Tech Tips for Catholics

I am convinced that a lady I work with has perfected the art of using her vacation days.  Depending how many days and how your company’s vacation policies are, you may want to consider some of the key planning techniques used by my brilliant co-worker:

• Put your requests in early (like before everybody else).
• Take Mondays/Fridays off weekly to have extra long weekends.  Let’s just say you get three weeks worth of vacation per year; you could have three day weekends for about half the year straight! (man, I wish I would have thought of this.  Now I have to wait until next year to try it!)
• Plan your vacation days before and after paid Holidays (if you get paid holidays).  This will feel like you actually took an entire week off (without using up as many v-days!)
• Don’t let others in on your little secret until your requested days have been approved by whomever does the scheduling.  This sounds a little selfish now that I think about it.

These may just be commonsense to most of you, but I never really thought of’em until I began to realize this co-worker is never at work on the coolest days to not be at work : )

Every employer is different.  I’ve worked for one where we had to use our vacations days a week at a time (meaning that we couldn’t take off individual days).  The place I work at now is really nice about letting us use our vacations days whenever we want as long as it is approved and we have someone covering our department while we are gone.  If you don’t get vacations days or personal days at all, then maybe you should consider a new career ; )