For the next few days, the retail world is going to be about as busy it can get, right up until the end of Christmas Eve.
And then, the next day… it’s quiet.
With relatively few exceptions, Christmas Day is when an enormous number of workplaces just close up shop and take a break.
Today in 1988, there was a report in the New York Times about a company that decided to shut its doors for December 25, only to run into a little hiccup around those doors.
This was Denny’s, which in those days was famous for its Grand Slam breakfasts and TV commercials where the actors kept mispronouncing the name of the chain as “Lenny’s.”
That year, the company decided to give its employees a break on Christmas; as one executive told the New York Times, “We just feel we spend 364 days a year taking care of other people’s families and for one day a year we want to take care of our own.”
The company said it would miss out on $5 million in sales, but management felt the workers were worth it.
Employees were happy because they didn’t have to work on a holiday.
Managers were happy because they didn’t have to try to choose who had to work the holiday and who didn’t.
So what was the problem?
Well, typically when you look at a Denny’s sign you’ll see the company’s logo and right underneath the words “Always Open.”
And because these restaurants were always open, they didn’t really have a way to close.
Managers of some locations didn’t know where the keys were to lock the doors.
Some locations didn’t have any locks at all, because why would you need to lock up a place that was always open?
Denny’s eventually had to hire locksmiths to install or to replace locks at about 700 of its roughly 1,200 locations.
Although two Denny’s in Fresno, California stayed open that year, and so did three restaurants in Alaska, so I guess the number wasn’t quite that high.
This month in 1975, Architectural Review reviewed a notable bit of architecture in Kyoto, Japan.
Kazumasa Yamashita’s Face House had a set of doors that looked like an open mouth with a set of teeth, plus round windows that looked like eyes and some pipes on the exterior that resembled a nose.
The building was out in the sun all day, maybe it should’ve had a hat?
Diner Chain Has to Buy Locks for First Holiday Closing (New York Times)
Face House in Kyoto, Japan by Kazumasa Yamashita (Architectural Review)