Here’s a quote that, I hope, will settle the work from home debate: Whether you work from home or work in the office, it’s still labor. And so are you. (The Chief Nonsense Officer. September 2022)

I’m confused. Why is Labor Day? It can’t be to celebrate work, because we already do that at least five days out of seven. And it can’t be to celebrate laziness, because many people are frantically busy on this day.

I know that the original Labor Day was a direct outcome of the 1894 Pullman Strike. The powers that were probably planned as a symbolic reconciliation between workers and bosses. Yet labor disputes remain a reality today.

To some people, at least in the USA, the day is the symbolic end of summer and the reality of laboring under a stifling sun. To others, it signals the reality of school with its symbolic hard, cold benches.

Labor Day, like any day, means the end, or the beginning, of something to someone somewhere. I get that. But here’s what confuses me.

Why is the reality of Labor Day still the fact that many people in planes and boats and trains and kitchens and diners and shops must labor so hard to make this day a symbolic success for others?

Welcome to my side of the nonsense divide.