Fired

Workaholics go to meetings
Chapter 4: The Package (part 2)

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As I sat there wasting away minutes at useless calculations, I wondered why everything was bundled into one giant PTO pool. Imagine if baseball didn’t break down hits into singles, doubles, triples, and home runs. You’d be as confused reading the back of the baseball card as the manager trying to set the lineup. Being the statistical guru that I am, I separated everything into categories: PTO that is automatic (like holidays), PTO that is granted (like vacation), and PTO that is urgent (like sick time). This made perfect sense – PTO as a single category should not exist if you plan to track it. But no one really tracked it before. People just entered their PTO hours in the weekly time reporter and that was it. No one checked it, no one cared. But I decided that I would.

The owners were on board right away, and I was writing policy change notices before I knew it. Advance request past future different directions sign postrequirements, half day options, the snowball had been pushed off and was barreling down at the speed of light. And in the midst of it all, there I was, like a wizard waving a magic wand, creating rules and policies, setting requirements… What the f**k did I know about setting policies? I wasn’t a business owner now; I had never been one before. I did not realize…or maybe just didn’t care to realize that this made life harder on everyone. I’ve been an employee my whole life, yet I was sitting there in a suit and tie, and a smart-ass look on my face, setting up hoops for everyone to jump through. Not that I cared. I felt power. For the first time in my life, I felt like I exist outside my little circle of friends and family. Little did I realize at the time that the new system of tracking PTO will come back to bite me so hard in the ass that I still feel the sting crawling up my spine. Everything was rolling along smoothly, and then I fucked it all up…

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