Who Gets Friday Off? Probably Not You

For the first time in over three decades, New Jersey will be open for business on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and that noise you hear is the sum of five million groans, or the entire employed population of the Garden State.

In reopening for business on Black Friday, as the day after Thanksgiving is affectionately called, New Jersey joins the ranks of a distinct minority of U.S. states–just eighteen–but unlike Wyoming, which took the day off away in 1983 giving workers a floating personal day instead, it doesn’t sound like New Jersey has any such niceties in mind.

Meanwhile, working in Louisiana has never been sweeter: State workers in Louisiana are under executive order to take a four-day weekend over Thanksgiving (as well as Christmas and New Years) starting this year.

Other states have found more creative approaches to giving their Tryptophan-sluggish workers the Friday after Thanksgiving off: Georgia celebrates Robert E. Lee’s birthday, California traded “Admissions Day” (Sept. 9) for it a couple decades ago, Nevada has designated it “Family Day,” Indiana celebrates Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, New Mexico calls it President’s Day, and Texas gives workers a day off to watch the UT versus Texas A&M game.

However, even if you live in one of the 32 states that recognize Black Friday as a holiday, odds are as an IT professional, you’ll be working anyway. 59 percent of IT professionals work over long holiday weekends, found a survey released July 2006 by KACE, a provider of IT automation solutions and 21 percent reported having worked Thanksgiving in the past year. More than two-thirds had at least once been required to work on a major holiday to perform an IT task.

If New Jersey is looking for sympathy, it’s probably not going to get it from the IT department.