Accrued Benefits

I still have almost 4 weeks of vacation due to me - the "accrued benefits" of not taking a vacation for over 2 ½ years. (I have to agree with the Counters here: lying in bed sick for a week doesn't quite count as rest).

Almost 4 weeks. Now they tell me I have to "use it or lose it" before the 4th of July.

This is odd, because I just took a week's vacation a month ago. Apparently the Counters reign over the Accountable: the message was filtered down from HR to my VP to my immediate supervisor/lead, who told me this with horror in her eyes, because she knows what is coming up.

Then again, she took off two weeks a month ago at the same time I had my 1 week vacation - mine planned a half year in advance - without particularly caring about accountability for the department. Because she left 2 days before me, she even wrote a company-wide email referring all of her caseload to me. (And me? I had no one to slough it off to, so all I could do was apologize and tell everyone to put it on my desk. Yep, it was there WAITING, Waiting, waiting.)

But now I gotta go on vacation again, starting next week. 'Wonder how we'll work that out?