Wish you were here... ("You got paid...")

If there was ever a Saturday in the fall when I felt like I’ve overdosed on football (rare, though it happens), today was the day. Anyone who follows NCAA pigskin will tell you today was huge, and it delivered in every way — and then some. From the Illini snapping Wisconsin’s 14-game winning streak (grrr), to LSU sneaking back to beat Florida, to Stanford beating USC at the Coliseum (the first Trojan home loss since 2001). On top of everything, Danny Woodhead (what a name) of Chadron State broke the all-division career rushing record (mad props for running backs). Today was incredible. Enough said. On to a worthless, drunken blog post.

Two words: Paid vacation.

Every month I have to submit a time sheet to my department’s payroll staff. It’s very old school — marking my time on colored paper to be added by hand — but it works. I get paid every month (yeah, I get paid once a month), so I have nothing to complain about.

Usually my time sheets are simple to fill out. I mark down eight hours for each work day and don’t have to worry about leave or sick days. But September was different. Since I took two days off I had to account for 16 hours of vacation. I’ll do the same for three days in October, but my September time sheet was a learning experience, so I talked to the department’s office manager to get a little instruction on how to do it right.

I assumed the vacation time I’ve accrued didn’t count for anything, didn’t mean anything except for the time I was allowed off. But, since I’ve lead with the key words of this post, you can already tell I was dead wrong.

After studying my time sheet a little more closely, I discovered my vacation allowance was listed as “PDLV” — paid leave.

Could it be? I thought. Could I have been paid for not working?

I posed the question to Debbie, the office manager.

“Yeah,” she said. “You got paid to do nothing.”

What!? No way!

It’s true, though. I got paid to be two thousand miles away, not caring about my job at all. Oh, what a life.

Here’s the lesson of this post: Stay in school. Go to college. Get a degree.

Fuck. It’s Sunday.

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