Monday, September 27, 2010

I need some holidays for my religion

I'm a practicing atheist which I'm thrilled about except for the fact I get screwed out of a bunch of free vacation days.  

I know that you can't hire/fire people based on religious affiliation and i'm not advocating you do but I have to tell you that if you employ a non-believer you'll wind up getting an additional 5 days per year out of him or her.

I have a friend who an ultra-orthodox Hasidic who must take 25 extra days off per year, not counting the 2pm departures on Friday to make it home before sundown.  Now I will not judge anybody for their religious decisions and I wouldn't switch lives with this dude for a million dollars but it's crazy to see how many high-holy days exist in some of religions.  
Two days for Rosh Hashana, one for Yom Kippur and now a week for Sukkot.    I count 8 working days out of 22 off in the month of September alone
So I propose that there should be a bunch of holidays for non-religious people that we get off with no questions asked.  I'm not taking about ones that goes against personal/vacation days but completely free days with no ties or complaints.  I propose days like Ice-Cream Sunday day or Fantasy Football Draft day which don't go against your which are just free days to practice being a non-believer.
Now i'm not speaking about job discrimination in hiring practices as nobody should be denied work because of his/her religious view but a question I always have is how about if you apply for a job whose responsibility in part  involved work on Friday Night and Saturday Day, like maybe you had to do the scoreboard for High School Football games as part of your job.  Well if you can't work because of your religious beliefs how is it fair that you get hired for a job which you cannot completely fulfill.  

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