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 couldn’t afford the pay cut for those days, people who could get to one clinic but not the other easily, people who just didn’t 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 wasn’t planning on using it any time soon (see, we have so many floating holiday hours, BUT we aren’t allowed to use them unless we request it a month in advance and they don’t roll over at the end of the year like PTO. I’m able to use that for my trips. No we aren’t allowed to use them here even though we all have more than enough hours to cover because we all had like a week’s 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 doesn’t have designated sick hours. We do have a lot of UTO, but we aren’t allowed to request to use them until we’ve completed exhausted our PTO. So if we have to call out, we have to use PTO time
And hey, I know I’m gambling slightly. If I get sick, like earlier this year when I got RSV and had to stay home for nine days, I’m probably gonna be hurting. BUT I still currently have more wiggle room than the majority of my coworkers here.
So I’m like “oh nooooo I’m basically getting a surprise paid vacation, how terrrrrrible. Guys it’s fine, I’ll just go to the city the next state over or something”
Here’s 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 you’re the local Manic Pixie Dream Guy) and partially because I’ve actually lowkey been talking about visiting this city for years, but always as a Oh One Day type of thing. I didn’t 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 I’d like, another gave me a list of food recommendation. Apparently with anybody else they would’ve just taken it as an Oh One Day type of joke, but no, they just looked at me and went “Cyrus would, yeah. Let’s all live vicariously through them because there’s zero question of them actually doing this”
And hey, I’ve 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 I’ve somehow never actually booked a hotel room for myself. I’ve stayed with family, only gone on short business trips, I’ve even been asked to tag along to a friend’s roadtrip and slept in the living room of a complete stranger over night, or I’ve 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
So… guess just bought travel tickets for next week
