When Anticlimactic is a Great Thing

It's amazing how sometimes the buildup to asking for a favor can be so excruciatingly worse than asking for the favor. For instance, it seems that each of the times I ask for anything at work, my agonizing over the how and why and wherefore to is never worth the aggravation.

I should have realized that it's not worth stressing over approaching my boss when over a year ago, I had to ask for a raise. I had been under the impression that I wouldn't be stuck with a salary that was less than my last hourly rate for very long, and after seven months, was unhappy enough about it to try to do something about it. Well, after speaking to my supervisor about it, I went to my boss and, turning redder and stammering more than I ever have, attempted to tell him that I'd been working really hard and had been there for over half a year and wanted him to consider giving me a raise. Before I could progress into a deeper shade of red-violet and before my tongue swelled up to fill my entire mouth (what was coming out already sounded like 'bneah, bneah, nya'), my boss said, "You want a raise, right?" I nodded wordlessly. And that was it.

The second time I had to talk to my boss about doing something for me was something I will owe him forever for: my knee surgery. Again, this was simplicity itself. He asked me how long I'd be out for, who I was going to see, and what the proposed plan of action was to take the screw that's been plaguing me for almost a decade out of my knee. Showing that he really does care about his employees, he went out and found me not necessarily a "better" doctor, but the best doctor for the job, a traumatologist, who was an orthopedic surgeon that specialized in rods and screws. Even better, he trained under the guy that invented the procedure that got the rod in my femur in the first place. Then, to go even further, he gave me a week's paid medical leave to recover. Hurricane Gustav cut into that quite a bit, but it was great to have the support of my boss and my supervisor, who has knee problems of her own as a former athlete.

The last and most recent thing was this: I'm getting married in May, and I was very concerned about time off. My wedding date was pushed up from October of 2010 due to

1. the rapidly declining health of Boy's grandparents, who shouldn't be traveling but are already doing so for his graduation
2. the fact that everyone from Boy's side would already be here, again, due to his graduation
3. we weren't sure where we were going to be in 2010
4. and that he really wanted to do something huge for graduation and I already wanted to go to China

So now the big date is May, Tulane's graduation weekend (eep!). With the encouragement of my parents, we decided that our first choice in honeymoons would be a fantastic extravaganza of a trip, and what more exotic and once-in-a-lifetime destination than China? With the help of good ol' Mom and Dad, who found us a few options in tours and tour companies, we put ourselves on the list. And since it was a 24-hour flight, we figured we'd want to make it worth it, and make our honeymoon the vacation of our lives.

Now, in a recession like this, it's scary even thinking about a) spending that much money and b) asking for a huge amount of time off, paid or unpaid. I had broached the subject to my supervisor, who seemed very uncertain that it would be possible. Since the trip is not yet set in stone (these tour companies operate in a way that a certain amount of reservations need to be made in order for the trip to even occur; personalized city-by-city tours like this need a minimum to be met to even be profitable, and we certainly didn't want to go by ourselves!), I put off and put off speaking to my bosses about it, getting more and more nervous as I waited for a confirmation and thought of ways to make my case and the very real possibility of getting canned for having the audacity to request a 20-day honeymoon.

Well, all of it was for naught. My supervisor, as promised, spoke to my boss about it, and he, as a hopeless romantic and a bit of a self-proclaimed yenta, let me know when I bumped into him at the gym, that sure, I could have the unpaid time off and to have fun--I hopefully will only get married that once. Although this could all be a moot point if the two trips I'm on the list for don't become guaranteed, it still is great to know that if we get to do this, I have health insurance overseas and a job when I come back.

Whew!

What an anticlimax to all that anxious buildup! And it's things like this that make me appreciate a whole lot that even if the job itself kind of sucks, sometimes the most important thing is to be working for someone who doesn't suck. So cheers to that.