Last week I had jury duty. I did not get seated for a trial. What I did do was blow an entire work day in and around the courthouse. Combine that with the fact that I am on furlough one day a week and my Friday was a little bit pressured with requests.
One of those was from a staffer in California who is a nice woman and always understanding when it comes to timelines. She called me in the late morning to ask if maybe, possibly, I’d be getting to their request because the vote by the San Francisco City Council was this upcoming Tuesday. She was most sympathetic when I explained to her that I had been out on jury duty on top of being on furlough one day a week and remarked that it would be helpful for her in planning to know that I’m only working four days a week.
Having gotten no guidance from my boss, who is NewBigBoss, on how to let folks know about this, and having forgotten to ask him about it during our weekly check-in call yesterday, I asked him today by e-mail how he wanted me to handle letting folks know I’m on furlough on Wednesdays. His reply: “I’d just as soon not put that message out broadly. Staff will just have to give you the notice you’ve requested and we’ll work to meet it.”
And what this says to me is that they did not, in fact, offer the “compensatory time off” to everyone. They waited for people to ask for it. They expected most of the staff would just swallow the pay cuts, and I suspect most of the staff did just that. As far as I know, I am the only person in the DC office who is actually taking the furlough day.
So does this mean I have an over-inflated sense of entitlement or that my co-workers have no spines?
And in other strange questions: how long is it going to take the cat to catch the annual mouse? Yes, we get slightly less than 1 per year. The challenge is always to find the <ehm> remains before they start to smell.
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