ten years and counting....

As of last Saturday, I have been at my current job for ten years. There was no party, no gold watch, no token ten-year pin. As a matter of fact, it would have gone totally unacknowledged if I hadn't mentioned it. (Insert heavy sigh here.) Does no one remember the days of employers giving gifts for work anniversaires? Pins? Plaques? Bonuses? Those were the days.



Being on the job for ten years creates a number of interesting statistics. I'm assuming that that is the proper phraseology - a 'number' of statistics. A 'pod' of statistics like a 'pod' of whales doesn't sound right, and a 'murder' of statistics like a 'murder' of crows, might seem appropriate, but a little over the top...unless you're buried in statistics, then it might be the best option. Back to the 'number' of statistics. Being on the job for ten years means approximately 3652 days have passed, assuming that two leap years are included. These are not exact statistics, so don't burn the math. Of these 3652 days, 1040 of them were weekends. Not to say I didn't work any weekends, but for the sake of this demonstration let's say I didn't. So were down to 2612 days. For the first five years, I had two weeks of vacation per year, one week of sick days and about five odd holiday - give or take one or two depending on if Christmas and New Year's day were on a weekend. Let's go with five. So that is four weeks off (remember - we've already excluded weekends, so a 'week' is now five business days) for each of the first five years, and since after five years, our vacation is increased to three weeks - five weeks off for each of the second five years, for a total of forty-five weeks off over ten years. Let's add a week for the occasional snow day and those odd Christmas/New Year's days. So - forty-six weeks off over ten years, for a total of 230 days, which takes our grand total down to 2382 days of actual work.



I have walked into that building and that office door at least 2382 times. Imagine doing anything 2382 times. It's a little mind boggling (unless you're a teenaged boy - in which case you can imagine doing 'something' 2382 in one year.) To put it in perspective....if someone handed me a penny each time I walked in, I would have $23.82. That would buy my lunch for, oh, about a week. That seems a little pathetic, so let's up it to $1.00 a day which would give me $2382.00. That's a little better - at least I could purchase a nice refridgerator/freezer combo or a hundred new DVDs on sale If we raise it to $10.00 a day, I could have banked $23,820.00, which would be a nice little nest egg to survive on, for say....six months. I'm going to recommend this to anyone who is working - besides your pension and 401K, put at least another $10.00 a day into a bank account you don't touch. I think of the interest I could have accrued and I need to go cry now.



I'm back. What if we raise it to $100.00 a day? Then I would have $238,200.00 which seems much better. With that you could buy a decent house in the midwest - not a mansion by any stretch, but a decent house. Now..if you break it down, a hundred dollars a day is only $12.50 an hour for an eight-hour-day. I don't think I'm breaking any rules by saying that I've more than averaged this over the past ten years. Where the hell is my $238,200.00?????



Maybe a 'murder' of statistics is more accurate.



Next year I will have an additional week of vacation added for a total of four weeks vacation, a week of sick time and the odd five holidays. Ok, ok...I know...it's no longer 'vacation time', but 'Personal Time Off" or PTO time. Next year I'll have twenty-five days of PTO time and the odd five holidays for a total of six weeks (business weeks - five days- remember?). I jokingly tell my co-workers that I am taking twenty of those days and simply taking February off. I'll just leave on January 31st and say 'See you in March.' I found this amusing until one killjoy employee, who shall remain nameless (mostly because I can't remember who it was -remember who's blogging here folks!), pointed out that, "I don't think they'd let you do that. Most places won't let you do that.' People, I can't even imagine what my desk would look like after taking a month off, mostly because I probably wouldn't be able to unearth it when I got back. If you don't have a sense of humor, get one - you'll love it. And they're free.



I'm sure I'll have no problem using my six weeks off. A new policy last year declared that we could no longer come in early, work through lunch or leave late to make up for, say, a doctor's appointment. You have to use your PTO time every time. You don't realize it for a while, but this really nickles and dimes your PTO time to death (a 'murder' of PTO time perhaps?) This is the first year that I will not have five days of vacation time to carry over (it was vacation time for nine years - hard habit to break!). Twenty hours of PTO time (are you happy now?) is the most you can carry over to the next year. Last year, horror of horrors, I gave up about twelve hours of time because I had more than a week left. In my defense, our management didn't tell us until the end of November that we had to use our vaca...sigh..PTO time off (ok, that's a little redundant!) before December 20th. I had holiday plans, but there is too much work to do to take too much time off in December. Believe me, that will never happen again. It's only the beginning of September and I have less than a weeks worth of time left to take off this year. Damn that nickle and diming.



Back to my six weeks. Since there are only fifty-two weeks in a year, this means that I will have over one-tenth of the year off. That would mean that if I worked every available day next year, I could get up and leave about fifty minutes early every day! 1540? I'm out of here! I could take every Friday off for the first thirty weeks of the year. Every Friday from January thru the middle of August. I could take an entire week off every other month. Or two weeks off ever fourth month. Or the entire month of February and two other weeks just to spite the killjoy. Damn the buried desk.



To recap, over the past ten years, I've had about forty-six weeks off. That, in really, really rounding-up land, is almost working nine years and getting the tenth one off. This makes me feel a little better that I didn't get a pin or a bonus. But not much. Our office is moving at the end of October and I will actually have a window in my new office, with real sunlight and everything. For the past six odd years, I've been in a windowless cave, but being that my ancestors are from Transylvania, this really hasn't been a bad thing - I'm really, really, really, really white. Ask anyone. I'm practically translucent. It will still be nice to have a window in a bigger office. I think I've earned it.



So, I'll lay in a supply of sunscreen, keep the blinds closed (especially in the morning!) and once in a while I'll peer out over the parking deck next store to see downtown. If I'm still at this job, this will this be my view for the next ten years. ........minus sixty weeks or so.


Holly