To think we shouldn't have to work the day before Christmas Eve?

Exactly. Which is why despite all the complaining, lots of health care professionals do not actually work all of every Christmas

You are missing that OP lives 15 min from her work on a normal day.
This year she is expected to do a six hour round trip, expenses not paid, to do a corporate wankfest team building day when she had been led to believe that her employer's business shuts down over the festive week

Am I missing something OP-
the 23rd Dec is a normal working day- why would you expect it randomly off? Everyone works that (bar teachers / shift workers etc).

What am I missing?

Unless they’re paying travel expenses, it’s not worth it. Are your colleagues going? If so, could you share the petrol expense? If not, your day’s wages will be swallowed up by expenses. IMO they haven’t thought this through for more remote employees.

I think it's a slippery slope to treat selling bathrooms as important as healthcare.

Any job that isn't life or death SHOULD be treated as just a job, and employers would benefit from treating them as such.

In fact, when I ran a business, I hated the rogue staff who were incredibly passionate and self-important about their work. They were terrible workers as they had no sense of proportion about what they were doing, and therefore terrible at delivering against company objectives as a result.

The ones who treated it as just a job had their heads screwed on and were very productive.

So stuff your wailing. OP isn't a healthcare provider. This is just a job, and they're acting terribly for morale.

The NHS can’t afford it all bank hols double time

I’m staggered at the number of people who are telling the op to suck it up because they have worked every Christmas since Jesus was born and drive 6 hours to work 8 days a week.

I do agree that it is a normal working day for many people, however having to schlep across the country, spending more money than she is earning is unreasonable.

I’ve worked retail jobs where I’ve had to travel for hours for training (Brighton to Nottingham), but, the travel and accommodation was paid for and it was in the middle of the year at a pre agreed time.

I would take the day unpaid.

Regarding people working in NHS it can't only be me that's noticed that there's generally skeleton staffing levels at Christmas.
So not all the workers work Christmas day. Have done my bit in care work and in my experience there's some flex. Same for DH who is police officer.

In OPs xase it is unnecessary and ridiculous to expect them to do this at this point in the year. I can only guess it's less about wanting teams to get together and more about utilising a dead period when nobody is buying bathrooms.

What an unpleasant way to talk to someone. The op has been told she has to do a 6hr round trip the day before Christmas eve paid for herself. That is the problem.

If she had to sit in the office answering the phone I'm sure that would have been fine.

And what if OP is struggling to make ends meet? And then has to pay for 6 hours worth of travelling on a day that she'd been led to believe was part of the Christmas shut down?

OP, have you decided what you’re going to do yet?

It's late notice but not badly so

I would query the legality of not paying travel expenses since it's not your normal place of work - have they arranged transport? I think that's your only leg to stand on - quite reasonable to state that you can't afford it especially as it's an unexpected expense that you haven't budgeted for

But 3 hrs travel each way for a company event ( transpennine distress? ) isn't extreme at all

Why?
(Presumably you need to work to earn your living).

I have, but it’s interesting to wonder why she chose that as the main point. (Actually I got it wrong, it was "the day before Christmas Eve".)

The employer is being unreasonable, but I don’t think the event being the day before Christmas Eve is the part that is unreasonable.

@TheNinkyNonkyIsATardis yes, totally agree this is also a leadership fail. I feel the people leading teams should show they value staff rather than some of the ridiculous things they expect people to do.
I'm sure very clever leaders could work something out by themselves if the didn't just jump onto the ridiculous bandwagons that the seem to.

A good manager imo is capable of nurturing team player spirit in their employees without making them jump through all manner of ridiculous hoops to prove they are team players.

An hour away or 3hrs away as the op is having to do?

As an aside if you work for the nhs you'd have had all extra travel paid for. The op is having to pay for this treat herself.

Always worth checking out posts, not just titles

I've just remembered our organisations epic christmas do fail a few years ago.
Staff going to the local Xmas meal were allowed to leave, paid, at 3pm. Everyone else had to work as normal. I wasn't going as I was a lone parent and my team leader couldn't go as she was hearing impaired and restaurants were too much for her. I still hold a grudge against the HR member I think allowed it to happen. Just awful.

But the title of her post is about having to work on Christmas Eve…

One of the biggest leadership fails I've seen was around a Christmas lunch.

The CEO worked remotely and rarely attended the office. The Christmas do was always to down tools at 11ish, do secret santa with eggnog or mulled wine in the office, then make a leisurely trip into town for a long lunch at 2, after which people could leave at normal work time, taxis home paid for.

Because the CEO was rarely there, he missed a lot. And he decided to catch up with one employee at 10.45. To make it fair, the rest of us would stay working as well until we went directly to he restaurant. We could do SS at the restaurant instead (usually these were joke gifts, sometimes quite big, and would be left in the office). Oh, and he wanted to continue with the work chat at 4pm, lunch couldn't take that long, surely?

Complete fucking idiot. He was ousted as CEO a couple of years later, and no one was sorry to see him go.

Hmm, I have extensive management experience and I can't think of a better "own goal" than getting workers to travel to a team engagement event on December 23rd and listen to a CEO speech. It's like a perfect "alienate your staff" recipe and completely pointless as well.

If they want to do team building, let them do it on January 2nd when everyone is fresh and wanting a new start - but nobody is buying bathrooms.

The problem is your thread title says

To think we shouldn't have to work the day before Christmas Eve?

I find it fascinating that so many people on the thread ( and elsewhere on the forum) have bought into all this nonsense and made it normal.

I'm often aghast at the lack of critical reading/thinking skills in some posts

I suspect it’s because so many of these people exist in the UK, that this kind of unfairness continues and grows. Working conditions and standards are being eroded gradually and some people are racing to the bottom with glee.