Holidays

The country celebrates holidays. Joyous occasions where families get together, and depending on the time of year or weather, have cookouts or BBQs, the beach, movies, bowling, or dinner out at a place like my establishment.

I can remember the first time I worked Thanksgiving. Broward County Youth Fair. At 1am, We went to Rascal House in North Miami Beach and had turkey legs for dinner.
The first Christmas and New Years working was spent in Key West with a small carnival at an east end strip mall. An ideal setting and we really only opened long enough each day to hang out on Duval St each night or the beach first thing in the morning, bleary eyed and most often hung over.

My company chooses not to be open on Christmas, currently. I remember, all too well,the last one I worked. Nightmarish still 20 years later. I would most likely resign if they decided to chase the profit line on that day. Not because my christian beliefs forbid me to work on, what is considered by many, to be a true holiday (this is arguable at best) but it is a day that almost everyone else gets to spend with their families and I get to partake in it as well.

I have  good friends, not in the restaurant business, that have the same self-imposed lifestyle that I do. We miss our families while we are miles apart. We hate the separation from our loved ones. And what we MISS the most is: the standing in lines at the local restaurant, fighting for the space at the park, the nasty words exchanged at the boat docks when we try to launch, splashing by the obnoxious fool at the pool...because our holidays begin when we get home during the week without the competition and annoyance of the rest of the world...because they are all at work.