Yesterday was Labor Day, which means Americans celebrated the contributions of workers by doing what we apparently do best: making a whole lot of workers work.
Every year, I find myself wondering why roughly a quarter of the country doesn’t actually get many of the holidays that everyone else enjoys. And for those who do work on them, a paid holiday can apparently be treated like some sort of mythical creature. People have heard of one, but most have never actually seen it.
Now, before someone starts typing an angry comment, yes, there are legitimate essential workers who need to be on the job. Hospitals don’t exactly function well if everyone decides to close for the afternoon. Police, firefighters, military personnel, certain public transit employees, fuel stations and other truly essential services are obvious examples.
But then we have the home improvement stores.
The grocery stores.
The malls.
The department stores.
The restaurants and bars.
Because apparently civilization will collapse if we can’t purchase a throw pillow, a gallon of milk or a $14 hamburger on a particular Monday.
And here’s where I think we’ve lost the plot.
We constantly say there are things more important than money. Time is one of them.
The problem is that time is the one currency nobody can earn more of. Once you’ve spent it, it’s gone. There is no bank where you can walk in at age 80 and say, “I’d like to withdraw the 37 weekends I didn’t get to enjoy.”
Wouldn’t it be nice if, occasionally, we collectively decided that people deserved a day to spend with their families and friends?
Instead of spending Labor Day wandering around a department store looking for a fake plastic plant that will finally give your living room the personality it has desperately lacked since 2017, why not take a drive?
Visit a little town you’ve never explored. Walk through a park. Go hiking. Sit outside. Grill some burgers you bought before the holiday. Have a conversation that doesn’t involve a register, a customer-service complaint or someone asking if you’d like to open a store credit card.
And here’s the really radical part:
Let the people who work in those stores do the same thing.
I’m not suggesting we shut down the entire country every time there’s a three-day weekend. Some services genuinely need to operate. Life doesn’t stop because the calendar says Monday.
But perhaps we could stop treating every holiday as another opportunity to squeeze another dollar out of people.
Businesses need employees.
Employees are human beings.
Human beings have families, friends, hobbies, responsibilities and lives that exist outside the four walls of their workplace.
And yes, profit matters. Businesses have to make money to survive. But if making another dollar requires us to continually consume every spare minute of the people doing the work, perhaps we’ve confused economic success with actually living.
Labor Day should remind us of something rather important:
The people doing the labor deserve some time, too.
Time is precious. None of us knows exactly how much we have left.
So maybe the best way to honor Labor Day isn’t by shopping until our credit cards file for workers’ compensation.
Maybe it’s by giving people a little time to actually enjoy the life they’re working so hard to afford.
That’s a pretty good deal.
And unlike that fake plastic plant, you can’t buy more of it later.
