Usually, when I schedule vacation time away from my job, it is for the purpose of getting out of town for a few days. I am a person who enjoys the open road, preferring to see the world through the windshield of my Toyota Yaris, rather than from the window of an airplane.
Last summer, I scheduled six working days off to drive from Milwaukee to St. John's, Newfoundland (the birthplace of my late mother-in-law) and back. In February, I went to see an old friend north of Atlanta and recorded the basic tracks for a long-delayed first album of original songs.
Today, I am on a one-day vacation from work. While I post infrequently in this forum, I thought my reason for playing hooky would be of interest here.
I stayed home because Scott Walker is invading my office today.
I am employed by a small company in the Greater Milwaukee Area. We are a medical data analytics organization that also performs insurance billing and management for physician clients across the country. I am employed there as the compliance officer, and as an adjunct to the many duties that entails, I also maintain the company blog. Judge for yourself how that might read.
Due to a number of positive business factors on our end of late, we have a necessity to nearly double our staff over the next 12 months. Because outside private equity firms have failed to deliver with investment dollars for the company, my bosses are applying for small business loans from the State of Wisconsin to invest in expansion of our workforce, as well as for R&D seed money to expand our core product.
Ever the opportunists, members of the Walker "Administration" contacted my CEO, stating that Walker wanted to pay a visit to our facility and publicly congratulate the company for creating jobs in the state. My bosses, focused solely on the news cameras that would follow the governor, which might enable them to draw attention to our company, accepted the invitation. Our VP sent out an e-mail last week stating that the governor (small g is deliberate) would be visiting on May 15th and that we should take some time to clean all of our work areas ahead of him "dropping by". Three seconds after I concluded reading the e-mail, I put in for a vacation day for today. Even now, I wonder what I was doing during the previous two seconds to delay my decision for so long a period of time.
Based on my title and seniority, I am roughly the 4th link on the management chain at my company. Admittedly, I exist as a strange mixture of top cop, information dispensary, public face (due to the modest national audience for the company blog) and comic relief for the organization. I can honestly say that my bosses are unlike anyone I have ever worked for in that I have flourished with this company in a way that simply isn't possible elsewhere. They have truly taken me places I have never been before, and I look forward to sharing in the success that is coming to the two founders to whom I report, after nearly 20 years in the industry.
Yet, not today, and my reasons for being absent couldn't be more obvious.
I'll tell you all what I told my bosses in a detailed e-mail upon requesting the day off for today. As the father of a school-aged child, and as the husband of someone who works in the mental health field, I need not pick up a newspaper, watch a television or even visit sites such as Daily Kos to know the level of damage Scott Walker continues to inflict on my adopted home state. Programs in my son's K-8 school are being cut to the quick, with the number of fundraisers held at his school conspicuously increasing during the past school year. We chose his school based on its unique curriculum, and we are now being told that the things that make it unique may completely disappear prior to the new school year that begins in August. Meanwhile, my wife's mental heath services organization is looking for funding far outside their usual sources in order to keep basic services for people in communities in Southeastern Wisconsin up and running.
As the compliance officer for my company, I have to set an ethical standard to be followed by the employees of the organization that goes above and beyond what is normally expected. While this becomes a challenge at after-work happy hours in a town known for its large amount of beer, the employees need to know that every task I approach while in the office is the model that trickles down. For me to be in the office today, as my bosses welcome Scott Walker with open arms, attempting as best I can to avoid being introduced to him while at the same time not regurgitating my breakfast as he takes credit for job creation that he has nothing to do with, would be a betrayal of every ethical cell that exists in my body. I feel I would be a disappointment to my fellow employees, my friends, my family and most of all, myself. By doing the bidding of whoever writes him the biggest check, Scott Walker is not a leader to be welcomed, but rather the lowest form of ethically-challenged prostitute, and that is someone that I simply cannot let near me if I am to call myself a compliance officer.
Lastly, as I mentioned earlier in this posting, Wisconsin is my adopted home. Having met and married a charming Midwestern girl from Northern Illinois, I treat every day of my existence now as a form of decompression after the first 36 years of my life, spent primarily in the Northeastern United States. There is something of an unintended cruelty that permeates every facet of life in the big cities of the East Coast that either kills you or makes you build external barriers in order to survive. In Milwaukee, I have found a place where I can breathe (figuratively and literally; my seasonal allergies have improved) and where the layers of hardened artifice one tends to build up in Eastern urban centers have mostly broken away from my personality. As a result, I have developed a short fuse for the type of bullying that has become the hallmark of Walker's time soiling the governor's mansion. I simply refuse to be in the presence of a man who enjoys twisting the knives in the backs of decent people who are no threat to him for no other reason than because he can. Even though the visit is slated to last no more than three hours, I refuse to be used as a political prop for such a person.
So, here I sit. Drew Carey is having three contestants spin the big wheel, the beers in my refrigerator await the stroke of 12 Noon and for the balance of the year, I have one less vacation day to spend on the highways of America. I am suffering no feelings of nausea or revulsion, and the Nintendo Wii in my living room is calling me to a place far removed from medical coding decisions, compliance training, industry analysis in blog form and - most importantly - Scott Walker.
I have discovered a million ways to be wrong, but what's right never changes. Presented with a choice, I did the right thing today. I didn't go to work. Pardon my lack of tip jar and lack of responses to comments, as I suddenly and unexpectedly have the day off.