Christmas Is All in a Day’s Work for Some Employees

For most employees, these are words they’d rather not hear from the boss: “Yo--(Al, June, Bob, etc.)--you’re working Christmas.”

No different for 18-year-old Hannah Mills, who staffs the ticket booth at the Edwards Original Cinema on Adams Boulevard in Costa Mesa, where “The Naked Gun” was playing.

“When I first found out, I was trying to figure out ways to get out of it--like telling them I have to go to New York or something,” said Mills, who lives in Huntington Beach. She opened presents and went to church with her family Sunday morning, then came to work while her parents and siblings lunched at the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel. “But then I thought about the people with no families who are going to be going to the movies, and I told myself it was an OK thing to do.”

‘We Were Just Lucky’

Kristen Hanson, 18, of Newport Beach, who was selling popcorn to the Christmas moviegoers, said she too did not exactly volunteer for holiday duty.

“We were just lucky, I guess,” she said near the beginning of what would be a 12- to 14-hour day. Lucky? Oh, a joke. “Edwards doesn’t pay overtime--we just earn $4.25 an hour like always,” she said.

At the Wherehouse record store on Harbor Boulevard, management had at least promised to pay employees double their normal wages on Christmas. That wasn’t enough to make up for a lost family Christmas for Christopher Macklin, 19, of Costa Mesa, though.

“I want to be home with my Mom . . . drinking eggnog. We should have today off,” Macklin said while assistant manager Brian Donovan glowered at him from behind the cash register.

“Quiet, Chris, or you’ll have tomorrow and a few days after that off,” Donovan said.

The store remained open on Sunday mainly to accommodate customers returning or checking out videos, along with serious procrastinators still looking for that special gift, Donovan said.

“You know, retail,” said Donovan, who lives in Costa Mesa, far from his family Christmas celebration in Ohio.

Nor could Huntington Beach Police Lt. Bill Mamelli, who left this message on the department’s tape-recording for the media: “Sorry you have to work today. Obviously your seniority is as low as mine.”

In Newport Beach, Warren Jason of Capistrano Beach (known offstage as Warren Dan Goldstein, formerly of Philadelphia) was toiling away his Christmas Day musically, behind the keyboards at the Newport Beach Country Club.

Dreaming of White Christmas

“I try to keep it mellow,” said Jason, whose talents include heading a comic “new wave” band called Atlantis that performs underwater in scuba gear. “Usually there’s a lot of dancing, but today there are families here and they just want to hear Christmas music. . . . This is what you do in California. You play songs like ‘Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow.’ ”

After about an hour, though, Jason had played all the Christmas music he knows. “That’s the downside,” he said, coaxing the opening chords to “The Christmas Song” out of his piano, er, double-deck electronic keyboard. Behind him, outside the dining room’s plate-glass windows, a few golfers marched off underneath swaying palm trees to play a holiday round.

“My first Christmas out here, it snowed. That was 1968. I was living in Northridge,” Jason said. “No kidding.”

At the bar, Jon Thorson of Costa Mesa said he doesn’t mind working Christmas.

“My wife has to work today,” Thorson said, so “we celebrated last night.”

“It’s pretty slow,” the bartender said. “People don’t drink very much Christmas Day.”

They may not drink, but they sure do eat. Ask Conny Gordeau, one of several waitresses at Kaplan’s delicatessen in Costa Mesa who barely had time to talk.

“This place is a zoo,” said Gordeau, 27, a native of the Netherlands who moved to Costa Mesa last year. “I started at 5:30 this morning, and I don’t know what time I’ll get off. But at least everyone is in a good mood. . . . Some people just have to work today.”