The Only One In The Office

I'm only a day and a few hours into the week and I've already noticed a marked increase in the number of phone calls I'm getting at work. At least I know the reason for this. As we approach the holidays and the end of the year, people have been taking time off for vacation and to use up any comp-time accrued during the year. While we all have roughly the same ammount of vacation time, the other planners in the department have banked a lot more comp-time than me (they have a lot of long night meetings). And since the City only has a limited ammount of money to pay-out on comp-time, the others are (understandibly) using as much of it as they can.

The result, however, is that I'm really the only planner in the department for the rest of the year.

On the one hand, being the only here means that I've been able to work on getting caught up on a few things which have had to be put aside at various points - which is good. On the other hand, since I'm the only one here, any time anyone has a planning related question, guess who gets it.

Yep, me.

Luckily, most of them I have been able to answer or they've been things which can wait until after the first of the year when the others are back.

The real fun thing? I'm going to be gone the rest of this week after today! This, of course, has put our angry, bigotted secretary in a snit. She spent 20 minutes yesterday bitching at me because there weren't going to be any planners around the second half of this week. I tried to explain that if the others used all of their comp-time time right after they get it, they wouldn't be in the office during the day
anyway. She refuses to accept this. She says "Well, when I worked for the non-profit, everyone was saleried and we didn't have this 'comp-time' crap." Well, yes, that's true. Saleried positions do not get comp-time. They also get paid more than us.

Ah well, another 5 hours and 10 minutes and I won't have to hear about it for a few days. In the meantime, I'm thinking I'm about due for another random call - it's been 10 minutes!

We Are Everywhere

I'm sitting watching the Avalanche/Blues hockey game - which makes me very happy by the way, and that's not just because the Avs are currently up 2-0 - and I've noticed something. The Avalanche have become one of those teams that it doesn't matter where they are, if you watch one of their away games you'll see a decent number of people in Avs gear (the only exception, maybe, being Red Wings games).

And yes, I know it's been a long while since I last posted - things have been crazy the last few months. I'm hoping to get back into the habit again soon.