Who works on Eid

On Eid morning the org chart turns over, and yesterday was Eid morning.

The people who wrote the greeting are with their families. The marketing director, the agency, the brand team who spent two weeks on the card and the tone of the card: all of them at somebody's table, phones face down, as they should be.

The people at work are the ones nobody in that meeting has met. The agent on the chat, answering from a laptop in a shared flat. The rider, who is not from here and whose own family is two flights away. The four in the kitchen who drew the short straw on the rota, cooking for the households that ordered in because the house was too full to cook.

For one day those four or five people are the whole brand. The customer who sends a message at noon on Eid does not meet the card. They meet whoever was asked to stay, and how that person was treated, and whether anyone told them about the promotion they are now being asked about.

I have been the customer on the other side of this. What I remember of a company from a holiday is the reply that came at one in the afternoon from someone who had clearly been told nothing and was kind anyway. I do not remember the card.

Who is asked to work the holiday is decided by people who never work it. It is decided in a rota, in a staffing line, in a choice about whether the chat closes for Eid or stays open with one person and no brief. None of that is in the marketing plan, and all of it is in the customer's morning.

The customer reads that decision before they read the card.