While many of us have been busy pulling out our Night Shift Workers Day decorations from the attic, some may not be aware of the holiday. Congress has also designated this Receptionist Day. The question of the day is the following: if you have a receptionist who works nights, should you bring two bouquets of flowers or pick which aspect of his or her employment you want to celebrate?
Congress appears to have run out of days to give to every possible group, so it is doubling up. Does that really serve to make folks feel special — a time share on a holiday?
Just for those new to this holiday, Night Shift parties generally serve coffee — Irish or otherwise.
I love working the night shift.
It is best not to work 3 days in a row (it screws with the body’s hormones).
This is why many medical people work 3 twelve hour nights and call it a work week.
And a Happy Belated Night Shift Workers Day to you all who are likely heading to bed right now.
Vince Treacy,
“Hopper conveyed the psychological angle in silent places that he cast in a hard, melancholy light.” (from your NYTimes link)
Which is exactly what I liked about that Christmas Card … all alone after having spent the night bringing joy to others … a commentary on the Santa myth and greed. I’m deep, baby …….
I only send out christmas cards when a particular scene captures my imagination … needless to say, my friends do not look forward to the years my return address is on the envelope.
Many years ago, I worked as a supervisor on the 2nd shift and 3rd shift in a tape factory. This job was before I went to Law School and it was an amazing experience. The night shift workers are a special breed. I like the idea of a day in their honor. I wonder if any of my old co-workers are still working the night shift?
Just pretend you don’t know them since you never work overtime or come in at night.
We should have a day that celebrates the days where we don’t have to celebrate anything….
Or maybe a Predator Priest Day or a Crooked Economist Day
Nighthawks, a 1942 painting by Edward Hopper, portrays people sitting in a downtown diner late at night. Considered Hopper’s most famous painting, as well as one of the most recognizable in American art, it is currently in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nighthawks
The painting belongs to Chicago, but the diner was in New York City and the painting itself is in Rome right now.
“I JOINED the crowds heading into an Edward Hopper show at the Fondazione Roma the other morning. Organized in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (most of the works come from there), the exhibition has been a hit here. In a country with what often seems like the most refined taste in the world and no taste at all, it owes something to a cheesy full-scale reconstruction of the “Nighthawks” diner in the first gallery. Visitors snap pictures of themselves posing beside fedora-clad mannequins slumped stiffly over the counter. There’s another, better gimmick too, a room with pencils and stacks of white paper, where doodlers copy Hopper’s drawings. Reproductions are projected onto the stacks, so lines can be easily traced, and people labor over their tracings, then tote them around the show like diplomas. (By people, of course, I mean me.)
Local Heroes, Far From Home
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/arts/design/02abroad.html
Hah … that was the same picture on my Christmas cards one year except Santa and his reindeer were sitting at the counter. Sorry … way off topic.
Bring two Bouquets of flowers by all means. Irish coffee is always good before a good rub down.