My Subconscious is on Sabbatical

I recently filled out a PTO request at work, but accidentally asked for 5 weeks off instead of 5 days.

My boss got a good laugh out of that, and I did, too. Until I started thinking about how wonderful five weeks off would be, and then I was like, wait a minute…why are we laughing?!

This reminded me of how my former father-in-law used to get these months-long “sabbaticals” from his job. “We’ll pay you not to come to work for the next three months,” they’d tell him. What a sweet deal, huh? He used the time off to travel, work on projects around the house, etc. I love my job – don’t get me wrong – but damn, what I’d give to be able to take five weeks off for real. I shouldn’t complain; after all, I did have a 618-day sabbatical of my own a few years ago, but that was without pay, which dampened my enthusiasm ever so slightly. Sure, I didn’t have to get dressed until noon, but I ended up wiping out my 401K. In the Dances With Wolves parlance, that is “not a good trade.”

But if I could keep the paycheck and still get the time off? That’d be okay with me. I’d love to take another road trip, with an endpoint a little farther than Dayton this time around. Actually, Tara and I have talked about buying an RV and traveling all over the country when we’re old and retired, which sounds great to me. Only problem: I’m going to have eight years to kill before she turns old enough to join me in retirement. I’ll have to take up a hobby, like whittling. Or making sweaters for penguins.

Speaking of work (technically I was speaking of not working, but close enough), I had an awkward encounter today with one of our new hires. It was awkward because she clearly had me confused with somebody else, but I’m not even sure who.

“Thanks for the help with {insert member name}!” she said brightly when we bumped into each other in the kitchen.

“Of course!” I replied “Glad to help.”

Now, I didn’t specifically remember helping her with {insert member name}, but I work on stuff for a lot of different people every day, and figured I must have helped her somehow.

“I’m still having technical issues with the workflow algorithm,” she continued. “Is it supposed to auto-populate the address fields?”

Umm. Err. WTF?!

By now, I realized she thought I was somebody else entirely. Somebody in the web or IT department. I should have bailed out gracefully, but then I’d have looked stupid for taking credit for helping her earlier, so in order to save face I continued to play along. Only I don’t know a damn thing about which fields are supposed to auto-populate and, in fact, didn’t understand one damn thing she had just asked, so my blurted-out answer – “I am not aware of any limitations pertaining to that particular program” – made me sound like the world’s stupidest IT guy.

Which means, in an effort to not look dumb, I ended up looking dumber than if I’d just corrected her the moment I realized she thought I was somebody else.

I did save it with an “I’ll look into that and get back to you!”, only I can’t really do that because I don’t even know what I’m looking into in the first place.

Work is so damn complicated these days. I could really use a week or five off…