Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Due to my five-year anniversary with LuthorCorp this March, and due to a little nifty in our benefits package that allows us to buy or sell a week’s vacation, I have four weeks of vacation this year. This dovetails nicely with my shiny new Egg Board fellowship at WCDH, which is tentatively scheduled for June 15.
I had expected to hear plenty of grumbling from LuthorCorp about taking all this time off at once. I expected a discussion of who is going to cover for me while I’m out, and why we can’t afford a temp. I expected to get a stern lecture about what a burden I was placing on everybody, and how we are not Funky Little Company anymore; we are a big public Fortune 500 company and the rules are different now. What I did not expect to hear was no.
No, we can’t spare you. No, you can’t take all of your earned vacation at once. No. No. No.
Fortunately, I have three things working in my favor. One is that I had the presence of mind to push back, even though it meant exchanging the only harsh words I’ve ever exchanged with my boss. Another is that my sweet and wondrous co-workers within earshot have vowed to help me in any way they can. The third is that we had this conversation just minutes after I had done a really big favor for another salesman and his multimillion-dollar customer.
I am supposed to meet with my boss’s boss today, who has the final say, and who is both a good guy and an old friend (he recruited me into this company and before I came to work for him he wrote me a reference letter for a scholarship when I was in culinary school). It is for this reason only that I am merely rattled, and not depressed. But since we have 8 inches of brand-new snow on the ground—9 if you count what we’re supposed to get this morning—whether he even makes it into the office today is anybody’s guess.
To quote my friend Johnette, I’m gonna have a drink and walk around, I’ve got a lot to think about, oh yeah.
never take employment advice from me. find a big fresh dog poop and place it in your boss’s in-basket, with a post-it saying, do you want four weeks of this shit?
I don’t think the post-it note will stick to the poo. You might want to try putting the note on one of those little signs they poke into the cakes at the bakery.
...mmmmmmmm, snow...sorry, I realise I should be supportive and come up with some brilliant idea to help but I am suffering from what can only be called “snow blindness”...I like snow :^)…
...if he doesn’t make it in to the office can’t you just make the decision for him?...or - even better...could you fail to make it in to work (for 4 weeks) because of the snow?...right, I’m warm again - time to rush outside and play some more in the snow :^)…
I’m guessing that quitting your job at LutherCorp is not an option? Because we all know what I would do if faced with this very problem. But then, I have not been known for making very smart career moves in my life, have I?
I will send my incantations to the universal egg powers that they crack one on the head of the boss and his boss and see that this is an opportunity to have a very happy employee and saying no will only cause unhappiness all around.
I had actually thought of pulling my own heart out of my chest and tossing it in boss’s inbox with a note attached to those little poky signs from the bakery saying “well, I won’t be needing THIS anymore!”
Then I thought, hell, they’d probably dun me for the cost of cleaning the carpet.
Update: Boss’s boss will be in the office tomorrow (his flight home yesterday was canceled) and is still willing to meet. I am marshalling my forces in the meantime.
would it help if we picketed? flash-mobbed? boycotted Lutherans by not listening to Garrison Keillor? would it help if we formed a DRUM CIRCLE?
This sucks. Good luck with the big, big boss.It’s not like you are asking for 12 weeks off to be on Survivor, so mebbe they will see the light.
You might bring a list of things you would have to cross train your co-workers in along with assurances that folks have said they would be willing to learn those tasks.
Cross training is a good thing.
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never take employment advice from me. find a big fresh dog poop and place it in your boss’s in-basket, with a post-it saying, do you want four weeks of this shit?