Working on Personal Holidays

Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, New Years, birthday (have worked them all since I was 23, unless on a weekend), etc.

It's typical. It's normal. Welcome to America. :D

Have I ever worked on vacation - I have called into a teleconference or checked my voicemails. But I avoid it at all costs. Some things I delegate up to my boss, some things I delegate down to my staff. The week before vacation is often the busiest all year as I clear my desk.

Did you explain the sitauation to your boss? I would be horrified to make you work when something like that was on. I would have looked for creative ways to deal with it.

I try to get my staff able to understand some of each others knowledge domaines to the extent of being able to cover for each other. One of my staff was away for three weeks this summer, and I took over most of his projects. I did call him once for a piece of information. For the rest, I just managed and coped my way through it.

I attend the funerals of my staff's loved ones(family). So I wouldn't dare call them. I wouldn't ask them to carry a phone or a pager. That would the height of crassness.

If I may be so bold, if your manager doesn't see that dependancy on one individual is a bit of a problem, then he/she is a poor manager.

I did work on a high profile project about 10 years ago. We were all on pager duty for a year. We had a problem on Christmas day and one of the individuals was called on Christmas morning. He didn't have kids but had taken time off to get away with his girlfriend, who threatened to break up with him if they didn't spend some quality time together. He didn't leave a forwarding number and his cell was off. The senior manager called all the hotels in the city he was staying at to find him. Needless to say, the risks to the project were high if he did contact him (lose a valuable resource) and high if he didn't (customer lost connectivity in a 24/7 business).

If I found myself with two days to go before a deadline and a vacation day coming up, and I knew I couldn't make it, I'd talk to my boss about it. Some deadlines are more important than others.

James

I have worked on weekends, company holidays, and personal days before. It depends on your responsibilities and position in the company. But it is not only IT that does, I know many who do also.
It also depends on the size of the company and if there are overlapping duties/responsibilities.
My worst experience was when I had an infected bite on my leg. I couldnt walk hardly at all and even then it was painful. The doc told me to stay home for 1-1/2 weeks.
I ended up doing about 2 hours a day online through vpn to work on things, check email, and netmeetings to fix problems.

One year I "had" to go into work for the end of year roll-over of accounts. Why didn't I just do this via VPN like usual? The EX wanted to drive through the snow belt, (3 hours worth each way in good conditions) to have Christmas with her b1tch of a sister. (the one that I mentioned yesterday that thinks Christmas is placing an order for what you want.).

Sorry baby, I can't go with you because I have to work! Wish them a Merry Christmas for me though!

The EX ended up not going, and I ended up "being able to get the VPN fixed" so I could do my work from home. :D

At least I didn't have to actually go in, and it only takes about 10 minutes! B-)

Before that as a shop rat? Never.

Before that working in a gas station? Holidays off was rotated among the employees. That was many moons ago, and always had snowbunnies come into the back room to help me get over working..... :0 ]:)

The working structure is set up thusly: We get 10 paid holidays a year, subtract those that fall on a week day and the rest are personal holidays, some years it's five and five, some eight holidays and two personal, it all depends on the years calendar. With 20 years on the job, I get 6 weeks of vacation, which the boss will never let me take more than two weeks at a time. Towards the end of the year, I have to squeeze them in where I can. The boss would rather I take them than have to pay me for them. I'm not allowed to carry any from one year to the next because I get so many. It comes down to September and I'm taking every Friday off, and even some Mondays too. I hate taking them in the middle of the week.

were talking about holiday time for double time, not overtime.

You do what you have to do. In August I was on a weeks vacation, and the Wednesday before the client tasked my group to deliver an updated project plan, based on a variable that would not be available until the following Wednesday. The project involves relocating a data center from one end of the state to the other. The projected end date at this point is Dec 16.

I instructed my team to forward me the results of the variable by COB Wednesday, and I would send the update. Now this may sound foolish, and that I ought to have delegated the task, but hear me out.

That Wednesday night, the team sent me the updated plan, with a new end date of Dec 26.

That Friday I took a conference call with the client, while I was on vacation. I am a team leader, not one who could hire/fire, and the people who were about to commit to working over Christmas obviously didn't follow through.

Am I sorry I 'worked' over vacation? Not at all.

I'd probably avoid working on my anniversary, but at any other time its simply business.

When we hire someone at our site it is a standard question whether they understand that it may be necessary to 'step up' by working beyond the normal hours. At this place and others, I ahve seen many people work full days when they are officially on vacation, because it would look bad for their manager if they didn't 'use up' their vacation time, but they also couldn't get approval to actually take any days away from the project. Then there was the guy I worked for at a bank which had a financial year end which was due every January 1. Each year he would give us a great pep talk about how much he trusted us to do the year-end closing and reports while he was away. He would leave for a two-week vacation starting December 23, and leave it to everyone else in the shop to work straight through New Year's so we could complete the year end reports by 4:00 pm on January 1st. Wedding anniversaries and birthdays? You bet, I've worked them all, and every holiday. I've known people who worked seven days a week for ten months at a stretch because a project was behind. If you are in a shop where they use a rotation for holidays, you could end up like one person I know hwo worked every holiday for thirteen years. Apparently she had a 'bad attitude', so she could never get high enough on the perference list to successfully bid for a holiday off-and I can certainly understand where it came from.

If you expect to have days off at your choosing, you are in the wrong industry, and probably in the wrong country. You are supposed to live to work, rather than the other way around.