vacation or personal

All of you who work in offices understand the torture of only being allowed to take two weeks vacation all year. Two weeks equals 10 days not 14. That sure was a tough concept to grasp right out of college.

"Yut you said two weeks"

"Yeah two weeks...10 days"

"Um...two weeks is actually 14 days"

"Yeah well. um. 10 days. You know two full WORK weeks"

"oh"

So out of the whole entire year you are allowed only 10 days to take off. The worst part is that regardless of the fact that you are an adult you have to get approved for this vacation. Its not like you can just say "Hey Bob, I'm not coming in tomorrow." You have to let them know days, sometimes weeks in advance! Honestly I think its absurd. Especially since most employers wont let you know things that are critical to your job until the very last minute. For example - I have a friend who's company was getting downsized and she had no idea until one of her customers emailed her a copy of the letter that the president of the company had sent to all the customers. I guess mail merge must have left out all the employees by accident. Anyway, if your company isn't going to let you know you are out of a job until the last possible moment, they why should you go out of your way to let them know when you will be on vacation? You shouldn't. And since they only give you like 10 days a year to do what you wish with, it seems to me that that means they only stand to be inconvenienced by your absence 10 days out of a year? Sounds like something they should be able to live with. Unfortunately that is not the way it works and we are all forced to go through whatever annoying process your boss made up to request vacation days.

As someone who hates formalities it kinda sucks that I am also the person who happens to be in charge of tracking how many vacation days people have left. My ideal system would be the following. People would just take vacation when they felt like it, and whenever they annoyed me or I felt that they had taken too many I would tell them they had used all their days. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way either. Every time one of these little fuckers takes a vacation day after getting approval from their various supervisors they hand the form over to me. I suppose I am supposed to process it because whenever anyone submits a form they ask me 15 times whether it has been "processed". I don't even know what that means. The only processing I do is sticking it in a folder marked "time sheets". The folder says time sheets because I am too lazy to cover it up with a label that says vacation forms. In fact 90% of everything on my desk or in my filing cabinet is labeled wrong. God forbid I didn't show up one day and they needed to find something, they would be completely confused. But that's a whole different story.

Anyway after I receive a vacation form and after it gets filed into the "time sheets" folder it just sort of sits there. Then inevitably some idiot asks how many days they have left and I have to figure it out. So then I enter each vacation day into the system. People are extra serious about their vacation days. It's actually kind of funny. Any slight discrepancy sends them into a panic. I try to let them know that it is possible I have made a mistake (although I rarely do). You have to calm them down immediately or they really freak out. They come to my desk waving copies of their vacation requests and start questioning which days have been "processed" as vacation like I have all their days off memorized. Please. They are lucky I remember their names. Anyway, after going through all their days off it usually ends up being their mistake because although I pay little attention to what I do and regardless of the fact that I can't think of anything I care less about, unlike them I am not incompetent. Apparently incompetence is worse than complete indifference because they are the ones who usually have marked their own vacation days down incorrectly. I mean if I only had 10 days off a year and I wasn't in charge of keeping track of them, I sure as hell would make sure I wrote them down correctly. Fortunately I am in the position where I can keep track of my own vacation days. I could take 10 days or I could take 35. I would be the only person to know. But the guilt would be overwhelming so I usually take far less than my allotted days. Which is actually kind of pathetic.

Besides people getting their own vacation days wrong the most annoying aspect of THIS part of my job is explaining the difference between personal days and vacation days. See there is no difference. They don't seem to get that. There is absolutely no difference between vacation days and personal days except that for whatever reason someone decided to give them two separate names. Neither of them can be “carried over” at the end of the year. Both of them must be requested in advance. You don't actually have to go on vacation to take a vacation day. Personal days are not only supposed to be used for doctors appointments and personal errands. You can use any day for whatever the fuck you want to use it for. At least that is how it works around here. And I can't understand why they can't understand that. There are plenty of things in this world that are the same but go by different names. Like a grocery store and a supermarket. They are the same thing but they have different names. A sofa and a couch; same thing different name. You get my point. It is endlessly annoying to hear people debating about whether or not to use a vacation day or a personal day. This of course wouldn't bother me if it were an internal debate...but it never is. It usually happens out loud right in front of my desk.

"Oh I don't know. I have already used 5 vacation days, maybe I should use a personal."

"mmhmm"

"But I don't want to run out of personal days."

"mmhmm"

“What do you think?”

“mmhmm”

"Oh I just don't know. I guess I will use a vacation day. Can I change it later?"

"mmhmm"

I'm not quite sure how to get it into their heads that it DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER!! It particularly doesn’t matter anymore because little to their knowledge the entire vacation policy has been completely changed. Now they don’t have vacation days OR personal days. HA HA HA. It is called Paid Leave Time. PLT is identical to both personal and vacation days, but the powers that be wanted to mix things up a bit so they changed the name. I kind of can’t wait to roll my eyes as I see their confusion. That will be quite enjoyable, although I’m sure I will stop enjoying it as soon as I have to explain the difference between PLT and vacation/personal days to them.