A Rant on Behalf of my Employees

Our official days off for the holiday are today (since Christmas Eve is on a Saturday) and Monday (since Christmas is on Sunday). The past two years, Skippy has let everyone go home early (about lunchtime) on the day before our days off. It didn't happen yesterday, so my empl...

Wait. It did happen? What? When?

Mid-afternoon, I phoned Skippy (who was on an errand to Atlanta to pick up something for someone to put in some building on campus) to let him know our brush-grinding contractor had started working, and I also wondered aloud why campus seemed so empty and Froggy and Thing One's cars weren't outside the office. That's when I found out that we had been allowed to leave at noon. He sounded surprised that I wasn't aware of it.

No one called me or left a voice mail on my cell phone. No one called me or left a voice mail on my office phone. No one e-mailed me. No one sent me a text message. No one made an announcement over the two-way radios that all managers and most staff members carry. No one told me in person. (Yeah, I know, how old-fashioned could that be?)

I can't prove it, of course, but I have a feeling that Froggy and Miss Kitty assumed that everyone would be let go at lunch "as usual", phoned Skippy and browbeat him into agreeing to it, and then chose not to inform me. Possibly (if I want to be nice), they thought Skippy would tell me. Maybe even Skippy sent a text message to the managers but accidentally left my number off the list.

As a result, everyone else got four hours paid not-work, and my crew got two. Come Monday, I'm going to raise a stink in our management meeting. I'm going to be nixed, of course, when I say my employees are owed two hours of comp. time, and Froggy is going to claim it's my fault that I didn't know. (Miss Kitty would say it, but she's back to not speaking to me.) Razzlefrazzlesnarfin...

"Life isn't fair, Calvin."
"Yeah, but why can't it ever be unfair in my favor?"