The Festive “On Call” Advantage
Working over the Christmas period is the optimum strategy in the Winter Grand Game.
You can always tell that Yule, Midwinter, Christmas, or even the politically correct-ish “holiday season¹” is approaching by what’s happening in your organisation’s online (therefore rarely read by management) shared calendar.
Admittedly it’s not a place I’d go often myself, preferring to stay away from that particularly managerial cock fight it being one of the few occasions where management turns upon itself in a cannibalistic feeding frenzy over who gets to stay out of the office for even longer that usual.
For it’s the only time of the year when senior management looks like it may have actually logged into the shared calendar² for once as they all seem to suddenly block booked out for the entire festive season.
This, naturally, leaves the remaining low tier management (primarily project managers) scrabbling around for the falling temporal crumbs, furiously messaging members of their own teams with various levels of bribes, threats, and promises of story points in order that they can also take some time off and not be left alone in the office “on cover”.
Such is the burden of responsibility, and loyalty, I guess — it must weigh heavy indeed the incredibly energetic way it is purposefully avoided.
