Laboring on Labor Day again (again)

This is getting to be a bad habit.

I'm required to labor on Labor Day--but not too hard. While my blog takes a holiday, here are the Rules for Laboring on Labor Day that I published a few years ago:

1. Dress down. They can make me teach on Labor Day, but they can't make me dress up.

2. Pack your own picnic. No way I'm eating at my desk when the rest of the world is outside grilling burgers!

3. Don't begrudge the revelers their revels. The people who clean our bathrooms, make our photocopies, and answer our phones work hard for very little money and deserve every minute of their day off. I do not wish they were here working, but I do wish I could join them on their day off.

4. Office hours? Are you kidding me? No one comes to my office hours on a normal day, so what are the chances that anyone will show up on Labor Day?

5. Enjoy the commute. No public school = no school buses holding up traffic, no 20-mile-per-hour zones, and no teens racing around curves on country roads.

6. Be there. Nobody's fooled by the Labor Day flu; if my students are required to be in class on Labor Day, then I'm going to be there with them.

7. Don't try to explain it. I know we have reasons for teaching on Labor Day, and some of them may even be valid ("We can't shortchange Monday labs!"), but the real reason we teach on Labor Day is that we've never been sufficiently motivated to change it.