The last paid holiday
25/12/13 19:09![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darkemeraldsToday is the last paid holiday of my career.
Though it's true that Americans don't take much time off compared to, say, Europeans, I'm still very cognizant of the generous plan my public sector place of employment has given me all these years; how many days they've paid me not to be at work.
From the very outset, when I was a just a wee Word Processing Clerk I (anyone remember those?), they gave me ten days of vacation, twelve of sick leave, and three personal days per year.
The vacation-day count has gone up along with the workload, so that when I turn in my badge next week, they're going to pay me for all the vacation I haven't actually managed to take for the last several years. That drop in the retirement bucket will make an audible splash, I can tell you.
As to sick leave...well, I learned an important lesson in my early days. A woman I worked with was singled out for praise because she had never taken a single sick day in, I forget, something like three years. Her reward? A free day off. It was obvious to me that she could have skipped the praise and had twelve paid days off in each of those years.
(Also, praising someone for the "virtue" of naturally good health is, at the very least, annoying.)
In short, I've never been afraid to "call in well" when I needed a mental health day. I'm pretty sure that's why a) I never climbed higher in the organization and b) the benefits of retiring at the first possible moment outweigh the big pay cut I'm about to take.
Besides, they don't buy back your unused sick leave. I'd've been dumb not to use it.
Back to work tomorrow for a few more days of toil in the fields of the System.
Though it's true that Americans don't take much time off compared to, say, Europeans, I'm still very cognizant of the generous plan my public sector place of employment has given me all these years; how many days they've paid me not to be at work.
From the very outset, when I was a just a wee Word Processing Clerk I (anyone remember those?), they gave me ten days of vacation, twelve of sick leave, and three personal days per year.
The vacation-day count has gone up along with the workload, so that when I turn in my badge next week, they're going to pay me for all the vacation I haven't actually managed to take for the last several years. That drop in the retirement bucket will make an audible splash, I can tell you.
As to sick leave...well, I learned an important lesson in my early days. A woman I worked with was singled out for praise because she had never taken a single sick day in, I forget, something like three years. Her reward? A free day off. It was obvious to me that she could have skipped the praise and had twelve paid days off in each of those years.
(Also, praising someone for the "virtue" of naturally good health is, at the very least, annoying.)
In short, I've never been afraid to "call in well" when I needed a mental health day. I'm pretty sure that's why a) I never climbed higher in the organization and b) the benefits of retiring at the first possible moment outweigh the big pay cut I'm about to take.
Besides, they don't buy back your unused sick leave. I'd've been dumb not to use it.
Back to work tomorrow for a few more days of toil in the fields of the System.
(no subject)
26/12/13 21:25 (UTC)We top out at three weeks' vacation per year, too, but we can accumulate up to nine weeks. After that we lose it--they simply erase any excess over 360 hours on January 1. This bucket size of 360 hours probably originated with the intention of getting workaholics down off their workaholic horses for everyone's good. But the practical outcome is that it gets harder and harder to find time to take the vacation, and even here, there's a subtle (sometimes not-so-subtle) message that you're a better team player if you just don't use much of it--and certainly never all three weeks at once.
This is how I've wound up with nine weeks of unused vacation on the books that, as of January 1, will be paid into my deferred comp account. It's not as insidious and toxic as the corporate model, but it's gotten progressively less benign over my career. The corporate model tail wags the government dog...just kind of slowly, with a ten year time lag.
That revolution can't come soon enough, but I suspect it's not going to look like a revolution. The metaphor that springs to mind is little green shoots coming up out the ash-field of Mt St Helens in 1981.