Running Out of Sick Days?!

Last full day for visiting in-laws. We didn't visit the "world famous" San Diego Zoo as discussed but went to PB instead. Who could miss such a perfect beach day?

They picked me up 12 pm sharp since I only asked for half day off. We then rushed to PB for lunch first. Joyce (John's mom) really wanted to go to Cass Street Bar & Grill though we didn't particularly care for going. She always liked that place ever since Kate (John's eldest sister) took her there.

"Kate just loves their Oriental Chicken Salad! She likes it so much that she DRINKS the dressing after eating everything on the plate." Joyce was very excited to get another taste of Oriental Chicken Salad.

Are there routines for vacations?

You bet cha!

Joyce wanted Oriental Chicken Salad from Cass Street just about every time she came to San Diego and Henry (John's dad) always asked to take a ride to Cardiff By the Sea and then had fish tacos from Las Olas, a little Mexican restaurant facing HWY 101 and the Pacific. That we did yesterday.

"There are a lot of people here for a Tuesday. Don't people have to work?" Henry seemed to be puzzled by the crowd down at the beach around 2 pm.

Spring Break should be over by then. It's the 3rd week of April. Though there are tons tourists in San Diego all year round, the group playing horseshoe in front of us looked oddly familiar to me. They seemed to be some fraternity guys from SDSU that I saw sometimes while waiting for the buses right next to a fraternity house.

Great looking young men and women passed by. You know they are mostly Californians, not tourists. I suppose when you live here for a while you can spot the natives, migraters, or tourists. We are often mistaken as tourists -- that says something about our "fitting in" issue, doesn't it?

Students may be skipping classes; some people could take a sick day out seeking beach therapy. We saw in a gift shop a T-shirt with a surfer dude printed at font and read "I'm running out of sick days, so I'm calling in dead." Joyce and I giggled about it for a good half-day.

My work employs an interesting holiday benefits: for the first year, a fulltime employee will receive one week paid vacation days but not included in regular pay-period. He/she will receive a check of one week's pay on the anniversary date's pay-period. In other words, any time we miss work, we don't get paid and if we don't work there for a full year, we lose vacation pay. We don't have paid personal days or paid sick days, either. No work, no pay. It's that simple.

John's work offers paid personal days / sick days. In the past, the management never asked the employees when or why they took personal days as long as they didn't run out. His co-workers had been leaving early telling the guys in adjacent cubicles, "I'm going to the beach." He had done the same thing without telling anybody--simply picked up his bag, sign off how many hours he took--and left. Recently, managers had requested them to give legitimate excuses for using personal days / sick days.

Employers sure need to come up with something to deal with "beach therapy" in Southern California, don't they?


Note:

PB = Pacific Beach
SDSU = San Diego State University