Bank holidays: shit, or REALLY shit?

Bank holidays – bit shit really, aren’t they? Having a day off is great, clearly, but they’ve never really had much of an allure to me, myself, personally, to me, in my opinion, personalopinionally.

When I was a student they were irrelevant. I mean, if I didn’t want to go to school then I just didn’t go – the day didn’t matter, so an official day off meant little more than there were more wankers out at the pub. More wankers in Preston: A GREAT THING.

Then I moved into the fast-paced, fine and utterly lovely world of unemployment, where no days matter apart from Sundays – because they’re when the post doesn’t come so you have a mental marker point for what day it actually is – and one day every two weeks, when you had to remember to go out of the house and lie about searching for jobs. Bank holidays did little more than remind you banks existed and were the places that held the kosh over you because of your massive debts. Sigh.

Working in a shop? Well that just meant bank holidays were horrible. They are some of the busiest days of the year, seeing as shops only open at working hours on normal days, and working hours are the hours when people are at work, meaning people who work can’t get to the shop in working hours. As they’re at work. Then when they finish work the shop is closed and… sigh. Anyway, as these days are so busy at shops they were the days when we had to work. You couldn’t get a day off unless you’d booked it approximately eight years in advance, and they were always massive ballache days where every dickhead under the sun would come in and make unreasonable demands, like you having to ‘deal’ with them or something.

Then – after more unemployment and some freelance (N.B: exactly the same as unemployment) came this job. This job is based on monthly – and weekly – deadlines. I am contractually obliged to complete a certain amount of work per week, regardless of the week. You can see where this is going. Obviously normal days off you aren’t expected to work and when you’re out and about on press trips the workflow is limited accordingly. But bank holidays? Nope – you still have to do a full week’s work. Which means I’m now sat here on my extra day off doing work that I would have been doing at work.

Screw you, bank holidays. All you do is slow the world down for a day and get in the way. Banks shouldn’t fucking take holidays anyway. Get on with looking after my money*.

*Debt.