This question is for those who work weekends and holidays. Will you please share the pros and cons of working these hours?

Pros? You’re employed.
Cons. Your life is a living Hell. The assholes that come to whatever establishment, you have the misfortune to work at, make things 100 times worse.
For those of you who shop on holidays, YOU are the problem. You deserve nothing but misery, and I hope you get it. Why do you need to shop on Thanksgiving day? You want to save $15, while waiting in line for an hour? Brilliant….

Agreed with @MrGrimm888

It really sucks to work these hours, and it seems the masses really are more rude then, as are the supervisors and floor walkers and middle management, who don’t want to be there. It’s chaos.

If they pay you a lot more, at least time-and-a-half, it is almost worth it. But these shifts are usually reserved for low-pay, low ranking employees, so time-and-a-half might not even amount to much.

When I worked at Schnucks Markets, we were supposed to close early on Christmas Eve, like at four, but we actually worked much later than normal. And they let a lot of us go the day after Christmas.

^My dog.:)

I always preferred those hours. Years in retail and bars and restaurants taught me to appreciate non-rush-hour commutes, regular errands run during non-crowded times, not having to cram household chores into weekends, stuff like that.
Cons? I missed some social stuff, but not all by any means. I never had to work on Thanksgiving day itself.

I assume we are talking full-time employment. I liked having a varied schedule for the most part, I didn’t mind weekend days, but I would have greatly preferred getting holidays off.

Pros:
You can make appointment for M-F things without having to take off time from work. Things like doctors appointment, going to the bank, and spending a few hours at your kids school when they are young come to mind, although I never did that last one.

You don’t have to work 5 days straight all the time. When I work M-F by Friday I can barely drag myself out of bed. I like working 3 or 4 days, and then having a day or two off.

If the work week is Sunday through Saturday, you can take a 4 day weekend without taking a vacation day. (This has nothing to do with holidays, usually I had to work on holidays and couldn’t do the 4 day line up then).

Cons:

If you’re married or have children it’s very likely your schedule is out of sync with them.

Working a holiday gets old fast. Everyone else is out celebrating and your working. Your SO might have a three days weekend off, and the holiday weekend might be the time when you could never take a long weekend.

If you have an idiot who makes your schedule they might schedule you 10 days in a row. My husband recently went through this. There are some rules that need to be followed so this doesn’t happen. If the work week is Sunday through Sat, if you take Friday thru Monday as regular days off, you have to get the following Sunday off, or you will work more than 5 days straight. I used to always try to do this for my staff, and then they worked two Sundays in a row after that. At worst I gave them Monday if it was impossible to give them that Sunday off.

If you mean part-time employment where you always work weekends and holidays, I’d say the only good thing is you work part-time, so you’re home most of the week anyway, but working both Sat and Sun and holidays every week for weeks on end sucks if your SO is on a M-F schedule, and especially if you have children, unless it brief, meaning if it’s just 4 hours a day and short commute it can be not too terrible.

Getting a paycheck. Otherwise not so many but if that’s the job you have, you suck it up. I had a fulltime job with one night on a week and every third Saturday when I was newly married and an internship where I worked every Saturday. Didn’t love ‘em but I coped for “the greater good.”

While I have been fortunate to have Monday to Friday jobs with major holidays off for many years, my wife is a lactation consultant/nurse so weekends and holidays are just part of life. The fact that she has to work 50% of weekends and many holidays has been a real bummer for the rest of us. I’ve been more of the primary caregiver for much of the time because I spend so much more time with them. She has missed so much. I can’t imagine if I also had such a schedule.

The only pro is that she gets to do what she enjoys for work.

One plus can be that if you have school age children, not working during the week means that you can be home to check in with them when they come home from school. And if there is another parent in the house, they can spend time with the child on the weekend. Of course, this does take away from the whole family having time together.

Are we talking about always working weekends and holidays or a rotating shift that includes them?

PRO: The pay. We got double time and a half. That put me at $90 an hour, back in the day.

Traffic is also much easier.

If you are doing a service call at someone’s house, they are much more appreciative.

CON: You usually don’t have the support groups you are used to.

The bigger paycheck.
My husband used to work a lot of weekends and many holidays when we first got married.
At first, I didn’t like it but I got so much done when he was not around. XD

Pros? I own my own business so the pleasure is mine to conduct business when and how I choose, so it works to my advantage.
Cons? There aren’t any.

Be thankful it’s not a rotating shift.

^^Is that when people work first shift a few weeks then change to second or third shift? I don’t see how people do that. Sounds very difficult. I worked retail so I worked early and late shifts, but the earliest most of the year was 8:00am and the latest was until 10:00 pm except special events and Christmas time. I guess it sort of was like a rotating shift in a way.

I am less lonely , and I appreciate having someone to talk to during the holidays and weekends. I also like getting time and a half pay.

I don’t work weekends anymore, but when I did, one of the main pros of having a weekday off (i was a part-time job so the weekdays I had off would vary from week to week) is that stores and such are much less busy on weekdays than on weekends so I could shopping done during quiet times of the day, which was nice, whereas everyone goes out on weekends. And yes, you get paid a little more for working weekends and nights.

@JLeslie I have done it and it sucks. 12 hour shifts: three nights, two days off, four days, two days off, three nights, three days off, four days, two days of.. etc…

Everything @MrGrimm888 says except I work in a nursing home so I wouldn’t say they are the problem when they are there on a holiday… they live there. I hate that I work every weekend almost when I was told it would be every other and I hate that I worked every holiday this year and didn’t get any off even though it is supposed to be… every other.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is, yeah pros are you have a job and (at least for mine) get benefits for working weekends and holidays but other than that it really sucks because I haven’t had a holiday with my family this year and when you are a part time college kid who needs money you have no choice but to suck it up so yeah

When I worked at the Emergency Veterinary Hospital, that was the last worst case scenario. On holidays, every “regular” office closed, and typically for several days. So. Our ICU, would be exponentially fuller, with transferred patients. And we’d have crazy wait times, and would sometimes get overwhelming cases. We couldn’t give our patients, the care they required. We had to prioritize critical patients, and some others, would just have to wait.
One Christmas day, we a 7 hour waiting time. Every one of our 50 cages, was occupied by an animal. So. We had dogs on the floors, and down the hallways. We had surgery after surgery scheduled. We had to do CPR, on one animal, while others were dying. We had only two doctors/surgeons. We had to pull doctors out of surgery, to help with all the CPRs. Often, I was doing chest compressions, while talking on the phone, to someone about their own animal, and whether or not it needed to be seen. We lost about 15 patients, in 24 hours. Most of us worked at least 17 hours straight. The physical and emotional toll, was insane…

I had stop on the way home, and just cry. The girls didn’t hold back at work, but I did. I had that job for about 9 years. I had to maintain composure, and you can’t help anything, when you aren’t in control. So. I bottled up my sadness, and frustration. Until I left. But there were times when I had to just hold one of the girls, while they cried. I was the only male emergency technician, most of my time there. We had male medical students, occasionally, but usually, just me. If a car pulled up with a dying dog, that weighed over 60 lbs, I had to run out and carry it in. If the big dogs, didn’t want medical treatment (understandably,) I restrained them. I had to deal with the most dangerous animals. I was mauled multiple times. I have a tattoo sleeve, on my left arm, to cover the scars, from a dog that was hit by a car (HBC.) It let me carry it to radiology, but when I picked him up, after x-rays, it latched onto my arm, and bit me all over my forearm. I didn’t want to hurt it more than it already was, so I absorbed the attack, without defense. The damage to my arm, was incredible. When dogs bite, they pull too.
Disease Control wanted to euthanize the dog, because it wasn’t vaccinated. I refused their request. It didn’t have rabies. It was just badly hurt. We kept it, in quarantine, and I rolled the dice.
I really fucked myself up, by working that job. My social life, was non-existent. But… I helped a lot of animals. I worked, pretty much every weekend, and holiday. I from when I was 23, until I was 32…
Then, when I got back into being a LEO, I worked every single Friday, Saturday, and sometimes Sunday, and every holiday. Did that until only a year, or so, ago.

I have no family, of my own. I put that on my professions. My choice. I guess. I helped countless animals, and people. I am proud of that. But I wish I had a wife, and kids…
And my body sustained lots of damage…

That’s life, I guess…

Sorry for the rant…

Worked over ten years on Christmas Holidays and others as it paid time and a half and helped me to pay off debt quicker and still have extra for family gifts. It was a sacrifice for family members to put up with but we made up for it days before the Holidays or after.

After ten years asked To finally have Christmas and Thanksgiving and others day off and received a yes, but the regular staff ( new) didn’t like like to have to work on those days( they always had it off due to my working it for yrs)so they all quit thus I had to work double shifts and the bonus more money too.
It was exasperating working with selfish coworkers who in this case were newly employed and younger party goers who felt entitled.

^Amen…

“If you’re married or have children it’s very likely your schedule is out of sync with them.
Working a holiday gets old fast. Everyone else is out celebrating and your working. Your SO might have a three days weekend off, and the holiday weekend might be the time when you could never take a long weekend.”

^This. This is the hardest part for me right now. I do work some days of the week with weekends included. I don’t get to see my husband and son much.

Well, in my case someone has to do it so we rotate around.

@Jonsblond You have to make sure when you are all together you really didn’t time together. Probably, with a teenager, that’s complicated, because they may not feel the same urgency to have quality time when the quantity time has been significantly reduced.

That whole quality time in my opinion is not “better” then quantity, it’s just what people focus on when they don’t have a lot of time.

Now, that your son is getting older is he off on his own or with friends more anyway? That doesn’t probably address the holiday situation, but the regular weekend frustration maybe.

When I was young and considering careers, I never wanted to be a nurse or a cop because of the situation with hours and working nights, weekends and holidays. I also passed up jobs at hospitals (administration) because a lot of them require nights, weekends and holidays. I always went for jobs that had “office hours” which traditionally are Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 or something like that.

I work in local government and there are people who have night shifts and work holidays but they’re well compensated for it. My boss works a side job at a national dept store chain and when she works on Thanksgiving, she gets compensated well, but it’s still way less than my hourly rate (which is salaried but when it’s broken down to hourly rate, it’s about $40 per hour and she gets 18 when she works Thanksgiving).