Saturday, December 22, 2007

Saturday Night

It's the Saturday before Christmas and this will have to be one of the most benign holiday seasons that I've ever experienced in the US. There have been almost no festivities that I was aware of at work and there were no gifts to make me feel uncomfortable from vendors. I couldn't be more delighted.

Five years ago we were still having holiday parties at work. These were loud boozy affairs that always made me feel as if I needed to keep my guard up. It wasn't cool not to go but it certainly wasn't fun going. I wasn't sorry when they said that our budget cuts wouldn't allow for them any longer. My boss did take us out to lunch yesterday. It was a last minute thing and relatively unthreatening.

The coming week seems to be an unofficial company holiday. I think only one other member of our team besides me will be in. Some of these people have just started working for the company so it's a little hard to understand where they have the time coming from. I recently read in the newspaper that IBM has stopped recording vacation time for their non-hourly employees. It's sort of an honor system. I think that de facto is where The Times is now.

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