H: The funny thing is because I do background checks like that as one small part of what I do for a living, I’m very good a that, yes.
N: I didn’t mean to imply that you are not diligent with such things, I only wasn’t sure how it works in your business. In mine it is obligatory but I suppose for your’s it isn’t. So I was professionally curious how you handle this.
H: I tend to work for large brands, like ones that you know, but nevertheless I do a very extensive background check to see whether thematically it fits because it seems like I’m in the beautiful situation that I can choose who I work for. But this one I had never heard of before. So I’m going to write an email saying “I will do this for free and if you want more next year you pay me”.
N: That’s good. I’ve been spending my morning reminding people to take vacation. For some reason they don’t do that.
H: Did you hear about the decision that if the company says you have to take your vacation days until March 31 or something and otherwise they will just disappear, that this is illegal?
N: Yes, I know, only for the minimum vacation days though. Anyway I am pushing them to take vacation, I’m getting very frustrated because they have all sorts of excuses for not taking vacation and now I’m at the point where I tell them “if you don’t schedule your vacation I’ll do that for you”.
H: Yeah, they will not want that! Well, I remember when I was employed at a foreign university, they had serious troubles, because something comparable happened in that country as well and if you’re a university professor you don’t take vacation you just don’t go into the office, that was before I entered the corporate world. I never took a single day of vacation because it’s just a no-show situation. You don’t come and you don’t work but you don’t formally enter vacation into any sort of system. But suddenly in this country the courts decided. that you have to officially take and record all your vacation days, and the ones that you haven’t taken you can take now like I don’t know 10 or 15 years back, and people did that, like all the people who never in their life took a single vacation day and they had to fire a lot of people because they needed to pay all of them out. And people talked in the hallways, they said “don’t do that, you had your time off and it will just make the system crash” but they did it anyway.
N: Nice. I’d understand that if they never had time off, but if they had time off and just didn’t record it, it does not seem to be a fair decision to me. But then again it’s the university’s own fault if they don’t get their administration straight.
H: So what’s the Christmas Party about?
N: Which Christmas Party?
H: You are going to a Christmas Party with your husband tonight.
N: Oh yes, I forgot.
H: This is a particularly boring TP.
N Is it over already`?
H: I thought this morning that we should do that on a continuous basis.
N: Ohhh no no no I don’t quite think so!
H: Like twice a week or something.
N: But why would we do that??
H: Because I enjoy seeing you.