The Static Page

Take a break!

For some of us, a very important yearly event has just been and gone. For a lot of people, it is the highlight of their year. For many others, it's just another long weekend. Yes, I'm talking about Easter.

Although it moves around a bit each year (when it occurs is dependant on the moon), Good Friday is nearly always a public holiday. For many jobs this merely creates a four-day working week. Not always, though. Many retail places stay open, usually paying higher wages to their staff for working on a public holiday. Sometimes this strikes on other areas as well. Certainly in IT, weekends are valuable times for getting out-of-hours work done so a long weekend can be doubly valuable.

But there comes a rub. A lot of public holidays have national significance, like the various independance days or memorial days (Australia is also celebrating ANZAC day as I type this, for instance). Others are mere social days like New Years Day or the sprinkling of Labor Days or Bank Holidays some countries have. Easter - and Christmas - have a religious significance. I had problems coming to work on a Sunday some years ago because of religious commitments and I would probably have the same problem if I were asked to work on Good Friday.

What hassles do you personally have with public holidays and IT? What are the inconveniences? Have you knocked work back for some reason? Did that get you into trouble? And what about colleagues? I know there are people here in IWETHEY with no or low tolerance for religious activity - what happens when a colleage won't work on a religious public holiday?

Wade Bowmer, aka Static.

Comments? Email me at static dash page at yceran dot org.