The "I'm working Christmas" thread

[Welly]

My work colleague has a sister who is on call for her job this Xmas and Boxing Day - she expects to be called out about 6 times on each day.

 

Her job? Funeral Director in a South Coast town.

[Steadfast]

I didn't realise funeral directors worked all hours, never given it much thought but I'd assumed out of hours it was dealt with by police/ ambulance/ coroners and then each case handed over during working hours.

On a lighter note, having a Santa hat under my hard hat whilst dealing with trains did cause a few double takes and smiles, so it's not all doom and gloom working over Christmas

 

Jo

[phil-b259]

Nights for me this week - and between 01:00 Christmas day to 05:00 boxing day I and my fellow faulting crews from Three Bridges, Brighton and Barnham were tasked with providing S&T cover for the renewal of 2 long set of points over Christmas.

 

Sized nuts / bolts a tight time frame (plus the fact that we are NOT the 'Capex Works delivery' team who do this sort of thing on a routine basis) meant a very busy 48 hours for all involved and we only just got it finished in time for handback on boxing day - not that there is much to see visually for our efforts.

 

Incidentally these points had been scheduled to be replaced back in the Autumn but the job got cancelled for unknown reasons , but in early December the TME suddenly says that the ultrasonic defects are now so bad that they must either be plain lined or renewed over Christmas. Our route directer says 'NO more plain lining - they WILL be done' so its a made scrabble round to find enough S&T from the rostered faulting teams to cover the works - the Works delivery staff having already been given Christmas off.

Edited December 27, 2018 by phil-b259

[Titan]

[pH]

The first year I worked in the Post Office as a temporary Christmas worker (1965) we did a house delivery on Christmas Day. That was the last year it happened.

[Titan]

So far I have only worked one Christmas Day in my railway career, and seeing as it no longer is deemed necessary to have a Design Engineer on site (or even on the end of a phone) to provide technical support during construction, I don't suppose I ever will again.

[Rugd1022]

Just done three twelve hour stints on Christmas eve, Christmas day and boxing as standby / on site driver in the big possession down at Milton keynes, along with a few other Rugby, Bedford and Crewe based drivers, plus one of the lads from Reading too. The usual mixture of radio silence, utter chaos, feet up in the window, drinking tea, watching old car stuff on youtube on the ipad, more tea drinking, jumping from one train to another and back again etc. I can't really complain since I've had the last few Christmases off and I can relax today and tomorrow, then I'm back on the DIRFT shunt job on Saturday then another four days off.

[Nick C]

In my MAFF days, there was one person who would come back from the festive break, grab the newly delivered holiday diary and make a loud point of booking the next Christmas off before anyone else could bag those days.

 

Surely the solution to that is to make the new diary available from Christmas day onwards - that way the people who are working then get the first chance to bag it for the following year?

[Oldddudders]

Access to leave roster input tended to be in seniority order in my junior days, but I still benefitted from the less-popular periods being cheaper, too. But Christmas leave needs managing for the benefit of all.

[The Stationmaster]

Over many years I never came across any real problems with leave or Bank Holiday rosters but in many cases we we worked on a basis of rostered leave for a lot of people plus dividing the leave into groups so they got a 'good' date one year and 'not so good' date the following year.  There was aways the odd individual who tried to work it but they were always jumped upon from a great height by both management and their mates so they rarely tried it more than once.  Usually the worst problem was being able to grant and cover the lieu days for those who had worked Bank Holidays.

 

Oddly one of the biggest arguments was over Sunday turns and at one place we had a supervisor who liked to come in to work a Sunday during the middle of a fortnight's annual leave - that I solved by putting in some new local agreements and the only person who didn't like them was him so the majority carried it.