I worked the overnight shift at the 5th Avenue Apple Store. I got to spend two Christmas mornings (and two New Years Eves) in a row with some of the best people I've ever worked with...hell, some of the best people I've ever met!
I think of it as a public service: you're working on your Operating Systems assignment at 1am and discover your AC adapter has malfunctioned and you have 5% of battery left.
Here's a tidbit that might entertain, then: in densely populated suburbs, you're less likely to find what you need at 3am than in small-town America (at least, in the rural South). That's because Walmart is typically open 24 hours, and Walmart in rural areas has essentially everything that's not very specialized.
Upon moving from such a place to the suburbs of DC, I was dismayed to find that finding a store open at 3am was actually more difficult than in the hinterlands.
No doubt. When I moved to Minneapolis, MN from ND, I was constantly amazed at how little is open in the early AM. Heck, even the fast food places closed early[1]. ND small town is more 24hr than the cities.
1) and what unholy foolishness of closing offsale at 8pm on weekdays, 9pm Fri and Sat, and closed all day Sun. WTF? "Backwards" ND has Sunday offsale.
Not really. I think NYC is the main city that doesn't sleep. Other large cities I've been to like Seattle get pretty dead late at night. The town I go to school in, Providence, even has a 2am business curfew.
Is it really worth not letting employees be with their families on Christmas so a forgetful dad doesn't have to wait an extra day to buy mp3 players for his children? Is cheap electronic shit really more important than allowing people to spend time with loved ones?
You know that not everybody observes or cares to celebrate Christmas right? When I worked at a movie theater I loved working Christmas because it was easy money and I didn't care about the holiday, I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.
I love working on Christmas, since I don't really celebrate -- if I'm working, then other people don't have to, and I get paid a premium. The Christmas-New Years week is basically the most productive period in the world, followed closely by Burning Man week.
Thanksgiving, in the US, has more market penetration than Christmas. Yet, there's the huge Black Friday shopping thing, so stores pay people extra to set up on Thursday too.
"Only in America do you celebrate being thankful for everything you have on Thursday so you can go buy more shit on Friday"
-Some wise netizen (a paraphrase).