So far, so good

Guess what?! I did not cry last night! Guess I will be OK.

I have spent entirely too much time this morning searching the web for a picture of the fair ride that we love so much with no luck. Therefore, I will have to take my camera with me when I go back there later and get a shot of it. DS2 and I had a blast again last night. We rode on all our favorites together, he rode on a bunch more that he loves, then we ate chili fries and watched really crazy people bungee jump. Perfect fair visit 🙂 Then home for a couple of hours to relax and watch tv together until his dad came to get him. Of course even with that time he still forgot something that he wanted to take with him on the trip! He’s on a plane right now and I should get a call from him on my cell phone around midnight my time leaving me word that he has arrived at farfar’s house safely.

I figured out this morning that I do at least have the next couple of weekends covered with stuff to do which is helpful to get me in a routine with him gone. I also received a couple of party invitations yesterday which were unexpected and very nice.

Oh – let me rant about the HR department here for a moment. We have a shade under 1000 employees when you count part time and all faculty positions. We have 10 staff members in HR – compare that to just 3 payroll staff for instance. I have an employee who needs to figure out her maternity leave. She needs to do this for obvious reasons for herself, but I also need to know as I am hiring a temp to cover her position and I need to know how long the temp contract should be. Her due date is 8/8 and she is being conservative and thinking she may want to stop working around 7/29 just in case she is just too uncomfortable. As far as year end deadlines and her other tasks, that is a perfect cutoff. If arrangements with a temp work out smoothly that also gives her 4 weeks to train the person. Now the question is – how long can she be out and at what salary coverage? So, she started contacting the benefits coordinator June 1 to answer these questions. First she was told that she needs to apply for the leave 30 days in advance (in a perfect world sure, but that just does not make since when a leave is medically oriented!). So she said that her intention was to leave 7/29. Then they told her that they could not help her at that time since they would be conducting open enrollment meetings. Ok, makes sense. So the final OE meeting was last week. So she contacts them again on the 11th. Now she is told that they wont have time to meet with her until 6/28 at 1:00pm. Cutting it close aren’t we if you are telling her she needs to give 30 days notice??!! My issues is this: I understand when a department has large projects and deadlines. At those times that means you work overtime and are able to push off OTHER large projects. However, as a department you still need to cover the day to day customer service tasks. For instance, just because we are doing a large audit preparation in August, that does not mean that we don’t generate our normal monthly reports that other departments rely upon. If the academic department needs me to clarify an entry on their reports, I still have to look that up for them. So why is it that our HR dept thinks it is ok to tell a pregnant to wait until their deadlines are passed before they can help her plan her leave??? 10 people up there too. I’m sorry, but WTF are they doing???