Vacation Days

One of the benefits for working for my current employer is that I get a ton of vacation days. Because if my tenure, I currently garner 120 hours of vacation a week. Three whole weeks, pretty nice. I also have the luxury of carrying over 80 hours of vacation from one year to the next. The first couple of years I quickly accumulated the 80 hours to carry from one year to the next. So now I'm faced with having to consume those 120 hours of vacation, otherwise I will loose them. Over the last couple of years this has posed a problem.

For me to take a vacation day, my preference would be to leave town. Here in lies the rub. Typically out-of-town trips the family takes are usually during the summer months, when schools aren't in session. Summer time is also the busiest time of year for my vocation, so to take three weeks off is unlikely. When I first started with my current employer, I typically could use up vacation during the week between Christmas and New Years. Several years ago my employer chose to eliminate this week in an effort to reduce overhead costs (lighting, heating, etc) and provided this week as holiday leave. This year my employer chose to do a similar thing with the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, again another day I typically take as vacation. So now I have less days in which to account against my vacation days.

I'm sure many do not feel the predicament I am in. My own brother-in-law is one who doesn't have the same number of available vacation days, and so was very stingy with his allotment since he had a new baby due this year. To compound my vacation day situation, I have like five months worth of six days. So when my bride had our kids, I simply counted these as "family sick" days and it didn't impact my vacation allowance.

My bride often tells me that I should just take a couple days off and go fishing or something. Given the fact we have one car and the cost of gasoline is averaging $3 a gallon, even this advice is falling on deaf ears. Of course her response is that she could simply provide me with enough "honey-dos" to consume my available vacation distribution. Again, not something I'd like to do on a day off.

I am thankful I have the availability to use vacation and the liberty to take it when I want, but finding the right fit of purpose and timing is what complicates the equation for me. I hate to loose these days, but I also would hate to waste the wonderful opportunity of a day way from the job. Maybe I'm thinking about it too much, and just need to take a day of vacation to put it all into proper perspective.

Black Friday

For several years, my family has enjoyed a rich shopping tradition the day after Thanksgiving. As we watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, we'd comb through the newspaper advertisement, and make our Christmas wish list. Then my mother, her sister, and my uncle (who loves to sniff out a great deal); would develop their strategic plan to capture as many of the wish list items at ridiculous low prices. This typically would involve rising before the sun on Friday, and waiting in line to enter stores at 5am, 6am, or 7am. Once I greeted my own bride to this strike team, the baton was passed to the next generation. List are made divided by stores and opening times, and assignments are handed out. Cell phones and SMS messaging has enabled enhanced communications in the event an item isn't available at one location, the other squad of shoppers can be notified in time to pickup an item at the secondary target. You may think the tactical analogy is taking this event too far, but I assure you it accurately depicts this family ritual.

In recent years the Internet has fueled this ritual. With websites such as bfads.net, the family no longer has to wait for the Thursday paper to determine what items can be captured on Black Friday. Beginning in late October, once a week I've found myself searching for leaks of what to expect in the full color advertisements destined to be delivered to us on Thanksgiving. With this bit of advance intel, we can be completed by 11am and ready to spend the remaining hours on Black Friday vegging out on the couch watching college football and congratulating ourselves on the amount of money we saved with our early morning exercises.

However this new bit of information, also robs us of the jubilation that can be found as we pour through the print ads in hopes that the kids toys or dad's electronics maybe available at lower than low prices. We still check the print ads, know full well that our intel may have been compromised or a legal order may have prevented our source from acquiring the goods for a certain big box retailer.

Last year one of my wife's friends, who got a kick out of this family ritual, got the last laugh when she bunked the whole system by taking the advertisements to her local big box retailer that offered price matching. At 11am, armed with the print ads, she simply waltzed into the price matching retailer, and collected the goods she desired at the advertised price of the other outfits. In one fell swoop she dismantled the tactical approach by using the published rules of engagement. She systematically refuted the whole system, and probably saved more because she didn't expend the extra gas running from retailer A at 5am, then retailer B at 6am, as well as not having to purchase the Cinnamon Dolce Latte to ensure she was prepared for the tactical exercise. Although she may have found a more efficient method, did she have the same euphoria of the hunt?