gobble this!

Time for another update. I've been without Internet access for two days (may my 2wire modem rest in pieces) but hopefully next week they'll send me a new one. I don't know how many times I can carry my laptop to places but oh well. Wah wah. Now I'm trying to figure out what I did before the web came. Oh yeah, television.

I thought I'd write about the current controversy at my workplace. (note: I'm not going to say my employer since most of you do know where I work and in case some jackass googles this and reports me) This year our CEO announced a month ago that we will be open on Thanksgiving and possibly Christmas. It's made 98% of everyone at my work frustrated and including yours truly, very mad. I try to look at it both ways. Since I've worked there in '98, the only two days we were closed was Thanksgiving and Christmas. I know times are meant to change, but still. I know we are in a recession, and I can't really comment on how bankrupt or money-hungry my employer is, but this is just asking too much for everyone who works for the company. This just seems like an act of desperation and just a simple way of making a dollar just by asking the employees on all rings of the ladder to sacrifice their traditions. I know that a lot of places are still open on turkey day, such as Denny's and a lot of non-chain family restaurants around me that have Thanksgiving dinner specials. I even have a friend that works at the Cracker Barrel in Troy and he says that every year they are packed on Thanksgiving. So I'm speculating, because of these growing trends, now WE have to jump on the bandwagon. In the words of Rush Limbaugh, I hope this experiment fails. Since the restaurant I work at has a menu that doesn't replace a turkey or special type of dinner, I don't really see business happening.

There has been a lot of shakeups at the top of the ladder at my employers'. A lot of people despise our CEO (and the one before him) because of their nationality. It is believed they are both from the Middle East. And of course, I hear ethnic slurs about them all the time, but I don't care where they're from as long as they know the tools of how to keep the company balanced. As I've written before, there have been a lot of uncomfortable changes and most of them were based on their decisions. So needless to say, the whole Thanksgiving thing is the latest. A lot of people are even questioning that if they were indeed from outside the US, they would not take Thanksgiving seriously. Some people see turkey day as a religious holiday, while I see it as a spiritual and patriotic holiday. Everyone knows that Thanksgiving is not about eating, but giving thanks to what you have and counting your blessings.

I know that not everyone has the same Thanksgiving traditions, and I know that not everyone has a loving family or group to go to, but its a day besides Christmas that we should all devote to other people, especially family. In the last three years, everyone in my family has been going to my sisters place in Metropolis (about 3 hours away from me) and spending the whole day there. This year will probably either be a solo meal with myself or maybe going to my grandma's. It's still in question. Everyone who works with me is being forced to work that day. I can see why, only because the management is trying to be fair. Going back to what I said about being busy at Cracker Barrel, its not just lonely people or couples that come in on Thanksgiving. Its multigenerational families that are too lazy to cook at home. Instead of devoting hours (or days) in preparing a special meal, they take the easy route of going out to a restaurant. So in other words, I'm also kind of blaming society for not being traditional anymore. But that's just me.

Thanks for letting me rant on this one.