The rest of the week went by like a blur. Work obligations and a schedule of conference seminars reminded me why I was in Orlando in the first place. Even though the annual safety conference was something I always looked forward to and enjoyed, with the keynote speaker and networking opportunities being the highlights for me, this one day prior to the conference festivities stood out as the luckiest day of my life. With all the golf and the freebies and the rubbing elbows with average golf fans and Hall of Famers and finding out my wife was pregnant, it felt so far removed from a regular work day. However, the fact remained that I was in Orlando week on a work trip, which meant that my hours for that pay period would include this one lucky day.
Typically, my employee timecard would reflect the amount of hours I spent fulfilling conference and work obligations; including travel time and registration. For simplicity, we usually put down 12 hours on travel days and 8 hours for the rest. I would have put 0 hours for my luckiest day ever, except that I was not allowed to. Since that Wednesday would have been a regular shift work day for me, anything less than 12 hours would have flagged the timecard system as an unexcused absence. So I put in the 12 hours that was required and, because it happened to be my 7th workday in a row, it turned into 12 hours of double time pay per the company policy… truly my luckiest day.
Fatherhood and Marriage 