Saturday 12 December 2020

24 December: National Holiday?

 Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order that the 24th is a day off for fed workers.  

Having been in the military and GS world in my life....generally, the 24th is this oddball day.  More or less....nothing is happening.  

In 1978, at my first base....we kinda sat around the shop...drank coffee....eating cookies, and then around 11 AM, the boss said to go to chow, and don't return.

This process mostly repeated at every single base.  

At some point in the late 1980s, a new 'deal' came....half the shop would have the week prior to Christmas 'off' (meaning you couldn't travel beyond the local area but you could shop or just sit around the house).  The other half of the shop got the week after Christmas.  

As a governmental employee at the Pentagon?  Most folks took the day off (official leave).

I brought this topic up with a retired guy a few years ago....who worked for years around the hardware business.  He noted that the 24th was the most useless day of work in his profession....with absolutely no one showing up to buy anything on the 24th.  

Trump's deal?  It's just for 2020.  

Odds of repeating?  Maybe.  But it begs questions....shouldn't the 31st of December be treated the same way?  

1 comment:

Bigus Macus said...

Like yourself I've been in the military and GS world in my whole life. I'm still working and the way my Navy commands works is the Military will get a 96 hour pass. The day before most Federal Holiday civilians would get an hour off, and of course there was a liberal leave policy in place so the office would be pretty much empty on those days.