We are right smack dab in
the middle of the Labor Day holiday Friday and weekend, and my thoughts on the holiday are
always directed and shaped by my experiences revolving around my past experiences related to this holiday.
For 24 Labor Days from 1996 to 2019, my Labor Day was almost always a work day, because my company had its biggest book of the year to get out, and well, normally the company didn’t know what a deadline meant during the other 11 monthly issues of the year, but when it came to this book—
We just had to get it out as close to deadline as possible, and so I worked just about every Labor Day during that span.
I had things to do just like everyone else did on Labor Day, so in a lot of those years, I would come into work at about 4 a.m. in the morning—or even earlier—get out what I could, and leave after a day’s work, rarely seeing my fellow workers when they came in later in the day.
It was completely ridiculous, didn’t have to be that way, but that is the way that my company wanted it.
I even remember one year, the powers that be literally checked to see if myself and two others were in that day, and did it from the comfort of their homes.
They literally thought that we were not going to do what we said we were going to do—be into work that day—and when we embarrassed them by actually being there, they were flummoxed.
Now, nearly three years removed from that horror—the last book we got out was literally the final issue we released before the company folded—there is another personal wrinkle to Labor Day that I have to bear, and it goes far beyond whether I was in to work or not during those past years.
My father passed away two years ago on Labor Day—the holiday was on September 7 in 2020—so while this year’s holiday on September 5 is not right on that date, the holiday still reminds me that my father is physically gone, but certainly not forgotten.
And his passing on Labor Day that year gave us a message that he always believed in, that after your family, work comes first. He worked the grimy and deteriorating streets of New York City as a licensed medallion cab driver for more than 50 years, so if anyone knew what true work was, it was he, a guy who worked until he was in his 80s and had almost lost all his hearing.
My father knew exactly what Labor Day meant, and now the holiday reminds me that another year has passed that he is not physically with us.
Anyway, Labor Day marches on.
Here is what I said in edited form in Rand #797, dated September 3, 2012, and it pretty much applies today as it did 10 years ago:
"Today is Labor Day. I continue to labor on Labor Day, in a vastly different way.
For 24 Labor Days from 1996 to 2019, my Labor Day was almost always a work day, because my company had its biggest book of the year to get out, and well, normally the company didn’t know what a deadline meant during the other 11 monthly issues of the year, but when it came to this book—
We just had to get it out as close to deadline as possible, and so I worked just about every Labor Day during that span.
I had things to do just like everyone else did on Labor Day, so in a lot of those years, I would come into work at about 4 a.m. in the morning—or even earlier—get out what I could, and leave after a day’s work, rarely seeing my fellow workers when they came in later in the day.
It was completely ridiculous, didn’t have to be that way, but that is the way that my company wanted it.
I even remember one year, the powers that be literally checked to see if myself and two others were in that day, and did it from the comfort of their homes.
They literally thought that we were not going to do what we said we were going to do—be into work that day—and when we embarrassed them by actually being there, they were flummoxed.
Now, nearly three years removed from that horror—the last book we got out was literally the final issue we released before the company folded—there is another personal wrinkle to Labor Day that I have to bear, and it goes far beyond whether I was in to work or not during those past years.
My father passed away two years ago on Labor Day—the holiday was on September 7 in 2020—so while this year’s holiday on September 5 is not right on that date, the holiday still reminds me that my father is physically gone, but certainly not forgotten.
And his passing on Labor Day that year gave us a message that he always believed in, that after your family, work comes first. He worked the grimy and deteriorating streets of New York City as a licensed medallion cab driver for more than 50 years, so if anyone knew what true work was, it was he, a guy who worked until he was in his 80s and had almost lost all his hearing.
My father knew exactly what Labor Day meant, and now the holiday reminds me that another year has passed that he is not physically with us.
Anyway, Labor Day marches on.
Here is what I said in edited form in Rand #797, dated September 3, 2012, and it pretty much applies today as it did 10 years ago:
"Today is Labor Day. I continue to labor on Labor Day, in a vastly different way.
Most of you who are reading this have the day off from work. You can frolic with your family, have a barbecue, and enjoy yourself on the unofficial last day of summer.
I can't. I have to work today.
Yes, I labor on Labor Day, and I am not too happy about it, to tell you the truth.
Sure, we get the day back to us as a "makeup" day later when we need it, but laboring on Labor Day when everyone else is off is a pain the neck, adding to the pinched nerve in my neck that I already have.
I have read the "Dennis the Menace" comic strip seemingly since I could read, and today's panel pretty much summarizes how I get into my own mind that working on Labor Day isn't that bad.
Dennis tells Joey and Margaret the following:
"What's so good about Labor Day? We don't get presents and there's nothing' special to eat."
That is about the only way I can get through this day.
So while you are swimming, barbecuing, watching a baseball game, or taking it easy, think of me and my plight.
No, I don't think you will, but evidently, the world doesn't stop on Labor Day."
How true, how true.
So we celebrate the working population on the holiday, and their efforts to make our country stronger.
I certainly get that, but for me, it is bit of a struggle to get into the holiday.
It is certainly more about my father not being here than on my past work record, but the holiday has kind of lost its meaning to me, personally, during the past quarter century or so.
Have a great holiday weekend, and I think to try to get into the holiday spirit, I will speak to you again on Monday, right on Labor Day.
Again, I am so used to working on the holiday that it won’t faze me a bit to “work” on the holiday this year … so why not?
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