post the fifteenth, 2013

weather got bad today - freezing rain - and management let us out of work early. they never used to do that -- i've been at the same job for over 20 years, and up until a few years ago, we never got a break for bad weather. we were always expected to be there and that was that. easy to know what's expected when the same thing is always expected. they sort of opened a can of worms by closing several times one year... might have been three years ago... they closed several times and bad weather didn't materialize. it sort of became a joke and i thought they'd got it out of their system, but no, they closed early again today. sure, it's nice to beat the bulk of traffic -- well, after fighting the press of traffic leaving the company parking lot -- and it's nice to get by the grocery an hour earlier and maybe find a loaf of bread still on the shelf, but it's not exactly what you'd call vital. i mean, the weather is a bit rough, but it's not any more life-threatening than a normal rush hour.

besides the unnecessarity of closing and the confusion caused by the arbitrary nature of the closures, there is another complication. see, you've got what are called "exempt" and "non-exempt" employees. exempt means exempt from overtime, essentially, salaried. non-exempt are paid hourly and qualify for overtime. where i work, non-exempt employees are required to use vacation or leave time to cover the lost work time when the offices are closed. exempt employees are not dinged at all for the closure. seems incredibly unfair to me. i understand that non-exempt folks are provided with leave and emergency leave time, and those are the buckets from which this time is removed, which is better than requiring them to take vacation, BUT if they're out of leave they DO have to take vacation. leave is for sick days and also for everything from dr appts to child care snafus, and vacation is vacation. the key issue here, though, is that the offices are closed -- if you showed up for work, you would not be able to get into the building. this is absolutely outside of the control of any but the executives who made the decision. seems unfair that folks are required to use their leave time when they don't have a say in the decision.