On My First Day of Vacation... I Worked

Today's my first day of vacation. Yeah, I wrote over the weekend about starting vacation, but that was the weekend. Weekends don't count as vacation. Today, Monday, is my first real day of vacation. And today, on my first real day of vacation... I worked. 🤣

Oh, I didn't work a full day. Good grief, I'd never do that. Not unless I was getting a day comped somewhere else— which I have done before. Twice this year, even! Once in March and once again later in March. 😅 But this time it was just 1 hour of work. I figured I can give the company an hour on my day off in exchange for all the flexibility I enjoy during regular workweeks.

Me feeling charitable, or reciprocal with flexibility, isn't the only reason I took a meeting and did some followup work today. It's that, as I've pointed out many times before, work doesn't stop just because I'm on vacation. Especially in sales, work doesn't stop. Customer projects keep moving forward, and frequently the deadlines are set without regard to my availability.

When that presents a big problem I push back and/or call for backup. Indeed, there was another customer meeting today I let my boss handle for me. So he's working a bit today, too— which absolutely factors in to my charitableness / reciprocity calculus. A colleague was even willing to cover this meeting for me. But I volunteered to do it myself even on a day off because, honestly, the alternative is worse.

You see, the alternative if I let this going a week or longer without touching it is not "I'll do it later, when I return," but rather, "While I'm out for a week, other people will try to do it, and they'll do something wrong and break it, so when I return I'll have to spend 3x as long fixing what's broken. Oh, and when it broke someone pressed the panic button, so now I have to join multiple status calls with managers who are demanding explanations." 😣

Shopping Costco During Executive Hour

One of the benefits to Costco Executive Member status Costco rolled out earlier this year is letting Executive members start shopping an hour early. When I wrote about whether Executive membership has been worth it (spoiler: arguably it isn't) a few days ago I mentioned that I've thought several times about hitting up Costco early in the morning for Executive Hour but never actually did it. I always figured, "Nah, I'll just take it easy at home this morning and brave the madding crowds of the hoi polloi later in the day." 🤣 Well, today I finally shopped Executive Hour.



I was up early anyway today because I had an early work meeting on my day off. That's right— not only did I work on my first true day of vacation but it was an early morning meeting! After that I went out to the clinic for a blood draw, then when I came home I had a quick breakfast while Hawk jumped in the car with me to go shopping. At Costco.

We arrived at the Mountain View Costco around 9:15am. Normal opening hour on weekdays is 10am. For Executive members like us, the store's open at 9. And as we pulled into the parking lot, hoping to find a nice, close parking space instead of the usual automotive mob scene, we found... the parking lot mobbed just as much as 1pm on a Saturday.

"Wow, everyone in Mountain View must be an Executive member," I quipped. "And when everyone is Executive—"

"—Nobody is Executive," Hawk finished the line for me. 🤣

So, yeah, that Executive member perk is close to worthless, at least here in the Bay Area.