Shit splatters

Two weeks ago I gave a letter to the controller here, stating that I wished to take 26 weeks of mat leave and return in the middle of January. Since talking to some others and hearing that it seems easier to shorten a mat leave rather than lengthen it once the dates have been decided upon, I just submitted a new letter stating that I wish to take 52 weeks of combined mat and parental leave.

It will be interesting to see if the shit hits the fan the way it did last Friday, when an email from me regarding my holiday days was forwarded without my knowledge to the president. That turned out to be the first he'd heard of my mat leave/holiday time requests, although I'd been discussing it with the controller on and off for over a month. HE was the one who told me to email these other two women to see if the holiday days HE told me I was "entitled" to would work for them. And I wrote in the email that I had yet to ok the days with the president. But one of them forwarded it to him anyway. Cow.

So I got in shit on Friday afternoon with the controller telling me basically that the pres was very angry with me and that my holiday days wouldn't be possible. Well if HE had done his job and actually communicated what was going on to the pres beforehand, this wouldn't have happened--and I thought, jeez, I should just go straight to the pres about all this, if my communication is going to get stopped at the controller. So I tried to give the pres a letter about my mat leave yesterday, the same one I gave to the controller 2 weeks ago, but he wouldn't take it.

Anyway, I was in tears because I'd planned my vacation time around days that I'd either be driving down to see my family, or my family would be coming up here. And the controller seemed to take this sickly sympathetic pleasure in telling me that it wasn't going to work. No help, no offer of how I could rectify anything...

The woman who had forwarded the email to the pres ended up helping me straighten it all out. I talked to the pres that day and explained as best I could to him what had transpired. The controller has worked for the pres for 20+ years though, so like I stand a chance in hell of being understood. Anyway, my vacation days are in limbo.

I haven't had any response to my initial mat leave letter, and it is well before the 30-days-prior-to-leaving deadline, AND they haven't done any planning for a replacement yet, so they can't do anything or say anything about my updated letter. But they will. Or at least HE will.

Counting the days...