This teens’ parents have an essential decision to make: march down to the job and give the manager a piece of their mind, or let their kid have a very adult Christmas.

Nobody wants to spend the most important holiday of the year working. There are some industries, like healthcare and sanitation, where being scheduled to work on Christmas Day is an inevitability, especially when you’re young and at the beginning of your career. Old-timers see young, inexperienced employees as needing to pay their dues, and part of that is working long, undesirable hours. These old guys didn’t get the concept of «paying your dues» out of nowhere. They had to pay their dues, too! Not to mention, nurses early in their careers are not working on Christmas because their bosses are mean and don’t want them to spend time with their families. They’re working on Christmas because they’re doing life-saving work that needs to be done to keep patients alive. Nobody would choose to work the graveyard shift if they got their first pick, but the graveyard shift has to be worked by somebody, so the youngsters take those shifts until they aren’t youngsters anymore. 

If you have a cushy email job, the concept of having to work on Christmas is absolutely ludicrous. Including Christmas Eve and Christmas as guaranteed days off is the most basic benefit of working a typical 9-5. If you’ve never worked a job where you’re required to go in on major holidays, it’s easy to have no tolerance for this kind of expectation. After all, a job that demands that you give up Christmas must not be one you’re going to have the rest of your life. 

Parents of teenage workers face an interesting dilemma during the holiday season. They often find that their high schooler’s entire winter break is being swallowed up by shifts at a sandwich shop, leaving little room for family activities. When faced with such a quagmire, they have two options. They can either encourage their teen to quit the job because it’s asking too much and there’s a 99% chance it won’t be their career, or they can tell them to grin and bear it because being an adult is all about working when you don’t want to.