Be thankful if you didn't have to work

While you were scarfing down the turkey, there may well have been thousands of Washington-area workers chained to their desks or stuck behind a cash register.

A veritable army of airline pilots and crew, Metro workers, repairmen and -women, waiters and chefs, cops, firefighters and paramedics, dispatchers, cashiers, and (alas) journalists drew the short straw Thursday and had to trudge to work while their friends and family hunkered down to fowl food and foul football.