I hear that the home improvement stores are going crazy. People who didn’t lose their jobs are spending their vacation budget and time on fixing/upgrading/updating their home instead.
I think a more flexible system would be to give people like 6 weeks time off and get rid of official holidays so they can spend it however they want. Like if they wanted to celebrate Christmas in June instead of December, they could do so.
Some holidays like Thanksgiving and XMas should be fixed, or else companies would have maybe 3 people in the office, which is a total waste. And probably New Years as well since you wouldn’t want people coming into work hung over. Day after Super Bowl would also fit in this category.
Day After Super Bowl and Opening Day should definitely both be national holidays in the US. We can get rid of Columbus Day and Presidents Day.
Let’s add election day or move it to the weekend when most people are off.
I honestly don’t think that it’s the white collar 9-5 crowd who have trouble voting. I think it’s the folks who are working 40 hours a week at McDonalds and another 40 hours a week at Wendy’s to make ends meet who are allowed to take the time off work (because by law their employers MUST give them the time off to vote) but who cannot afford to lose an hour or two or three of pay (depending on how long the lines are) who have trouble making it to the polls.
And a national holiday doesn’t help those people. McDonalds and Wendy’s will still be open on a national holiday and they will still be expected to work.
I think that early voting and long voting hours are what helps those people. So they can vote on their day off. Or on a day when they’re only working one of their two jobs.
Despite all the one-sided vilification I think the 2020 election was actually an example of a step in the right direction in terms of expanding the window of when one can vote. Hopefully after the Rs saw that they actually did well with high turnout they’ll be less obsessed with undemocratic policies.
1 Like
I’ve had just 1-2 companies in my career take Columbus Day off - it’s more of a government thing. And my current company doesn’t take Prez Day off - we go almost 5 months after New Year’s before we run into a holiday. In recognition of this the company gives everyone 3 “floating holidays,” which is annoying in itself because when we ask for a day off in ADP we have to specify whether it’s a vacation day or a floating holiday. 
Personally I think we should have election day off in place of Presidents’ Day whether or not it really helps turnout simply on the notion of what we celebrate as Americans.
Namely, in America where we were so keen to rid ourselves of a monarch we have a holiday to celebrate our previous executives and not a day to celebrate when the people exercise their right to vote? Seems rather backwards to me.
You’d also think that the country would simply grant the right to vote to every citizen of age, without requiring them to register. Yes, here we are.
It should also be as simple as possible to vote, not requiring long waits. This is more of a logistical issue, but some people are making this part of their strategy to win elections.
Registering is pretty helpful in getting you the right local/district/state/etc ballot.
If the government knows who you are and where you live (tfh emoticon), it knows what local ballot you should get.
Logistical issues on those who move around or do not have a permanent address, I guess, which we have a lot of.
You might want to reconsider this hope:
It’s probably not relevant to YOU in your high level responsible role as an actuary, but one important distinction between vacation and floating holidays for some people is the question of whether they must request vs inform of their intention to use one.
Most of the time you must INFORM that you will be using a floating holiday, whereas you often times must REQUEST to use vacation. In other words your manager cannot say “no” to a floating holiday provided that you use the proper cover sheet on the TPS report notifying them.
It’s been decades since I had a job where this mattered… where I couldn’t basically take any day off that I would ever dream of actually taking off. (i.e. not January 2 when in a Financial Reporting role to go have a Vegas weekend with my girlfriends)
But those roles do exist… probably at your company. People manning call centers might be subject to rules where only X people may take, say, Martin Luther King day off. That was an issue at one public-facing role I had eons ago. The general rule was no more than 3 people out on a given day. But we had 4 people in the department and who always wanted MLK Day off and it wasn’t a company holiday. But they could use their floating holiday and thus not be subject to the “no more than 3 people out” rule.
also, mail-in voting.
yeah, we don’t need election day off. i got election day off this year, but i had already voted by mail way before that.