Going global has its advantages – lots of holidays!
I read the following with some amusement;
“Dear Librarians in Asia and the Pacific Region:
The OCLC Asia Pacific office will be closed Wednesday, July 4, 2007, in observance of INDEPENDENCE DAY holiday.
Sincerely,
The staff at OCLC Asia Pacific
OCLC Asia Pacific
6565 Kilgour Place, Dublin, Ohio 43017-3395 U.S.A.
E-mail: asia_pacific@oclc.org
FAX: 1-614-764-4331
Telephone: 1-614-764-6341
http://www.oclc.org/asiapacific/en/”
At first, I was bemused that ‘librarians in Asia and the Pacific Region’ should be inconvenienced by a holiday in the United States; a holiday for which the country concerned was not even specified. Believe it or not, other countries around the world also celebrate similar days on different dates.
Then it struck me that this was absolutely brilliant; employees of global organisations should automatically get all the holidays for every territory in which they operate.
I shall, henceforth, be celebrating every holiday I can find and suggest that my internationalist colleagues in Ohio do likewise in order not to appear parochial, insular, or (surely not) insensitive to international niceties.
I guess I’d better go home then…
Today’s image, CC-licensed on Flickr, is by Janusz Leszczynski.
July 4th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
It’s more general than that. Not only does the entire networked world have to take July 4 off, since nobody’s at the office at the other end of the line, but those of us who provide support outside the US essentially end up taking July 4th off in lieu of our own national day since we have to make sure that somebody’s there to answer the phone when the American’s call.