It’s a good thing that I have job flexibility.

My daughter last night started to fall apart, and she felt warm to the touch. 101 degree fever. So we shoved some Motrin into her, and she made it to bedtime. She had a hard night, some more medicine, and this morning she was still sick. So we had to keep her home from school.

Now what do people do who have you know….jobs. They take a personal day to stay home with their sick kids. Except, how many personal days do YOU have. It seems like most people I know these days have 2-3 weeks of vacation a year. If they’re LUCKY they get 5 personal days on top of that.

Well, we also have parent teacher conferences coming up for her. School is closed that day, and it’s all PTC all day. Well that’s all well and good for the teachers, but there goes another personal day for many people. Have to stay home with the kids, and then take them into the conference.

Doesn’t seem right to me. I dunno. Setting aside specified vacation days and personal days seems….well it seems juvenile to me now.

One of my first jobs was at Toys R Us. I had the fun job of going up and down each aisle and ‘straightening’. I wanted to be put on cashier, but they for some reason had it in their mind that I was a straightener. They were really mean there. Never pointing out what I did right, only everything I did wrong, and in a mean “you’re a total incompetent, you did it wrong idiot, do it this way.” type way, even if they never told me how to do it right in the first place. Real jerks. Anyway, I got a 15 minute break, so I would go down to the break room and drink a soda and read a magazine. I went down one time, and one of the managers came down with one of the assistant managers. They came down a minute after I did, and after a few minutes turned to me and said “Shouldn’t you be ending your break now?” to which I replied ‘no I have another 10 minutes.” Five more minutes passed and they turned back “OK your break is over.” and I said “No I started at 4, I get 15 minutes, I’ll go back up at 4:15.”

Crap like that.

Anyway saying “You get 3 weeks of vacation” is something similar. If I’m not making someone punch a clock from 9am to 5pm, why am I punching it for X number of work days a year. If I hire someone, and I give them work to do, then shouldn’t it be judged on how much work they get done, and how good the quality of that work is, not the time spent?

If you’re making widgits, and the assembly line moves at a constant rate no matter your skill it might make sense to pay you by the hour. You’re essentially paying by the widgit.

So why are we still paying as if the assembly line is rolling past. Sure you’re gonna keep track “hey Joe we’ve noticed that you’ve taken 8 weeks vacation so far this year, and missed a few project deadlines, we’d like you to scale it back and no more for the rest of the year ok?” rather than something formal. If Joe however works 10 times as fast as anyone else and his quality is beyond compare….why limit him to X days vacation or Y personal days.

It depends on the job and the industry, but really….the whole 3 weeks vacation days thing is so last year.

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Wrapping back around to my sick daughter, we had to dig to find a number to call to call her in sick. It’s the first time. Nothing straightforward about it. We also both got conflicting messages about the Parent Teacher Conferences, and no real way to figure out what’s up with that.

That’s the great thing about using a product like oDaycare for your daycare or preschool. You can control that information, and make it very easy for not only getting new customers and students, but getting that information out to your current ones. Calendar plug ins so people can see what food is being served on their iPhones from linking their calendar to yours…The days you’ll be closed, information about it. oDaycare doesn’t just put it on your website and easy for them to find, but it can even put it on their mobile devices so they can reference it anywhere.

It’s the little things like that, which make a parent really happy to be a part of your school, and oDaycare can keep that communication flowing.

Peace out. I have to go watch Thing 2, as it sounds like Thing 1′s fever is up to 103 and her mom is going to take her into the doctors office. Don’t get me started on that….