Guess who has a holiday!
That’s right, this guy.
And every other normal professional individual who works 8 hour, 5 day weeks. Because today is Sunday.
Internships teach you a lot about the process of adulting, to be honest. Aside from the work and travel, and managing a place to stay – when you’re away from home, that is, you also end up getting experience with a lot of things adults complain about. As a young person (youth), I’m able to understand why several adults complain a lot about fatigue. It seems legitimate.
But also, the last week has got me thinking about the kind of industries we take for granted, and expect to be on-demand. The services industry, restaurants, hospitals, call helplines – there’s this expectation we have as consumers that they’ll always be open for us. It’s rare that you see hospitals or restaurants shut on a Sunday. In fact, most businesses and establishments end up doing more business on the weekend than the weekdays, because people are relatively more free – they’re able to make time to visit places they dream of.
However, for the adults and sometimes, sadly, children, working these industries, it gets pretty terrible. Imagine having no Sundays off when the rest of your friends are partying. This, however, doesn’t mean that they don’t get holidays. It’s just that it’s super dependent on factors you’re not entirely in control of: like the kind of organization you work for, the kind of staff rotations you do, when everybody else is taking a holiday. I guess it’s a little difficult to envisage great work/life balance when this continuously happens and you’re left working every Sunday when your family and friends are partying.
It could be better than I’m making it sound – I have no experience in these industries, so I can’t accurately capture what it’s like. I’m also quite sure a lot of people make peace with it and consider it a trade-off for the kind of lifestyle they’re getting to live with the earnings, etc.
Irrespective, subjectively, I feel a little sad.
Holidays are best enjoyed when everyone has one, I do believe.
Nonetheless, there isn’t much you can do about it. Unless you declare Sunday to be a mandatory holiday and shut a city down – which capitalism will never allow for.
But.
You can be kind.
All of this blogpost is basically a series of thoughts I had while witnessing a terrible customer-service employee fight, from start to finish. I watched the whole thing, and it seemed far too petty to raise concerns about, but also, the customer was being super unreasonable and demanding a fresh drink because this drink was missing one ice cube. When the ice cube was added, she complained that the addition of this ice cube did not make the perfect drink and demanded a fresh one – while a queue formed behind her. While I’m being judgemental of her requests, maybe it’s fair to ask for these. There’s just no need to be rude with the employee. Ask nicely. People will respond.
And say good morning to people who are working on Sundays. Greet them, make some conversation. The world can do with nicer people – especially those who had to wake up far too early on a Sunday morning.
Tejas Rao 