From left, Amy Petrin, Lorenzo Perez-Febles and Jake Poole in the dining room at The Lobster Shack at Two Lights State Park on Wednesday. All three of them will be working on Labor Day. Perez-Febles, the manager, has worked at the Cape Elizabeth restaurant for 32 years. He said he thinks he has probably worked every Labor Day for the last three decades. “When you’re a seasonal restaurant, you tend to stay open every day until the end of the season.” Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer

Wells Police Sgt. Adam Shaw has been an officer with the department for 18 years. “I don’t think I (really) have had a Labor Day off,” he said. “It almost becomes a ghost town, and things get very quiet.” Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

Emily Anderson is a registered nurse in the intensive care unit at Northern Light Mercy Hospital in Portland. Every other year, she is scheduled to work on Labor Day, which includes this year. Anderson said she doesn’t feel like she’s missing out on the holiday, though, because most of her friends and family also work on Labor Day. The 25-year-old Portlander said the best thing about her job is “getting to watch people arrive at this unit the sickest they’ve ever been … and then leave feeling better.” Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

Hans Tarbox waits for motorists at the toll booth at the Exit 45 southbound on ramp in South Portland on Friday. Tarbox, 67, has been a toll taker with the Maine Turnpike Authority since 2002 and works most holidays, including Labor Day. “I especially like working the holidays because it’s a new group of people we may have never seen before,” he said. “They oftentimes want to tell us what they’ve done while they were here in Maine.” Tarbox said tourists often share where they’ve stayed, their difficulties figuring out how to eat a lobster, or where they saw a moose. He said they frequently tell him they appreciate that Maine still has toll takers who can give them directions, help locate an ATM, suggest places to eat or find a gas station. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

Lobsterman Steve Train, 57, of Long Island, on his brother’s boat, the Moira Bay, as a portion of the day’s catch is hoisted onto the dock at Luke’s Lobster restaurant on Portland Pier. Train won’t be taking Labor Day off this year, nor has he in the last 50 or so years since he began lobstering. “Unless we had a storm, we worked every one of them,” he said of the September holidays. Train works with his brother, Dan Train, of Portland. Rather than hire crew, the brothers alternate working on each other’s boats. Between them, they have 1,600 traps and haul up to 360 of them in a single day. “You know when holidays are, but they don’t mean quite the same thing because when you have to work, you have to work,” he said. “You don’t miss a day when you can make money.” Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

Lena Mozzhelina at Blanche & Mimi in the Old Port, where she works as a sales representative. Mozzhelina has worked in retail for 12 years and at her current job for a decade. She said she has probably worked most Labor Days in the past 12 years. “In the service industry, Labor Day isn’t really a holiday,” Mozzhelina said with a laugh. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer

Lex Pelletier is five for five when it comes to working Labor Days. The 31-year-old employee at Casco Bay Lines has worked either in the front office on the Maine State Pier in Portland or on the ferries as they ply the bracing waters of the bay. For the past three years, Pelletier has been working as a deckhand, ushering cars onto the Machigonne II, guiding throngs of passengers with her kind but authoritative voice and casting dock lines over bollards with precision. For Pelletier, who is studying for a captain’s license, working on Labor Day is pleasant. “I like working holidays,” she said. “The energy’s different. It’s very calm and enjoyable.” Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer