Paid Vacation

“Compassion is the ultimate value in life.

Service is the ultimate action.”

Jonathan Lockwood Huie

As of September first , my job status will change from being an hourly employee to a salaried employee.

This is a huge adjustment for me.

This change in status comes with both plusses and minuses,the plusses far outweighing the minor adjustments I will have to make in my life.

I get health insurance (don't get me started on this).

I get a retirement plan.

Really?

I will have sick days ,although I never get sick.

I will get paid for holidays.

(Now there's something special!)

I will have personal days, although I am not 100% sure what those are.

And I will have paid vacation time.

This would be fantastic,if in fact I ever took a vacation.

The truth is, as a business owner,I have always carried a certain disdain for the whole idea of paid vacations.

When one of my employees would go on vacation, not only would I have to pay him, I would have to pay someone to do the job that was now not getting done because that employee was not there.

It felt punitive to me.

I would much rather have paid that same employee at a higher rate when in fact he or she was being productive for me.

The truth is, if you are doing a job that is worth $20/hour why am I paying you $20 an hour for not doing it?

So now I will have all of these off days available to me.

If I don't use them, I lose them.

I don't understand any of this.

You want to pay me to not work and if I continue to work then I get it taken away from me.

How's that make me happy?

This is going to be a big adjustment for me.

Don't get me wrong. The benefit of having a balanced set amount in my pay twice a month will certainly make budgeting a whole lot easier.

Not losing almost 2 weeks of pay when the Jewish holidays come around is huge!

Still I find myself struggling with what to do about this seemingly mandatory time off.

Why do people have to complicate my life?

Aaaaaaargh!