I gotta tell ya - it really sucks having to go to work when most folks, or at least lots of folks, don't have to. I got up this morning, at the brutish hour of 6 a.m., as I do most Mondays, turned on the news and heard story after story about the MLK holiday.
There was an interview with a lady organizing a parade. There was the traffic report (It's really light out there! No one's on the road thanks to the holiday!). There was the weather report (Here's your holiday weather report!). It's like they wanted to rub it in to me personally.
It was bad enough that when I left my last job, I lost an entire week of vacation (they told me in my interview for my current job how much vacation I'd have, and it was the same as my previous job, but when I got here, it was a week less than that...grrrr). That was a hit. Because honestly, I'd rather have less money and more time off. And had my previous job not been killing me, bit by bit, day by day, I'd have been perfectly happy to remain at the salary I was making with all the cool government holidays and the vacation I was up to thanks to my tenure.
But it was, indeed, killing me. So, I had to make a change. And unfortunately, the change that presented itself was in the private sector which meant losing all of my tenure (if I'd gone to another state government agency, my tenure would have stayed intact) and the leave accruals that came with that tenure. As I said above, I was immediately miffed to discover I'd been misled about my vacation in my interview, then I found out that my sick leave would be half what it had been at my previous job. And I couldn't take any of it for 6 months. Welcome to the private sector.
I've adjusted for the most part to my lot. But there are days when it still gets to me. Like today. Right now, I'm toiling away at my desk, doing my work, trying not to let the dreary, rainy weather bring me down because I'd really rather be at home on my couch (no doubt pondering the contributions of MLK), and outside my window, there it is - the parade. Or rather, a march. I don't think you can call it a parade if all you've got is a drum followed by a bunch of people. That's a march.
Whatever it is, those people aren't at work - any of them. They're off today. Like I should be. F-ing private sector. I need to call my old co-workers and have them remind me how miserable it was at my old job (and still is from the reports of those still there)...
2 comments:
Its a give-and-take. Scott's officially off today, but he's working like a dog at home on some computer stuff, and he's state-related. I'm not teaching, the boys aren't at school, but I'm writing today, thanks to my multiple jobs, haha, in the private sector.
At least it isn't 78 degrees and sunny today. That would really suck.
I'd take working from home in my sweats, able to take a break whenever I feel like it, and able to stop when my work is done and go do something else over being stuck at the office, on a set schedule, unable to go run an errand or go to a doctor's appt without advance permission and burning leave time, in office clothes any day. I once had a job where I got a telecommuting day one day at a week - that was awesome.
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