Weekend Plans Post: Use Your Time Off
A birthday is coming up and it’s one that happens to have a round number at the end of it. I’m told that these are “important” birthdays and stuff needs to be done about that sort of thing. The main thing that I wanted to do was just, you know, maybe take my birthday off. I checked the calendar and said “don’t be on a Wednesday, don’t be on a Wednesday, don’t be on a Wednesday” and, wouldn’t you know it, it was on a Wednesday. I mean, it’s one thing when your birthday is on a Friday and you take a 3-day weekend. Hey, if you’ve got it on a Thursday, maybe you can make it a 4-day weekend.
But on a Wednesday? Ugh.
I mentioned this to my boss and he told me “take a 5-day weekend. Use your time off and decompress a little.”
Well, I checked my accumulated time off (sick and vacation) and it was over 300 hours. Dang.
Okay. It suddenly became apparent that taking off 3 days wasn’t as self-indulgent as I thought it would be. Maybe I should use some of that. Decompress a little.
Maybe even decompress enough to unwind.
Heck, if you unwind enough, you might even *RELAX*.
This weekend isn’t part of that decompression period… but, lemme tell ya, the knowledge that a short week is right in front of you? That’s a shot in the arm right there.
This weekend will have a Costco run in it (pick up some of those Chicken Alfredos they have, maybe some other stuff), an abundance of laundry, and the forecast says that it’s going to rain. And that will be nice.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is “Luxury”, taken by Maribou.)
Gonna go get my flu vaccine; have already had students out with the flu (they got tested for covid, negative, then their doctor tested for flu – didn’t realize that was possible – and they got a positive for that)
What I do saturday will depend on how my body reacts to the vaccine. If it’s a typical flu-shot reaction I’ll probably go grocery shopping and clean the house up. If it’s a stronger reaction I may just sleep.Report
My wife and I were going to go out to celebrate our anniversary, but she has come down sick. Possibly COVID, but she hasn’t taken the test yet. I’m feeling a little questionable, but it could be all in my head. I doubt we are going anywhere.
On the other hand, she got her Steam Deck earlier this week. Mine is supposed to get here tomorrow. I suspect the weekend will involve a lot of laying in bed playing video games. It could also turn into a long weekend, but of the less fun variety.Report
Also, take your time off in case you live in a state where your employer isn’t required to pay it out if you quit. And take your time off because even if you live in one of the good states, the tax man is going to take his cut.
Jay, maybe you should borrow a page from my book and take EVERY FRIDAY OFF FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR.
Seriously. There are 14 Fridays left in the year. Assuming you have to use PTO for all of them (which you won’t), that’s 112 hours of PTO…not even HALF of what you’ve accrued. Further, you accrue roughly 4.5 hours of PTO per pay period, so assume that’s 9 hours per month, so now you’re only using 85 hours of PTO! That’s only a little over a QUARTER of what you’ve accrued.
Seriously. There’s nobody in the chain of command who’ll balk at you doing this.Report
I actually worked at a company where I had 2 weeks vacation annually. My boss called me into his office and said “you have XXX hours of uncompensated overt time. You’re going on vacation in a week or so yes? Take it as “management directed time off” instead. It’ll drop your uncomp o/t down.” That was nice 🙂Report