Skip to main content

Taking Off

I am one of those who do not provide any personal details in my OOO message. I am out between these dates and these people will cover for me during that time. I have been receipt of messages ranging from second honeymoon at Tahiti, 15 year old dog's emergency arthritis surgery, vacationing in Mallorca and Ibiza with family and multiple doctors' appointments through the day. 

Not sure any of these message were particularly useful or actionable for me. The last one got me quite concerned because the person sending it was in his early 30s. It it not culturally acceptable to ask if all is well unless they offer to share - which in this instance they did not. Everything appeared normal before and after that day. The person who took off to Tahiti (more power to her and her marriage), was not performing at her job for a long time while managing up and around brilliantly. No one was delighted that now she would be gone for a couple of weeks without any coverage plan.

I am not sure if any of these folks were justifying their time off - those messages are sad to read and I see a fair share of those as well - sick children, sudden disruption of child-care coverage, aging parent taken ill, bereavement and so on. But there are things that people need to do - flooded basement needing immediate attention, power outage from a storm, totaled car and such. These are all valid reasons but the fact the person is detailing it out signals a low-trust environment. A person needs time off to do what they need to do - there is no need to explain oneself. 

“‘on PTO’ conveys ‘I’m fully off work, using a company benefit.’”

“In contrast to terms like ‘sick day’ or ‘on vacation,’ it keeps the reason for the employee’s absence private—recipients don’t get to speculate about how often Jimothy is traveling or whether Pamantha has an unusual number of medical issues,” she said. “Not to mention, at workplaces with pooled time off for both categories, vacation vs. sick leave might not be a meaningful distinction anyway.”

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...