Here’s my funny story about asking for two months off.
My boss didn’t much care for me. I worked for a global mobile phone handset provider with an R&D center in San Diego.
It was a slow time for engineering at our R&D center; i figured good time to ask for a sabatical. I was a principle staff engr so had earned it.
I asked my boss, “I would really like to take eight weeks off for a trip through Europe that my wife and I have been dreaming about for ten years. I’m giving you a couple months advance notice. You’re such a great boss, I really do appreciate your consideration of this request” *SMOOCH* *SMOOCH* …gratuitous ass kissing
He says, “NOPE! We are so busy. Sorry. We need you so much. We cannot afford to have you away for two full months”
Now, Piggington readers, are you ready for the ironic punch line that God bestowed upon this absurd scene?
A few weeks later the GM of that R&D center announces,
“All twelve hundred of you are laid off in ninety days. Now we cutting the center down to five hundred jobs, so this means we’ll have a free-for-all where you all scramble and scrap by re-applying for those five hundred remaining jobs. Sounds like fun, eh? Ready, Set, Go!”
So I had three months left of work, and ZERO job security.
I walked in my boss’ office and said, “You know that two month vacation request of mine you rejected? Well, I’m TAKING IT. All eight weeks.”
He says, “It doesn’t sound like you are ASKING my permission?”
I say, “I’m not.”
He says, “Well, I guess that’s OK for you to go for the two months! What am i gonna do after all, lay you off TWICE?”
(He had gotten his own walking papers himself, and in fact turned out did NOT get one of the five hundred remaining jobs.)
Now I am implying that I went ahead and enjoyed two months backpacking in Europe while I should have been searching for my next job, since I only had a few weeks remaining once back from vacation before getting laid off…ahh but I did have several months severance pay coming…it all worked out in the end. Found a job up in the Bay Area.
