# 10 days straight! I need a vacation. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 13, 2005, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/10-days-straight-i-need-a-vacation/303743 "2005-05-13T21:15:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Bearflag70](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Bearflag70](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bearflag70)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/10-days-straight-i-need-a-vacation/303743/21 "2005-05-15T16:26:04Z")
> [@fishbicycle](#): > > There is nobody else on the staff who knows how to do my job. Sounds like you hold the cards… ---
**Author:** ![fishbicycle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aeb1de/32.png) [@fishbicycle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fishbicycle)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/10-days-straight-i-need-a-vacation/303743/22 "2005-05-15T16:35:07Z")
> [@El\_Kabong](#): > > OK, well then, I must presume that this job is highly rewarding in some intellectual sense, since otherwise it appears that massive advantage is being taken of your skills and dedication. I’ll say no more. It’s a public radio station, owned by a university. If you don’t have a university degree, the only way to get a job with them is to be better-skilled than anybody applying for the job. That’s how I got it. Announcing and working with sound are my gig. The way the university politics are structured, there has to be an exceptional circumstance under which they would upgrade your status to the kind with benefits and vacation. I’ll find out at the end of the current fiscal year whether the GM has been able to convince them to give me the upgrade. The average employee there has between 0 and 3 years of experience. I have thirty years. I’ve wanted to do this for a living since my voice changed. And yes, massive advantage of my skills and dedication is being taken. Assuming I get the upgrade at some point, it will have been worth it. Dues-paying and all that. The alternative is unacceptable: work in commercial radio, and in anywhere from a few months to a year, BigRadioCorp changes the call letters and the format and fires all the staff. I’m not going to drag my wife, who already has a career, around the country so I can work short-term gigs at HITZ 105 in every city that has one. Where I work now, I could conceivably have a job there until I get very old. The station isn’t going away, NPR isn’t folding up. I go, do my best, make them sound good and look good to their superiors. It’s bound to pay off at some point. ---
**Author:** ![serious\_lark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@serious\_lark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/serious_lark)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/10-days-straight-i-need-a-vacation/303743/23 "2005-05-16T11:27:29Z")
> [@fishbicycle](#): > > There is nobody else on the staff who knows how to do my job. Every time I pass by one person’s office, I am reminded how the one day I couldn’t come in due to food poisoning, a program that had gone off without a hitch for 26 years got screwed up because nobody else there knew how to assemble it. This person made up a commemorative sign to tape to his office window. > > And that’s why I haven’t had a vacation in six years. My sympathies, **fishbicycle** , and I commend you for your dedication. However, unless you intend to never take a vacation for the rest of your working life, I would suggest that you look into having at least one other person at your work trained (formally or informally) to be able to pinch-hit for you. It’s your choice, of course, but if you’ve thought ahead, you’re probably already having nightmares about what will happen at that company when you retire or suddenly require extended sick leave … :eek: ---
**Author:** ![fishbicycle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aeb1de/32.png) [@fishbicycle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fishbicycle)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/10-days-straight-i-need-a-vacation/303743/24 "2005-05-16T19:31:36Z")
> [@serious lark](#): > > My sympathies, **fishbicycle** , and I commend you for your dedication. \ I would suggest that you look into having at least one other person at your work trained (formally or informally) to be able to pinch-hit for you. Thanks! The extra person would be ideal, except the budget for another person to do what I do doesn’t exist. I am the primary announcing voice heard on three stations. There isn’t anybody else here who has the voice to do it. See, they don’t pay enough to attract professionals. I happened into this job by accident, and they knew it was their lucky day, because they didn’t used to have any professionals here. Any time a position comes up, we get dozens and dozens of applicants who think working in radio would be so cool, but they’ve never seen the inside of a station and have no idea how anything works, and usually no vocal or reading skills. We have to turn them all away. And they’re people with doctorates and other degrees in areas totally unrelated, who are so desperate (or clueless) that they are vying for a job that they can’t afford to live on, in a field where the only frame of reference they have is the on/off switch. > [@](#): > > It’s your choice, of course, but if you’ve thought ahead, you’re probably already having nightmares about what will happen at that company when you retire or suddenly require extended sick leave … :eek: Well, they had another guy work here into his 70s, so if I got the benefits upgrade, I could work here until I couldn’t come in anymore. After that, they’ll have to take what they can get. For now, I try not to be sick. We’ll see how it goes with my upcoming months of dental surgery. **Lobsang** , I’m sorry we have so totally hijacked your thread. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/10-days-straight-i-need-a-vacation/303743/25 "2005-05-16T19:36:55Z")
> [@El\_Kabong](#): > > Why? Don’t want to come off as snarky, but assuming you don’t actually prefer to never take any time off, what is so important about what you do that you couldn’t possibly sneak in a week of holidays here and there? > > With that said, one can find plenty of folks with oilfield experience who would laugh like drains if one told them one has worked a mere ten days in a row, especially if one gets to go home at the end of the day. > > Our field jobs presently require anywhere from two to four weeks of 12-hour shifts at a time, usually in a fairly remote offshore location (at least one gets roughly equal time off). My personal longest was seven weeks on a wellsite in Guatemala, a week off to partially recover from a case of dysentery, then another six weeks on the same location, back around '86 or so. That was pretty bad, but I’ve heard worse. After that stint, I pretty much refused to do anything like that again and told them they were welcome to fire me if it was a problem. They didn’t. I haven’t had one in seven years. I had a couple three-day weekends, but no solid vacation. I was temping, and it was just never convenient for me to go when it was convenient for them to not have me be there. Yeah…and a ten-day streak isn’t all that bad. I’ve done three weeks straight a number of times. ---
**Author:** ![gfloyd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d2c977/32.png) [@gfloyd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gfloyd)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/10-days-straight-i-need-a-vacation/303743/26 "2005-05-16T20:44:03Z")
I haven’t had a stretch like that since Christmas. Eleven days in a row, followed by one day off to take two finals and move, followed by three more, ending up on Christmas Eve. Ah mall jobs. During December they own your soul. After that, they don’t want you at all, of if they do, it’s four hours a week. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/10-days-straight-i-need-a-vacation/303743.md?page=1)