Today was Christmas Day. Did you leave the house? Which establishments were open today? Which were closed?

LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 93 points –
90

Didn't leave the house.

I worked retail/food service for years. Going to places on Christmas tells employers that they need to be open those days, and that their employees don't need the day off.

Frankly i find it inconsiderate to the social contract to go out on holidays, and sometimes around them.

Its frankly why i always found Black Friday and the "scope creep" of this festival of consumerism partially so repulsive. I mean its repulsive on its own just in the way people act, but doubly so in that it runs right through a national holiday.

I lost years of Thanksgivings with family due to the scope creep of black Friday. Some years family could work around it, like we would have dinner at noon so I could be at work by 6 - but even then you feel terrible for forcing that.

I don't have a problem on religious holidays with going out to a place run by people who don't celebrate it. I was craving Arab food Christmas Eve which was fine because it's just another day for them. I would never visit during their holidays as they would never go to a Christian store during ours.

To be fair, not everyone celebrates Christmas. As long as employees are getting a certain number of holidays in a year for whatever tradition they follow, I think it's fine to be open on Christmas. But not to force anyone to work on Christmas, only if the business can sustain itself on non-Christmas-celebrating staff

that's fair, but my experience was unfortunately the latter. Retail was very much "we need you to work today", and any response other than "okay" was pretty much a reprimand. "Show up or don't show up again" was said to me when I wanted to have Thanksgiving with family. Now I avoid anything non-essential on holidays.

It's kind of a paradox really because people can't go to the establishments if they're not open. So how would the owners know whether or not people want to go there if they simply stay closed?

Other way around. Places default to open, then if people don't come, they stay closed next year as acost saving measure.

That’s how it works already, Chinese culture doesn’t care about Christmas, they make great money being open for their culture and others that don’t celebrate Christmas and want a normal day.

I love having Chinese coworkers because they will work extra shifts during Thanksgiving and Christmas. But it's my responsibility to work extra shifts for Chinese new year.

I wonder which establishments have experienced this.

When I was working for a video rental place on Thanksgiving, people would always say "I can't believe you have to work today!" While renting movies. I wanted to yell at them "if you didn't come in, I wouldn't have to!"

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I would argue that then they should just stay closed, for their employee's sake. Even non-christian, Christmas is a national holiday, and I don't know many things that need to be open. (Hospitals and emergency unfortunately of course excluded)

This is the way. For people who really want to have other days off for their cultural holiday, they can swap shifts with other employees who will be happy to work those days.

So fuck the other places that would need to stay open during their holidays than?

Unnecessarily hostile response dude. I even gave an exception already, this is all lighthearted.

Legit question, no? You are suggesting places should be closed because it’s a national holiday, so when it’s their cultural holiday they have to be open so you can go shop since it’s not a national holiday?

It’s hypocritical. Thats a hostile reponse.

They should be allowed to choose to be open because it’s a free market.

Your exceptions are strange, they should be allowed to be closed too, if that’s truly how you feel that it should be. It’s a national holiday after all.

Nope, obviously I do not have a binary yes/no opinion, there is obviously nuance, but you're being very hostile in your responses and I'm not interested in having an all-out argument here.

No, but it's more subtle than 'free market.' There should be some mandatory national holidays.

This gives employees the opportunity to exchange shifts and have time off during their non-Christmas cultural holidays.

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For me it's like any other day. I wouldn't mind working for the double holiday pay.

My step son is a chef. I think it’s insane he was only paid double, given what they’re charging for a meal.

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Only left the house to help my neighbor look for her escaped cat. It turned out to be in their basement. The cat gets it.

After many years of shitty Christmases .... I refuse to leave the house on Christmas Day or any time from Christmas to New Years.

Y'all crazy and insane out there and I don't want to meet, talk or see any of you in person during this time of year.

I've prepared my home base and I can live here with enough food for a month and enough entertainment for two lifetimes.

Ooh I like your style. I will hunt you down and I will inflict my friendship upon you.

Sadly I have to venture forth tomorrow or the day after for sustenance. Other than that I'm with you, people are nuts this time of year and are best avoided.

What entertainment are you enjoying? I started watching "For All Mankind" this week. So I'd like to get all caught up on that.

people are nuts this time of year and are best avoided

I think it's true because I'm in a really wealthy suburban area right now and there've been so many police sirens at night lately. Like WTF is going on? drunk drivers, car accidents, domestic violence, drug overdoses?

I think people do go nuts the week between Christmas and New Year's because all the white collar people are off work a whole week and it's party time for them

Went to a del taco today for breakfast. Tipped the guy $20 for working today. Went to a bar this evening for a beer and also tipped the bartender $20.

haven't left the house all day 💅

Saaaame. I just want someone to poke their periscope out there and tell me what's going on please.

Yeah I went out, pretty much everything was open except for the street vendor I normally get my oranges from. I guess Christmas just isn't as big a deal in China as it was back home - still saw Christmas decorations at a handful of stores and restaurants - my tea said on the cup "Merry Christmas" and had an explanation of what Christmas was on the back lol

Seriously, how many of us lemmies live somewhere else? I'm in Rabat atm, there's zero assassinated pine trees covered in brightly coloured plastic shit in sight. And everything is Business As Usual here.

live somewhere else?

somewhere else in regards to where?

I checked all the replies before replying here, and but for this "here in China" one, nobody seems to live / be / exist outside the catholic sphere ?

I'm just curious where you think we all live.

Well, online English speaking communities are gonna have a bias towards native English speakers. Obviously some will browse these communities because they're the largest, but while machine translation makes communication much easier, it's still more difficult than with speakers of your own language. And most native English speakers who aren't also native speakers of a language mutually intelligible with Hindi live in north America. (I'm excluding South Asia because a sizable fraction of the online South Asian communities communicate in the pre-colonization languages, mostly Hindi). Most such people have a shared cultural heritage that is largely European with a British slant.

When you think about it it's not an unreasonable question, when you interpret it to be asking how many of us are outside of the cultural influence of the anglosphere

Oh so cool! Are you native Morocco, or just visiting? I hear people there are so nice

It's complicated, but it looks like this season's gonna be 60% Morocco 30% France. I'm Belgian. I have too many toothbrushes.

It is nice over here indeed, very safe and friendly.

Left the house to drive the partner to her parents house for some time with them.

Bars were open. I feel sorry for the people who go to bars Christmas day and feel even sorrier for the staff who have to work Christmas day.

I was a bartender last year. I worked every holiday. It didn't phase me because I had nothing else to do. But if I had a life I would definitely make sure I didn't work holidays one way or another, either demand it of my boss or get an entirely different job that respects humans.

I salute the work you did. Service jobs should come with military-style awards. A Purple Heart for Bravery in the Face of a Drunk Karen, for example.

Instead we get minimum wage. And gratuity from appreciative customers like you. Thank you for your appreciation.

No problem, I've done retail and restaurant work, but I've never bartended. I know some folks who have though, and it's really the trenches and in some ways the worst of the worst since all your customers are smashed. Yeah, y'all deserve much better pay, benefits, and protection from your patrons.

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Three slaps per year, doled out as you see fit.

People would get real fuckin' polite in December and January. Start-of-year, everybody's got a full magazine. End-of-year... use it or lose it.

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Did not leave the house. Did not want to give bosses that forced close to minimum wage employees incentive to continue to do so. I believe minimum wage should at least double on holidays.

wow, were do you live? here in Mexico they pay triple on holidays, so it's not so weird for people wanting to work holidays

Didnt leave the house today. I work retail, so Im glad to not be at work today, since were closed.

But my old man did go pick up some burgers from Jack in the Box, so apparently they were open. I hate people going out shopping on a holiday like this, as a retail worker. It means theres incentive for the companies to open during holidays, regardless of how morally correct it is. Having said that, Im thankful Jack was open, as were having a pretty rough Christmas this year, and most of my family couldnt make it due to sickness and a death. This was our Christmas dinner that my dad and I shared.

My wife and I always wake up at her parents' house on Christmas Day and head to my mom's. This year her parents had to head out early this morning, so we were on our own for breakfast, and thankfully we found a mom and pop taco place open on our way down. While I agree that everyone should have the day off, if a business wants to get that one off business and provide that service, power to them.

I took the dogs for a walk. Gas stations and 24/7 pubs were open.

Christmas day was yesterday for me.

I only left home for church. After that, it was back home to have lunch with family, then hosting Christmas dinner for a bunch of people.

I did not leave the house, but I was very grateful that there was a sushi restaurant open for delivery because my SO ate all the sushi leftover from last night which I had been looking forward to sharing. Gave a big tip, of course.

Husband and I stayed in all day. We watched football and played video games. I made waffles for breakfast and spaghetti for dinner. Neighbor gave us a box of chocolates so we had some of that too.

I stayed at home and cooked a turkey. I know the grocery store was open till 2pm (normally closes at 10pm) because sibling worked today. I know wawa was closed, they had signs.

Stayed home most of the day except to go to my daughter's house for supper, about a 1/4 mile away.

The closest business that would have been open today out here would have been the gas station about 16 miles (25km) away.

That was yesterday in my timezone. Yes, I spent Christmas Day with family a significant drive away.

Almost none; gas stations, some restaurants and dairies. Most were closed.

Thankfully we had rain all day, a nice change back to traditional rainy and humid Christmas Days.

At the risk of sounding stupid, what are dairies?

Where milk is produced and sold, sometimes along with other groceries.

Does going into my garage workshop count? If not, then no. I didn't have anywhere to be and it was really cold out.

Christmas is inside time. It's -12c outside and snowing.

Life is going as normal as if there's no such thing as Christmas. In fact, the schools are open too, some folks are even taking their midterm exams.

Wow, which country are you in?

If it wasn't obvious already from some of my previous comments, I'm from Morocco.

okay. I didn't realize we were supposed to be memorizing everybody's usernames and every detail of demographic information they've ever mentioned.

I'm experiencing déjà vu. The same comment gets posted twice. I don't know if this is a glitch in lemmy.world's servers (or the servers of a different instance) or if it's just a client problem.

It's most likely a glitch on my end. Most everything I submit to Lemmy has been getting rejected with an error message "cannot connect to Lemmy" So I write the comment again and then later both comments appear.

But I just switched from Sync to Voyager so hopefully I will have a smoother experience with no more glitches.

I'm just telling you that I've said that information elsewhere, incase there's someone who looks through my old posts and comments.

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We took the dogs to run around at a park before the festivities. We were definitely the only people there.

I haven't left the house in months.

I sincerely hope that you’re OK.

I’ve barely left the house lately, that’s a habit that very much predates the pandemic, but I’m the odd duck who is good with that.

If you want to chat - about minimizing exposure to society or anything else - @_@m.djw.li

I’ve carefully curated a life where things come to me instead of vice versa, but we are outliers. Some people thrive this way, but certainly not everyone.

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Where I'm at almost everything except truck stops, a handful of fast food joints, even fewer liquor stores are closed.

My work is an outlier as we are in grocery distribution. We do shut down for major holidays, but a day earlier. So rather than getting the 25th off, I get the 24th off. We load the groceries on the trucks Christmas night and the trucks arrive at their destination early on the 26th. And yes, we are paid well.

I left the house, but only to drive over to my parents' place for food and presents.

On my way over I saw a drugstore and a Burger King open, everything else looked pretty closed.

I did! I took out the garbage and recycling, and cleaned out the car!

Xmas was yesterday now for me, but I never went outside the house. I made baklava ice cream and a green chile cheese ball, petted the dog and the cat, wished it wasn't raining so I could take a walk, and my mother bought some sugar that we needed at a pharmacy.

Ran out maybe 500 meters for beer. Otherwise, we stayed in our humble abode and ate. The holiday was the day before with family, so Christmas was the small-but-mostly-traditional Christmas dinner my wife had planned.

Open: stores whose primary business is intoxicating in some way.

Closed: most other stuff.

I overate turkey (cutlets, cause turkey is a pain in the ass when cooking for two), mashed, noodles over mashed, and green beans w/ bacon. Had a couple beers, and a damn good night of sleep.

I’m easy to please, and struggle with sleep, so the whole thing was lovely.

The previous day, we all had breakfast for dinner. I married into a pretty awesome family, but humans are still exhausting so we both wanted to take it easy on the actual day.

Back to work today, but plenty of leftovers and work is just a few steps away thankfully.

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All the pubs where I live, I think both the petrol stations. There’s Co-Op up the road that saw a sign on saying it is open 5 til midnight “including Christmas Day”.

In covid quarantine. Not going out.

It is boxing day here, and we did get a grocery delivery from my family. So someone delivered that. Poor sod.