind, and he rages over the politics and the younger generation.
I grew up in a “red” house in a “blue” state (CT) and learned that you go to work, you do your damn job, you shut up, and get paid. He didn’t have credit card debt, and when they sold their house in CT they made quite a profit (2006) as the market was just starting to really ramp up before the fall of Rome. They own their house in SC free and clear, still have no credit card debt.
The work ethic today is so touchy-feely, and lacking in skills as to be laughable. I am constantly amazed at the utter lack of preparedness of the average human, adult or child. They are always looking for the easy way out, or feel they are “owed” something by somebody. An ever unidentifiable search for the easy buck.
Sad. So sad. In a generation we have been reduced to the fast food nation.
We have a bunch of navel gazers here – the author mentioned the past only as a point of contrast, we are familiar with it, dickheads, no need for your virtue signalling.
Let’s look at what he is really talking about, Americans are becoming a leisure society like the French. The bullshit about the white men running things is a red-herring, the fucking reality is that as America becomes less and less employed due to globalism, America is turning into its worst nightmare, lazy people napping in the middle of what used to be a workday instead of busting balls to meet a production schedule.
The American commies got us the modern 8 hour, 5 day work week, your bragging about the previous generation working for 40 hours a week is hardly the story of Hercules and the stables. Ours is rapidly becoming a 4 day work week while the Chinese bust their nads to meet the world demand for goods at a relatively cheap price.
America’s increasing leisure activities are steered towards consumption; shopping for gewgaws and doodads or gobbling and gnawing on manufactured food. Theme parks and nightclubs fill the spiritual void once nurtured with well-deserved rest from ball-busting or, in the case of women, cunt-busting hard work. That is the point of the article, birdbrains.
You’re right that we’ve become a leisure society. People used to work Saturdays as part of the regular week. The only day off was Sunday. Now people moan and groan about working 5 days a week.
I been tryin’ to get down to the heart of the matter, too. But the will gets weak…
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A day off? WhyTF would I want to do that? Working in my studio is what I’ve done all my life. Whether there were a dozen employees or alone, it’s what I live for. Once in a while I might take an afternoon off, stretch out with a good cigar but 4 or 5 days? To do what?
Fishing, hunting, camping, motorcycling, landscaping, woodworking, playing music, cooking, reloading, making beer…I dunno, stuff.
Gib me leisure or gib me death, gib me something!