Still on call
It's defcon 5 at the household waiting for the imminent delivery of our new grandson. Might be tomorrow, might be a week from now, hell, it might be a month from now given the ways of babies plotting when they want to be born. I've given my supervisor at work a heads up since I might be called away with little notice. They have a really strict absentee policy at work, but we've come up with a plan. Provided the baby pays just a scant attention to my work schedule, it may be possible for me to attend the birth with no workplace consequences. But if the baby pays absolutely no attention to my work schedule, consequences by damned. It's not like I'm earning the big bucks. Still, I appreciate the workplace efforts to tweak the policy as best they can. I find myself at times longing for the "good old days" when I had a job that provided sick leave to cover such events until I remember that I never got to actually USE that sick leave. At those jobs, it didn't matter that my father was in the hospital for surgery that only carried at 20% survival rate or that I personally had a bleeding ulcer, I couldn't call in sick or take a vacation day because no one else knew how to do my job. At least with my current job, there's at least 100 other people that can do what I do. And provided I can give enough notice (as little as 24 hours in some cases), my schedule can be cleared and I'll be subject to no disciplinary action. That's much more valuable than some sick leave that I'm never allowed to actually USE.