Cracker: Hot Cross Words
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If I have to work, but can't buy a box of beers afterwards, why should people get to watch TV? If you really want to watch TV, surely you could tape some the day before, like I'm supposed to do with the wine.
But only if it runs off batteries =)
[he says, noting you did use the word "non-essential", but also remembering the planned power cut that hit Tokoroa every Boxing Day morning for a number of years]
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Screw the impact on domestic violence, crime stats, road deaths and general mayhem that alcohol causes, a member of the grossly self-entitled chattering classes is incapable of planning ahead to stock up on Easter Sunday!
We must drop everything and change the laws to end this outrage now!
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Screw the impact on domestic violence, crime stats, road deaths and general mayhem that alcohol causes, a member of the grossly self-entitled chattering classes is incapable of planning ahead to stock up on Easter Sunday!
If they're that much of a concern to parliament, you think they'd do something about alcohol on the other 362 days of the year.
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Even though they probably can't sell advertising
My wife rather dryly noted that the number of scheduled programmes appeared to have doubled.
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The surcharges really bug me.
And they bug for the reason that: if you're smart enough to calulate the percentage you need to add to every purchase on a given day in order to overcome the expenses of paying staff time-and-a-half and a day in lieu, then, you should be able to calculate the much much smaller percentage you need to add to your prices every day of the year so you don't have to raise it on one.
It especially irks me because for some reason the answer to the incredibly complicated estitmatation equation for calculating a surcharge always seem to come to 20%
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Screw the impact on domestic violence, crime stats, road deaths and general mayhem that alcohol causes, a member of the grossly self-entitled chattering classes is incapable of planning ahead to stock up on Easter Sunday!
I think I addressed the response about stocking up in advance. If I didn't, let me clarify, simplify: Why the fuck should I? Yup, that's my point.
Planning in advance is good for tsunamis, earthquakes and boyscouts. It's planning ahead because someone else's imaginary friend apparently died that day (excepting the fact that Easter moves depending on the moon).
I should note for the record, that my drinking (because yes I did still manage to drink, I just tucked into the good stuff I had saved something better than my friends) resulted in no perceptible rise in crime stats. And as @Kyle notes, if that's the argument, then that's one we should be having every day, not just on Jesus's death-day.
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...or, substitute the world "acohol" with "meat", and "bottle store" with "butcher/supermarket".
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In my old telly job, there was the possibility of working any public holiday. Before I started the job, the notion of doing this seemed utterly outrageous, but after four years, it was just another day at work, only quieter and with no annoying phone calls.
I was quite happy to work on, say, New Year's Day, because it meant I'd get paid time-and-a-half, and get another day off whenever I felt like it.
In fact, in a much it's nicer having a long weekend of my choice when the shops are open, rather than dealing with the closed-open-closed-open-ish of Easter Weekend.
But on the other hand, I know people with kids who had to work public holidays and they find it a struggle and an annoyance.
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I refuse to go anywhere with a surcharge. What bugs me is hospitality is one of the lowest paying jobs, yet owners still complain about having to pay their staff more on a few days per year. Do you see department stores, supermarkets, even smaller shops charging more? No they usually have sales. In Australia most people get paid extra for working weekends, you don't see them charging a surcharge
As for the shops not opening, surely we can go a few days without having people flocking to shops. Its great to see people out walking the waterfront with family, Te Papa etc full. Sure its a mild inconvenience but remember when shops couldn't open on Sunday???
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I think I addressed the response about stocking up in advance. If I didn't, let me clarify, simplify: Why the fuck should I? Yup, that's my point.
Sunday trading (in alcohol) only started in December 1999. Must've been hell for some before then.
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Sunday trading (in alcohol) only started in December 1999. Must've been hell for some before then.
Giving the sight of supermarkets on the Thursday and Saturday, you'd think that people were stocking up in advance of some sort of natural disaster.
Or perhaps people were stocking up on the last remaining packets of CC's.
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And they bug for the reason that: if you're smart enough to calulate the percentage you need to add to every purchase on a given day in order to overcome the expenses of paying staff time-and-a-half and a day in lieu, then, you should be able to calculate the much much smaller percentage you need to add to your prices every day of the year so you don't have to raise it on one.
Well some restaurants etc do that.
But it doesn't seem unreasonable to me, that if you want to eat out on a stat holiday, which means that people have to be there to feed you, that you should pay the extra amount of money for the privilege of doing it on that day which the country has said is in some way special.
Whether or not the day actually is special is another debate.
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I get royally pissed off with not being able to buy booze on the Friday and Sunday. It's a long weekend, what else is there to do?! ;)
I did buy ahead this year after being caught out last year somewhat.
But then was caught in a morning crush at the supermarket on the Saturday.
Seriously, what is the fucking point of a long weekend if it's pandamonium on the Thursday and Saturday at the shops?
If people don't want to drink or work on the Friday and Sunday then DON'T DRINK ON THE FRIDAY AND THE SUNDAY AND LEAVE THE REST OF US ALONE!!!!
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No time and a half or days in lieu or anything? You need to renegotiate, young man... I just worked Easter Weekend for another media company, four days and got paid for six. Nice...
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@Yamis: My point(s) exactly. We need to get pissed somewhere together next religious holiday...
@Richard: I like to think I did what was suggested by Haydn suggested afterwards - I just charge more *all of the time* so that I don't have to fart around with special charges.
@Kyle: I think the point is that the 15/20% is extorionate (or at least, less dramatically, higher than it should be) given that labour is only one factor in the total cost equation. The bacon, lettuce and tomatoes purchased the day before didn't cost them 20% extra, for instance...
How about if we just make alcohol and BBQ supplies (it is, after all, the last Friday before daylight savings ends) an 'essential item' under the Act?
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@Kyle: I think the point is that the 15/20% is extorionate (or at least, less dramatically, higher than it should be) given that labour is only one factor in the total cost equation. The bacon, lettuce and tomatoes purchased the day before didn't cost them 20% extra, for instance..
Well maybe. It really depends on what the proportion of the business' costs are labour (assuming we're using the time and a half, not the paid day off):
If you would normally spend $100, but the surcharge puts that up to $115, and the labour are being paid time and a half, then the original labour cost of the $100 bill would work out at $30.
20% surcharge it's $40 originally out of the $100.
30 - 40% of a restaurant's costs on labour doesn't seem unrealistic to me.
Yes of course they could absorb it, which would be good marketing, but I don't see why people should grumble about paying it.
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If people don't want to drink or work on the Friday and Sunday then DON'T DRINK ON THE FRIDAY AND THE SUNDAY AND LEAVE THE REST OF US ALONE!!!!
Hint: not working isn't as easy as not drinking.
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I made a foray into Rotorua on Saturday afternoon to get supplies. Blimey, it was hell, major traffic and grumpy people all over. I think there were plenty of people in the Pak'n'Save carpark who would have happily crucified Jesus all over again.
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How about if we just make alcohol and BBQ supplies (it is, after all, the last Friday before daylight savings ends) an 'essential item' under the Act?
Surely thats redundant... alcohol IS a BBQ supply, no?
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I have never noticed any booze selling holiday in the last 10 years. I buy it all online at half the retail prices and it arrives in crates so I've always got a stock. That's "planning ahead".
Curiously, having copious amounts of booze on the property at all times has meant that I've drunk a whole lot less. I don't really know why.
Speculation: if you buy booze for an occasion, then you tend to drink it on that occasion. But if you have booze for all occasions, then you only drink it as the occasion dictates. There's never any sense that booze will be wasted at my place - it just goes into storage. It's not sitting in the fridge demanding that the space be relinquished.
So while I tend to agree with Damien that we should be able to buy all things all the time, I also don't particularly care. Alcohol pretty much lasts forever, so it just doesn't make sense to me not have redundant stocks, sourced at the lowest prices, if there's any chance that supply could be disrupted by stupid things like religious holidays.
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I've worked all sorts of holidays before, particularly when I was in hospitality. As a student, if you took a job over summer, it was implicit that you would be working at least either or both Christmas Day or New Year's Eve (the latter, painfully, not a holiday with time-and-a-half perks). I don't remember it being particularly optional, but if you take a job in December, what do you expect?
But it's not just the students; for Easter, it's the people who don't have the extra summer staff to cover for them and would be made to work, losing their one long weekend a year. If anything, I'd vote for Easter Saturday being made a public holiday too, so they could be more certain of being able to take the whole weekend off.
There are an awful lot of people in hospitality/retail who will be there their entire lives, not just over the summer or when they're young. Most of them won't become managers with better bargaining power for holidays. Most of them will have kids, and thus unable to take their annual leave just whenever. They're the people you need to worry about. And they damn well deserve a couple of guaranteed days off.
(IMNSHO, Easter Saturday is *far* worse than New Year's in retail because it has all the nutty panic of Boxing Day without the time-and-a-half, whereas New Year's is much quieter, if still sucky.)
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Can I just point out that in my country very few people work on Sunday - any Sunday! - and yet somehow we cope?
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bah,
you should just be happy that it's only three or four days a year when not everything is open all the time.I once ran out of cigarettes on a Saturday afternoon in Berlin. An excellent way to learn about Ladenschlußgesetz
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planned power cut that hit Tokoroa every Boxing Day morning for a number of years
Bastards. How could people cook meth without electricity?
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When you live in a remote area, you make concerted efforts not
to run out of things you need...you might go to the appropriate shops only once a month (or a year, for my cigars), but you stock up. And you bank on the supply-chain getting interrupted by floods or slips or whatever.I am irreligious but I was brought up to understand that public holidays are for the benefit of workers, and I am very reluctant to see that side of things whittled further away. Simplistic idea - but I think we should just change the names of our public holidays: Queen's Birthday weekend? Irrelevant. Matariki = good idea (etc..)
That said, several whanau expect to work public holidays: they're medical workers, and they accept that they'll be needed on the days they are rostered on. I just wish they'd be paid appropriately-
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