Ho. Ho. Ho.

Ho, Ho, Ho.

I worked Christmas Eve and Christmas Day – and it didn’t kill me.

Working in the waste management industry, I’ve learned to deal with the ways our schedules change from one year to the next, and as we pray for a calendar year which we get every holiday off without having to use PTO, I must be considerate that someone is going to have to lie on the grenade and get what may be the easiest twelve hours’ work for the quarter at the price of missing out on what his family is doing. I fully empathize with nurses, medical personnel, maintenance crews, law enforcement officers, security guards, Waffle House and Chinese restaurant employees, the awesome people who toil at gas stations and Walgreens for the last-minute battery runs, and the Wal-Mart associates who finally get their day off from work only to suffer with 364 days of the worst of us in the customer service return lines. PS:  If you’re also working on Christmas Day and I didn’t shout out your line of work, charge it to my mind. On the contrary, NBA players dream of working on this day to debut their new shoes and special holiday jerseys, so they are living one aspect of their dreams and hard work over the years. Still, having millions in the bank does not prevent the personal feelings of having to leave the comforts of home to entertain an arena of around 20,000 paying customers in addition to a nation of fans whom have come to view them as mindless gladiators blessed with an innate ability to dribble, shoot, pass, score, and/or defend an orange basketball 94 feet from one end of the court to the other end.

For the first time ever, I did work Christmas Eve night. Having Boyz II Men and The Temptations croon “Let It Snow” and “Silent Night” repeatedly on Spotify, respectively, did not alleviate the sucky part of being away from the family; matter of fact, it exacerbated the pain that much more. (Lord willing and He says the same, this will be the final Christmas holiday I spend away from home.) Working Christmas Day night is a different animal; I’ve been doing this for the majority of the past eleven years that I have been back in the South. In this case it is overtime that pays for next month’s bills and even becomes an added part of the rainy-day fund those financial advisors tell us all about in every other email or news cycle.

One may wonder how I’ve gotten screwed with working these types of irregular jobs over the years. Easy:  I greatly appreciate autonomy, especially when it pays the bills well enough. There is a certain peace of mind that comes with being able to control my own destiny with some constraints, and the current job’s schedule is wonderful WHEN it works. Without the night shift, I probably wouldn’t have had the moxie to get into the barbecue life as intensely as I have the past few years nor the ability to create relevant content for A Dollar and A Dream for the past six years and counting. If you think about it, the only nonteaching day role I’ve had ever was a scheduler position at the now-closed school bus plant back home – and even then, that was fifteen years ago when I had no grey hairs and a compact car that continuously broke down.

Ho. Ho. Ho.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

I made it through both nights, and it didn’t kill me.

Tell someone who did work either of the two days thank you for his/her service to the larger community and put some respect on their names as they (like me) drew the short straw to sit on the timeclock.