March 1, 2006
Dear Everyone:
Have I mentioned the Personal Choice Holiday (PCH)?
Back in 1984, when Company acquired “That Other Company”, it acquired its proven reserves and its lawsuits, its assets and its liabilities, its employees and their benefits. Some pieces were divested immediately. For instance, in certain market areas, either Company or “That Other Company” “snafu situations” had to be sold off to satisfy the Fair Trade Commission.
Human Resources (HR) also took a look at Company Observed Holidays, those national holidays that the Company gave to employees as paid days off. The usual suspects lined up: New Year’s Day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving (and the day after), Christmas Day (and the day before or after, depending on where it landed in the week.)
But where Company observed Veterans Day (November 11th), “That Other Company” observed…
Are you ready?
At first glance it seemed like a slam dunk. The former “That Other Company” employees (“TOCites”) would simply drop Good Friday and observe Veterans Day. You should have heard the cries of outrage! No way were the “TOCites” giving up the Friday before Easter. Repeat: No way!
What to do? In the meantime, there was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday hippety-hopping down the Bunny Trail, on its way to becoming another national holiday the following year. So HR came up with the idea of a Personal Choice Holiday. Each employee was free to choose any day they wanted, as long as it didn’t have an adverse effect on their work group.
Want Dr. King’s birthday off? Go ahead. Want your own birthday off? That’s cool. Want to take Veterans Day to show respect to the many men and women who served their country in the Armed Forces? That’s your choice.
The PCH was gleefully embraced by all and everything was happy. For a while. The funny thing is, I only saw one “TOCite” ever take Good Friday off. And I suspected it was more out of habit than anything else.
Next thing they came up with was the Alternate Work Schedule (AWS), sometimes called the Compressed Work Week (CWW). It is most commonly referred to as “9/80”. This is because most people who choose AWS/CWW work 80 hours in 9 consecutive workdays. Then they get a three-day weekend. A three-day weekend every other week looks promising.
But the catch was, you had to give up a holiday. They can show you the math that proves that you actually get just as many hours off as the people who work the more traditional 5/40 schedule. So they just took away the PCH.
After a couple of years, the 9/80 people began to resent the fact that they didn’t get a PCH and started their own howling. The new compromise: They could take Presidents Day as a national holiday, or they could work on Presidents Day (the one day the Company agreed to keep the lights on and the support staff working) and take some other day as their PCH. Everybody happy? Yes, until next time.
All of this is coming around to the fact that I’m taking next Monday as my PCH. Why that particular day? It’s the day after the Academy Awards. When I realized that “Jeannie” would be in town for the Awards (previously we had thought she would be visiting “Alice”), I decided it was time we had an Oscar party. Haven’t had one of those in a long, long time.
I also invited a friend from ARMA. So we’ll get together at my place, eat junk food, have a glass of wine (or two) and cheer on our favorites. (Go, Philip Seymour Hoffman!) And I won’t have to worry about getting up the next morning to go to work. “Jeannie” can even stay over that night if she chooses.
On Monday, I can sleep in and have plenty of time
to clean up after the party.
I’ll also have time to pack because I’ll be getting up in the middle of
the night to be at the airport by 5:00 am on Tuesday.
I’ll be flying to “Abbeville”,
Which means no Letter next week. I’ll be back Friday afternoon.
Love as always,
Pete
“The only way have a clean house every day, is to
throw a party every night.”
--Phyllis Diller
P.
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