is unfair should be decided on a case by case basis. The mere fact of a holiday shift is not, to me, inherently unfair. I don't have to work on Thanksgiving (good old office 8-5 job), but I think that the folks from the head offices of Target and Walmart should be in the stores on Thanksgiving, working. If you are going to tell your employees that they have to work on what has traditionally been a family holiday, management should darn well be there too, not sitting at home digesting turkey while watching football. Essential industries like hospitals, police etc. *need* to be open. To some extent, so do places like drugstores and grocery stores. And restaurants - serving food is kinda what they do, so while it sucks to work that day, I would hope that most patrons recognize that and tip, heavily. But fuckitall, nobody needs to buy a big-screen TV at 90% off at midnight on Thanksgiving day. Having only worked four months out of the past year, any time they want to pay me cash dollars to sit here in this chair and wait for something to break, I'm good. Somebody's got to do it, might'swell be me. Then again, I have no friends or family with which to share Thanksgiving or Christmas, so I might be biased. If I work on Thanksgiving, I get paid time and a half for the entire shift, in addition to the eight hours worth of holiday pay I