Animato

[altivo]

Well, except for overflowing book drops, work wasn't all that bad today. Combined high and low point: I got a note advising me that I have too many accumulated vacation days and must use a bunch of them up before the end of 2012. How much is too much? Well, it says I have 43 days. I'm not sure that's right, but I can't see any way to dispute it. I have trouble scheduling blocks of time off, and it's hard to use up that many days one at a time. I may have to do something like take every Thursday off for the rest of the year...

I'm not the only one in that situation. The circulation manager has a similar large accrual, and was joking that I could just take the spring off and she'd take the summer...

Last night we watched Disney's Fantasia and tonight we saw the Italian "remake" in Allegro Non Troppo. I won't say one is better than the other, but rather that they complement each other to make something even better when combined.

I also did two uncharacteristically "consumerist foolishness" things. A calendar I wanted was 60% off at Amazon, and I added two other books to the order to get the free shipping. Of course that's just what they hope you will do. In my defense, the two books had been on my wish list for a while and I was going to eventually buy them anyway. The second? I bought another railroad car off Ebay. It was only $11, and it was a DT&I one that we don't yet have, but the real reason I bought it now was that I had already accumulated $2.50 in "Ebay bucks" from the other stuff I bought during December. Again, just what they want you to do. Someone take away my passwords and hide them.

Comments

[moonhare]

We can't 'accumulate,' nor can we trade days for pay... use or lose. The Circulation Manager loses at least two weeks a year, sometimes three. I end up taking large lumps of days at the end of the year when it dawns on me that time is running out (I was off from December 16 to January 2 this last time).

It took three of us two hours to check in and stage all of the returns from the holiday. We still didn't have time to pull the new holds (60) or clear the expired ones.

[altivo]

Sick leave here does accumulate up to some large maximum that can be paid at retirement or severance. Vacation carryover, though, is supposedly limited to no more than seven days from one year to the next.

The problem is that we get no timely warning that we are over quota, and that for many years the vacation calendar turned over with the fiscal year on May 1. When they switched to a calendar year basis, several of us suddenly were over quota and were given a "temporary" exemption. I'm going to have to be more hard-nosed about taking my days, that's all. We are chronically short staffed now, and I hate it when two people are out at once. Consequently, I try to avoid causing that situation myself. Obviously, that's counterproductive for me. Also, I'm the only full time staffer without children, grandchildren, and multitudinous "family" reasons for taking time off...