Thanksgiving Doesn’t Always Mean a Day Off

What's your family tradition on Thanksgiving Day?

For many of us, Thanksgiving means getting up early to put the turkey in, smelling the aroma of baking turkey and coffee-brewing while watching parades all morning, then expecting family to arrive promptly at 11am. The rest of the day is all about grazing over piles of turkey and green casserole and putting black olives on our fingertips to make puppets, and then watching the Cowboys on TV. That's what my family does and I thought perhaps you could relate.

Will you be asked to work on Thanksgiving Day? Heaven forbid! But more and more bosses are expecting it!

A Bloomberg BNA survey of employers says almost three-quarters of employers expect that both Thanksgiving and Black Friday will be paid days off for their staff. 99 percent of businesses are giving that Thursday as a paid day off. No big surprises there.

But about 1 in three employers said they do still expect at least a few people to work on Thanksgiving. Sometimes it's the nature of the business. After all, stores have to get ready for the shoppers on Black Friday. And for that, us shoppers thank you. But how many of us will work even when it's a day off, just because we're addicted to it? It could be something as simple as checking our work email on our smart phones on Thanksgiving Day. Maybe that's why the boss is expecting us to check in...because he knows we will. (This is where the black olives on the fingertips may come in handy. It's a way of banning ourselves from checking our phones on a holiday.) If it's a day off, take the day off!

The turkey and fixins will be upon us in just two weeks! Let the countdown to your DAY OFF begin.