At work, I am responsible for building delivery schedules for our customers during the holiday season. By holiday season, I mean Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Year's. In addition to making the delivery schedules, taking into affect the actual holiday (we do not work on the actual holiday, so no billing, no warehouse selection, no shipping, no receiving) I also have to make the decision as to when the holiday delivery schedules are in effect. When do the schedules start and when do they end?
I usually start working on the Thanksgiving delivery schedule in September. Thursday is normally a heavy billing day for us, so it gets chaotic trying to figure out the best day to move the normal Thursday billing to, to keep the warehouse selection even through the week, transportation needs even through the week, and the customers happy.
For Christmas/New Year's, we use the same schedule, and instead of having the delivery schedule be just one week long (like at Thanksgiving), we make it about 1 1/2 - 2 weeks long, to cover both Christmas and New Year's holidays. The good thing here is that since both holidays fall on the same day of the week, we just have to come up with one schedule. I usually start on this as soon as I am finished with the Thanksgiving schedule.
This year, I was given a deadline of completing the Thanksgiving schedule by October 15th (well before I am usually finished with it - somewhere around the 1st of November), and was given the deadline of completing the Christmas schedule by November 10th. I got both completed relatively on time (by the weekend after the due date).
However, another department at work made promises to customers well after November 10th, causing a massive rewrite of the schedules very very close to when the schedules were to turn on. This has caused big problems with sales reps, customers getting incorrect information, and lots of stress on my end.
We are currently in the midst of billing customers with their holiday schedules applied. I have been in several meetings each day, multiple phone calls verifying information, and just overall stress making sure things go as smoothly as possible during the holiday.
I love the Christmas holiday itself - it is my favorite time of year. Working in this industry though has jaded me towards hating the holiday work-wise. I'll be so happy when I can go back to enjoying the holiday without being stressed and overwhelmed with work.
