So my new clinic is going to be Unexpectedly Closed (save for outpatient imagining) for a couple days (we just. We have no doctors scheduled. No one was scheduled in advance and now all the doctors we have are Unable To Work Those Days).
Management basically told us to figure out what we wanted to do and gave us specific rules: one of us had to go to the other clinic one of those days, the other day only one of us had to go but by that they meant one of us Had to go, one of us had to still be in the closed clinic both days for our outpatient imagining appointments, the rest of us could either pick up shifts at the non-emergency clinics (for a pay cut those days) or do PTO
What followed was us gathering together to do what was essentially a very convoluted version of the Fox-Chicken-Grain riddle because among us where people who carpooled, people who couldnāt afford the pay cut for those days, people who could get to one clinic but not the other easily, people who just didnāt have the PTO, etc. And when the chips were down, I realized that the easiest thing for all of us would be if I specifically took PTO (or worked at a non-emergency clinic but like. Fuck that I got bills). Thanks to my overtime, I had the hours, and I wasnāt planning on using it any time soon (see, we have so many floating holiday hours, BUT we arenāt allowed to use them unless we request it a month in advance and they donāt roll over at the end of the year like PTO. Iām able to use that for my trips. No we arenāt allowed to use them here even though we all have more than enough hours to cover because we all had like a weekās notice and schedules fucking hates us). So I told everyone to just put me down as Bye Bye those days
Everyone was super concerned and kept asking if I was sure. See, the thing is that our company doesnāt have designated sick hours. We do have a lot of UTO, but we arenāt allowed to request to use them until weāve completed exhausted our PTO. So if we have to call out, we have to use PTO time
And hey, I know Iām gambling slightly. If I get sick, like earlier this year when I got RSV and had to stay home for nine days, Iām probably gonna be hurting. BUT I still currently have more wiggle room than the majority of my coworkers here.
So Iām like āoh nooooo Iām basically getting a surprise paid vacation, how terrrrrrible. Guys itās fine, Iāll just go to the city the next state over or somethingā
Hereās the thing, I said that last part as a joke. I was fully intending to just spend the week alone in my apartment, doing homework and working on art/fanfics or something. But my coworkers got super excited for me. Like they all immediately lit up.
See, part of why they immediately took me completely seriously is that they all see me as this artsy free spirit that just does things spontaneously (hey, you randomly buzz your hair off a couple of times, get into sewing, and get a couple free tattoos from local tattoo students, and suddenly youāre the local Manic Pixie Dream Guy) and partially because Iāve actually lowkey been talking about visiting this city for years, but always as a Oh One Day type of thing. I didnāt even realize anyone had noticed or remembered me mentioning it
Like one of my coworkers started looking up affordable hotels for me, another got so excited and started talking about the places they thought Iād like, another gave me a list of food recommendation. Apparently with anybody else they wouldāve just taken it as an Oh One Day type of joke, but no, they just looked at me and went āCyrus would, yeah. Letās all live vicariously through them because thereās zero question of them actually doing thisā
And hey, Iāve looked it up often enough to know that tickets there, plus tickets to all the specific things I wanted to do, happened to be relatively cheap considering this was the middle of the work week. Things that I can in fact afford these days. And just last week both my sister and my dad were nagging me about taking a trip for myself instead of just visiting them
And as I was sitting there, looking over the stupidly complicated notes we needed to decide who does what next week, I realized Iāve somehow never actually booked a hotel room for myself. Iāve stayed with family, only gone on short business trips, Iāve even been asked to tag along to a friendās roadtrip and slept in the living room of a complete stranger over night, or Iāve just not had the time or money to do something like this
I suddenly had the time, I just so happened to have the money, and I realized that I actually really, really wanted to go
Soā¦ guess just bought travel tickets for next week
