FIRST WORLD PROBLEM

I’ve been thinking about how best to use up some of the 3 vacation weeks that turned into sick leave this summer, so that they don’t roll over and cause me problems later (at some point, if you don’t use your vacation days and they keep rolling over for 5 years, you are forced to take them out before the fiscal year is up, which can cause all kinds of panic and problems at work). Years ago, I had this happen, and I had to use up 2 weeks worth of vacation days before the end of March (my company’s fiscal year starts April 1). I ended up taking off 2 months worth or so of Fridays, and I loved it. Working 4-day weeks made me happy, just like it’s been documented recently to be a great idea for companies, healthy for employees, and actually improve their effectivity and the company’s bottom line.

The thing is, I don’t want to cause stress for my team by taking a bunch of vacation when we are in the middle of what is usually our busiest time (Sept-Nov), and one of my teammates is already planned to be gone for 3 weeks in October (a trip to Japan with her family). In Sweden, most people take off in the summer for 3-5 weeks and because everyone is pretty much gone at the same time, you know that nothing will get done until everyone is back around the end of August, and then you sort of expect that business will ramp up and people are available and you can proceed with all the projects and work as planned with all your resources in place. My taking off in the fall puts a wrench in that. Not that I should care, really, because I’m absolutely entitled to take my vacation whenever I want, pending my manager’s approval, but I know that she will probably approve anything I want to do.

The other thing is that we are still waiting on Karin’s school schedule so that we can plan whether or not we are going to go to the US for Christmas. I am really hoping to get that info this week because Karin and Essie are leaving for Nice this weekend for 4 days or so, and she starts school the day after she returns. I am pretty sure that even if we DON’T go the US, we will want to take time off around Christmas because it’s another good year, where Christmas Day falls on a Thursday, which means we get Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off for Christmas week, and the following week we get Thursday (New Years Day) and probably Friday as a bridge day, so you only have to take 5 vacation days to get two full weeks off.

I stopped by my manager’s office this afternoon after some thought and asked her if she had any preference if it was better that I took several Fridays off (maybe 2-3 months worth!) or a week of vacation AND some Fridays. She said it was up to me. Then I asked the two teammates who were in the office if they had any opinion and if they thought one or the other would be more stressful for the team, and they didn’t really have an opinion one way or another either, though they agreed that avoiding the 3 weeks that Helena would be in Japan would probably be good. So that was no help.

As I left work, and was walking past my manager on the way out, I sang out, “Maybe I’ll just work HALF-DAYS from now until the end of the year!” which made her laugh.

Fridays off for a substantial amount of weeks is very appealing. Maybe I’ll do that and then take some extra days before our usual Thanksgiving party. I can also adjust and move from a Friday to another weekday any particular week if needed, as everything is pretty flexible.

It’s a nice little puzzle to have to figure out in a world that feels so full of awful and ugly and miserable news that I can’t do anything about.

Animals Near Me Lately: the neighbor’s cat Pluttis who was curious and came running toward me the other evening, but wouldn’t pass the edge of their yard so I could actually pet her, a big brown toady frog that I’ve seen one other time hopping about near the cucumbers, a huge green grasshopper in the Japanese dwarf cypress as I was watering outside this evening.

Mood: tired
Music: Francesca De Rose—What Could’ve Been