Who Works on MLK Day?

Me that’s who! Instead of enjoying the NFL games that were on yesterday, I spent most the game thinking about coming in to work today. I watched the game at a local sports bar and at least 5 people said “what, you have to go to work tomorrow?” Even my friend that I was there with kept giving me a hard time saying “we can leave, I know you have to get up and go to work in the morning”. None of that was bad as when I first told my mother I had to work on Martin Luther King Day. She works in Human Resources so benefits and paid holidays are very important to her. Her initial reaction was “WHAT????????” Pretty much the same reaction as when I said my company only gives us 6 paid holidays, except this time she added a “Oh Hell No” for good measure. All of this feedback got me to thinking if I should be going in to work at all. Any way you look at it, my company is sending a message to its employees, specifically its minority employees that they’re not going to recognize a federal holiday honoring a man who has been credited with leading the civil rights movement in America and the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize. And its not like I work at McDonald’s or even with the metro transit system where I would need to be there to help other people get to work. No I work for a large corporation that contracts out to the federal government, meaning we’re working for people who are off today. So how can I show my dissatisfaction with this situation? I can just take the day off but with a 2 year old that goes to daycare I need all the vacation hours I can save. I can tell my company that they should pay me for the day because it is a federal holiday but I’m sure that conversation would end badly and with a 2 year old that goes to daycare I need all of the money I can earn. So I decided on going to work but not actually working, regardless if it’s something that I do everyday anyway. I know being here today is my fault for not taking the necessary steps in my career to ensure that I would be fully in charge of whether or not I had to work today, so I’ll take the “L” this year and celebrate in style next year…….sleeping.