"Open Sunday" shopping after a mid-week holiday

So, Wednesday was re-unification day. Everything was closed. Very few people had to work.
Today is Sunday and Ikea and Kaisers are open in Berlin. Probably others too. My wife is a teacher and had to go in yesterday (Saturday).
Coincidence? I think not.

It seems that every holiday that falls in the middle of a working week MUST be made up for.
Not all employers do this obviously, but a lot do. A lot of places have an "open sunday" after a mid-week holiday.
Why?!
Well, I know why...but isn't this a little bit unfair?
Forcing people to work on weekends because of a mid-week holiday?
Nickel and diming employees?

I want to shop on Sundays as much as the next guy, and yeah it's nice to shop at Kaisers on a Sunday, but not like this.

Each town/city/Kreis is allowed to have four "Open Sundays" each year; it's up to each council to decide which four Sundays they will allow the stores in their region to open. I can't say I've noticed a correlation between mid-week holidays and open Sundays, but I'm not saying you're wrong.

Incidentally, I guess I'm not "the next guy" because I would chain myself to the Bundestag doors to stop shops opening on Sundays. Here in Freising they at least use the Sunday-opening powers responsibly by using it as an opportunity to promote the town and creating a vaguely carnival atmosphere with stalls and music and street cafes and whatnot. A furniture store in an industrial estate doesn't quite seem to provoke the same image somehow.

Well to be honest, I don't really have a problem with it. I think it's charmingly quaint to close everything on Sundays.
And anyway, in Berlin I can basically get anything I want on a Sunday.
But still.
It's the way they do it. If they have 4 open sundays per year and they always choose the Sunday after a mid-week holiday, doesn't that completely defeat the purpose of a "holiday"?
If I worked at Ikea, and I had Wednesday off because of a national holiday, and then they made me work on Sunday...I would be pretty upset.
It just doesn't seem right.

I'm sure anyone worknig on a Sunday got paid overtime rates for it, or got another day off in the week. Every damn weekend should be like the last one, with shops allowed to open whenever they like rather than have 1/7th of the week being totally unproductive. This is not an inconvenience to the workers - if they work then they'll get paid more, or get a day off in the week, that can actually be used unlike Sundays at the moment which are often wasted due to nothing being open!

Well, my wife didn't get paid at all for working on Saturday. Just an extra "vacation day".
She said this is common for most companies in Germany. When you work overtime, you get holiday time, not money.

So what's the problem? She gets to take a day whenever she wants for the one she had to work on Saturday. In any case, things are already open Saturdays, this is not unusual. The issue is with Sunday openings.

Yeah, but she's a teacher. Teachers don't have to work on Saturdays. And no, she can't just take her "holiday day" whenever she wants.
Ahh I don't even know anymore..who cares...I'm off to drink some weizen