The week off work has been productive. Veggies all taken care of, lawns maintained, chapters pushed out on my projects, and a surprising amount of Overwatch 2 played. However. There's this one cat in my neighborhood, I'm pretty sure I know which one, who has been leaving a steaming pile of shit on the top of one of my raised beds each morning. I say on top of, because I anticipated cats treating them as a giant litter box, and fashioned a mesh covering to protect the veggies from any attacks, fecal or otherwise. This cat? He walks onto the mesh, lays a turd on it and leaves. So I wake to find a suspended pile of crap nestled above my potential potatoes. I even set the mesh up in such a way that it sags when touched, to hopefully startle the cat or make it feel uneven enough not to sit there. It doesn't care. Bombs away. So I'm scraping it off each morning considering other options. I can make proper hooped coverings with pipe and netting but every store nearby doesn't have what I need, for now. The war continues. During this week off, I checked my emails sporadically despite knowing I shouldn't. But I have a team and I want to make sure they're okay. They know what they're doing, shit they don't need a manager, but occasionally one panics and if I can help, even on leave, I will. I logged in to find a series of emails from an academic freaking out that I'm on leave, cc'ing my manager in (big fucking no no) and wondering where everything is for a clinical hire she was wanting to make. Suggesting that this is a poor time to take leave when she needs me there. The work was already done . It was done two weeks ago and I kept her appraised of everything. She just ignored every email and phone call until I was gone, it seemed. Thankfully my manager, in a rare moment of backing me up, explained that I was on top of it, here's their contract (that she also received) and that I have to take leave because I have accrued so much HR sees it as a massive liability, and I accrue so much because I tend to never take leave out of fear of an academic hurting themselves in their confusion. It's just past 8am here. Time to see what presents have been left amongst my spuds.
Ooooooh it would take me an immense amount of self-restraint to not tell this person to go fuck themselves. Good on you for taking the high road. Take the accruals. Nobody should work as much as they do.Suggesting that this is a poor time to take leave when she needs me there.
Exactly! She can be very nice. She's just... Woeful when it comes to anything administration related and seems to view professional staff as an extension of herself rather than another member of the team. I was kind of dreading taking it but my boss just pointed to the calendar and asked which week suits me best because I need to whittle the numbers down. I can only carry over 10 days each year (we get 5 weeks a year) and I have another 10 to knock off before Christmas! I now understand her point about setting expectations. If I answer things while on leave that tells people I'll continue to do so in the future. I never considered that and just did it wanting to keep on top of things but..Here we are with my out of office message more of a suggestion than a hard and fast rule.
Yeah I don't know how helpful this is, but with my team and teams over the last few years my strategy has been to be transparent and say "here are my days off where, if something urgent happens, you can reach me by PHONE ONLY" and tell them if I don't communicate that for a given day off, that they will not be able to reach me under any circumstances.I now understand her point about setting expectations. If I answer things while on leave that tells people I'll continue to do so in the future. I never considered that and just did it wanting to keep on top of things but..Here we are with my out of office message more of a suggestion than a hard and fast rule.
It's good advice! I do have a work phone and they're very good at only calling it if they need me urgently. I just worry. It's a me thing and I think I'm improving, but I'm sure it's partially down to the fact that I got promoted from being a member to being their manager, so I know quite intimately how much shit they have do deal with and I want to protect them from it. In time I've eased up, I hope! The academic whining is to be expected and thankfully my boss stepped in so I've not replied to much this week.