Playing Hooky....

So, I have a confession to make. I played hooky from work today. In my defence, I noticed yesterday that my left eye was red on one side. As the day progressed, my eye grew redder. Prone to eye infections, I assumed that the redness was exactly that: A visual clue that my eye was infected.

This morning I was awoken by the puppies at 5:35 a.m because they needed to go out. My eye was a little sore and gummy. I examined it in the mirror and saw that it was an alarming shade of red. It didn't, however, hurt and wasn't light sensitive as had been the case with previous eye infections. After I'd taken the puppies out, there was just enough time for me to go back to bed and get comfy before my alarm went off. By the time the alarm kicked on, I had talked myself into not going to work.

So I called in sick.

In my defense, my eye is still red. It looks pretty bad. Yet because it is only a little sore and not light-sensitive, I'm now wondering if I have an infection or I have a burst blood vessel. Either way, it doesn't matter. I didn't go to work today.

I've complained in the past that my company is stingy with Paid Time Off. They combine sick time with vacation time so what you earn...you earn. I get one day every month, to be used whether I'm sick or in desperate need of a trip to Napa.

While I'm psychologically in need of a trip to Napa, I know it's not likely in the near future. I don't have much time off work anyway.

Yet, even though only earning one day off a month in vacation/sick time means a slow accumulation, it also means when you don't go to work, no one can say, "You don't seem sick!"

After all, if I'm pulling my vacation time from the same bucket I'm pulling my sick time, what right does anyone have to question if I'm really sick or not?

Granted, if I hadn't had the sore and blurry eye, I would have gone to work. Yet, by mid-afternoon, it felt fine and it enabled me to not only watch a few Gilmore Girl episodes on DVD but it let me get outside into the garden. As a result, I ended up pulling up an awful lot of weeds. I got some things planted. I got some mulch put down.

Best of all, I got to spend the day with the puppies. This was quite a treat. While I know they're not humans, that they can't talk, that their thought process currently consists of: "treats!" "need to go to the bathroom!", "need to sleep" and "need to be cuddled," I can't help assigning them just a few more thoughts. It was nice to be able to spend time with them at home. It was nice to not have to rush home at lunch, feed them, take them outside and them crate them back up for the afternoon.

All in all, even though I did check my work email a lot, I didn't do any work. I felt no need, I felt no guilt. Way back when we were owned by a university and we had a separated supply of sick time and vacation time, I would have felt bad for saying, "I won't be in the office today."

Yet when the supply is combined and you no longer have the advantage of being allowed to get sick because, if so, you no longer get to take any time off for anything fun...then it stops making you feel so guilty. After all, a day off is a day off. My PTO is there to be used. Therefore, no matter how I use it, it's mine.

I won't say that my eye isn't uncomfortable and that I may have an eye infection, under most normal circumstances, I probably would have dealt with it and gone to work. Except, lately, work has been nothing but monotony. You can see why calling in 'sick' may not have been a challenge.

In the end, I think today ended up being a Mental Health Day as much as anything else. My eye is still red. It's still sore, as if bruised. It still doesn't like contacts. Yet if I'd have had the desire, I could have gone to work.

It's just, sometimes, when you wake up in the morning, you just know that if you were to go to work, you'd be absolutely useless. That's how I felt today. I mentally checked my calendar and knew I had nothing scheduled. I mentally checked my list of projects and realized that the one, lone project I am working on would not weep if I missed a day...and thus, I decided it would be ok if I missed a day.

I know I'm not the only one in need of a Mental Health Day. One of my friends/coworkers was out Monday, two were out Tuesday, my boss was out yesterday....there are just some weeks that feel as though they shouldn't be spent in the office but, rather, should be given over to real life- not just the way you earn your paycheck.

So there you have it: Captain Monkeypants skivved off work today. She had a red, sore eye but she could have sucked it up and gone in to do her duty. Instead, she surrendered to the little warm puppy bodies that pressed up against her on her bed this mornign and realized how nice it would be to not have to leave the puppies today.

In the end, I spent quality time with my puppies. I got to watch TV. I got to make soup. Overall, I got to rest my mental health without having to contaminate it with the politics of the office.

I know, in the long run, I should have gone to work today, to let my time off accumulate faster so that I could, if I so desired, take a real vacation. Yet...when you wake up in the grey light of dawn and realize that lying in bed, flanked by two adorable puppies is a far more appealing image than getting up, going to work and working on the same thing for eight more hours...the idea of playing hooky is ridicously tempting.

I recommend it to everyone...anytime.

Happy Friday and have a great weekend!

A Wet End to the Week....

It is a really rainy Friday today. When I woke up, I could hear the pelt of raindrops on the windows and the drip of the gutter on my back patio. The news reported that there were a number of accidents on the roadways and that I should leave extra time for my morning commute.

It was all I could do to make myself get up and ready for work.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Days like this are made for staying home, for staying in bed, for being allowed to appreciate the natural world around us and know that it's nature's way of saying, "I don't want you to go out today."

I tried to listen to nature. The dreamer in me wished that my boss would send a message saying that we didn't have to come into the office today and I could have a free day off. As I said, it was the dreamer in me. The realist knows that my boss and his boss would NEVER do that, they'd never fathom the possibility that they could do that. I thought about taking a day off but when it comes to Paid Time Off (PTO), as I've mentioned, my company is not generous. I'm down to five days and given that winter isn't even here yet with its steady threat of the flu and other viruses, I have to save my time. When you're only accruing one day a month and there's no differentiation between sick time and vacation time, you have to save it for when you really need it, not for a rainy day.

So, I dragged myself out of bed. I'm still not so sure it was a good idea. As I was making my toast, I managed to drop the lid of my butter dish onto the floor. Naturally, it was made of glass and, naturally, it shattered. I only had time to sweep it up and check for splinters, butter my toast and dash out the door.

It was raining and it was raining hard. To make things worse, they've finally finished construction on the interstate that I take to get to work. It was previously down to two lanes with those orange barrel thingys and concrete dividers shutting off the rest of the road. Two days ago, they reopened all the lanes. I'm still not used to my entry ramp shooting me out into a new lane that wasn't there before, especially in the mornings when it's dark. They haven't put any reflectors down yet and the only thing separating the lanes are sparse broken white lines. On a non-rainy day, it's not quite as bad because you can see out of the windows to figure out where the rest of the traffic is. Today, however, my window wipers were at their fastest speed and my car couldn't shake off the raindrops. The road was saturated, covered with deep pockets of water. Making out the lanes was a nightmare.

I think I might have been one of the only people who felt this way. Drivers started whizzing around me, clearly irritated that I wasn't going fast enough. They'd pass me and then pull out in front of me, forcing me to brake a little harder than I would have liked to stop myself rear-ending them. I wasn't about to drive faster, however. I may not like being bullied on the road but I also know when safety is more important.

By the time I was off the interstate, I breathed a sigh of relief. The rest of the drive wasn't so bad. When you're down to a two-lane highway, it's a little easier. The only other danger that lay ahead was the results of the season itself: The fallen leaves.

Because the rain is so heavy, the colourful leaves that have been clinging to the trees to show off their splendour have had to give up the fight. They've tumbled down, creating a thick carpet of leaves on the roads, pathways, cars and in people's yards. As a pedestrian, they can be hazardous to walk on; the rain makes them as slick as ice.

The town in which I work has cobbled streets. They're cool to look at, a nightmare to drive on. They're bumpy, uneven and when you enter the 'cobbled zone' there's a huge bump between the asphalt road and the cobbles. If I get stuck at the light right before the cobbled road starts, I literally have to gun my poor little Corolla so it can climb over the ridge. Today, they were almost invisible, thick with wet, soggy leaves. I slid at least a couple of times even though I was only driving 15 mph.

I finally made it to the office only ten minutes late. Everyone is feeling like I am; they wish they'd stayed in bed and are grumpy because it's Friday and if they'd stayed home, they would have had a three-day weekend.

Yet we're here. It means that our Friday is underway and we're edging closer to the weekend. I'm hoping it rains through the evening merely so I can appreciate the fact that I'm home and can stay there for a while. I just hope it lets up for the drive home.

Thanks, as always for reading. Have a great weekend.

Happy Friday.

Long Weekends and the Need for Days Off...

I'm glad it's Friday today. I'm even more glad that it's the Friday before a long weekend. It's a happy/sad sort of weekend because while it does last three days, Labour does, typically, mean the end of summer.

I said a few months ago that summer is my least favourite season. That hasn't changed. I still prefer the colder months of the Autumn, the warming trend of Spring and, of course, the snow covered days of Winter.

Yet that is not to say I haven't enjoyed Summer. Granted, it's been a busy one for me with trips to Washington D.C., San Diego and Las Vegas. There's also that whole buying-a-house-thing, not to mention the trips to visit my family. Thus, the summer months have flown by with only time to snatch at moments, even the luxury of hours to call purely my own. I've managed to get a lot done in my house in a short time. I've managed to find time to see my family. I've even managed to keep my grass to a reasonable length even though the inevitability of having to mow makes me groan.

Yet now Summer is winding down, I can't help but hope it means life will slow a little too. It's going by too fast. The older you get, the fast life moves. I've mentioned it before but I miss the days of school where you count down until summer and the lazy, unstructured days drift by slowly until the last week when, suddenly, time is moving twice as fast as normal and the threat of structure approaches.

In those school days, however, there are marked breaks, countdown targets- Fall Break, Thanksgiving, Christmas vacation, Spring Break, Summer Break. It's not that you don't get days off when you're working but it's not the same. Most of the time, you have to fight to take the Friday off after Thanksgiving unless your company is generous. Fortunately, the company I work for is nice enough to count that as part of the Thanksgiving Break. Yet the other breaks, the summer vacation...we don't get those.

We could get those but each day off must be accounted for with PTO- the dreaded "Paid Time Off".

You'd think PTO would be a wonderful thing, a little gift in the middle of a mundane week. It is...to an extent. Yet as a fairly new employee, it accumulates rather slowly. When you only get one day per month, it doesn't add up fast. It looks rather nice to have five days displayed on your paystub. It's rather like having a nice healthy bank account. Yet the minute you spend it, it's like spending gold. You debate it, you run it through your mind, you mentally calculate whether it's a smart choice to take a day off or not.

The worst part is when the PTO is representative of both sick time and vacation time. At our company, there is no difference. You take PTO regardless of if you're going to Hawaii or if you're suffering from the flu. It's a nice, easy policy but, naturally, it's not without its problems.

You see, when people are low on PTO time, they don't want to take time off. Thus, when they don't feel well, they'd rather drag themselves to the office and suffer through the day than have to deduct a day from their fragile accumulation.

You can see the problem with this, right? Yes...for certain periods of the year, the office becomes an Incubator of Disease. All it takes in a small company like this is for some poor suffering employee who is low on PTO to come into the office and cough and sneeze. Lo and behold, the next day, two more people are coughing and sneezing. A week later, almost the entire company is sick.

I know it's not just my company. It happens everywhere. It's happened in virtually every job I've had. I had one job at a hospital in which you were actually docked if you took time off. You would accumulate points for every lateness, every sick day, every sick hour. If you missed any time, you'd get points. Too many points in a month and you were on probabation. If you already had a probation and you got more points, that was it...you were gone.

Can you see this problem with this? It was a hospital, a place where people go to get well. When the employees are walking around like zombies because they have the flu, guess where that flu is going to go. Yes....everywhere.

I understand the need for companies to be at their maximum productivity all the time. Without employees, companies lose money. Unfortunately, what I've never understood is that isn't it better to have a day or two with only a few employees missing than have weeks of slowed productivity because everyone is sick?

My problem is that I think with common sense. Even when I type that sentence, I laugh at myself. I pride myself on being a little odd, thinking outside of the box because that's where I tend to live. It doesn't mean I don't have common sense, however. Even I can see that giving employees a little more sick time will encourage them to, you know, stay home when they're sick.

I can hear the voice of Management in my head: "If we give them more sick time, they'll just pretend to be sick and take time off. Then, when they're really sick, they'll still come in. It does no good."

To this, I say....perhaps. Yes, there are employees who call in sick when they're not. There are employees with children who have to take sick time to take care of them. Then, they run out of sick time, catch the illness from the children and bring it to the office.

I get that. I get the logic behind restricting sick time. It doesn't mean I like it. It also doesn't mean I'm not sensitive enough to think that sometimes, you have to take a chance and cut your losses in order to do something that's 'right.' Yes, employees will take sick days, they'll take "Mental Health Days" and not come into work.

You know what I say to this? Let them. I speak from experience when I say sometimes taking a Mental Health Day is necessary. There are times when you haven't had a day off for weeks. Weekends don't count because usually they're so jam packed that relaxion is put on the back burner. You work all day and you get to the point where you just feel like you're not getting anything done because you feel trapped. That's where Mental Health Days come in. Sometimes that's all you need to recharge. They're days when you stay home, watch stuff you've had recorded on your DVR for months, read a trashy book...basically, you do nothing.

Everyone needs those days. We're human. There's only so long you can go without taking time to think, to relax before you feel like the world is spinning out of control.

In one job I had, we had "personal days", these could be used whenever, without having to give notice. The boss I had was a strong endorser of Mental Health Days. She was a good manager because she understood that sometimes taking one day to recuperate meant more productivity in the long run than not missing a day at all.

I can see why Management in most companies don't like letting employees take advantage of them by calling in sick when they're not sick. Thus, that's one of the strategies in limiting PTO. Yet, that's looking at the half-empty glass. In most companies for every one 'slacker', there's five people who make up for it. If there's nothing but slackers, well, honestly, in that case, I'd say to Management that they need to take a strong look at the way they run their company. You should never have a company full of people who can't be bothered to work. If you do...something's wrong.

Anyway, I digress. It's Labour Day weekend. It's the last long weekend before the nights get a little longer and the leaves start turning their beautiful colours. It's the last long weekend to enjoy the summer and celebrate its rewards. I, for one, am looking forward to it even if it's not going to be particularly productive. I'm heading to my parents which means no time for working at home but it doesn't matter. There'll be plenty of time for that in the future.

Happy Labour Day.