Last First: Employee

There was this tweet yesterday:


And then this amusing Twitter exchange on “fake” v. “real” employee.

So today officially marks my first full year back in the employee saddle, after #freelancing for four. Usually a bigger deal for the employee than the employer, if memory serves.

To be honest, I don’t really know what to make of it. One year doesn’t seem all that long, yet it also seems like a lifetime. Four years #freelancing and I forgot what it’s like to be an employee. One year as an employee and I still think about #freelancing. Except it was just something to do, bring in some money while having a super flexible schedule. The super flexible schedule made it possible for me to help my family, and develop such strong bonds with my nephews and niece.

One of my nephews, Little Man, is autistic. And since he was a newborn, we’ve had a special connection. He never held eye contact when you called his name, but when I said “Hey Little Man,” he looked at me. The nickname stuck. My role became supporting him, along with my brother and sister-in-law as they went through all the testing and therapies to help his development. We all did a lot of reading up on autism and trying different things. And he improved.

It’s incredible, really, especially once he started going to school. And now, well, he’s practically a different kid whenever I go home for a visit! Truly heart warming. And he is wicked smart with an awesome sense of humor. I don’t know if he realizes the humor, but the eat of us definitely do.

While Little Man has been blossoming at home, I’ve been navigating my way through a new city, new country, being an employee and figuring out this new role that is not clear to me yet.

What is clear is that Canadians appreciate hard work, and time off.

There’s a post from last year about Canadians and their holidays. They get a day off practically every month! Craziness. And on top of that, Clio gives its employees three weeks off a year. And it starts, in full, on your first day of work, not after your first year.

Typical American, I have a hard enough time taking two weeks. Three weeks is just mind boggling. Oh, did I mention that Clio gives its employees the week between Christmas and New Year’s off as well? So that’s really four weeks of vacation a year. Four! And you can carry over five days, which I did since, well, 8 days is all this American felt comfortable taking last year.

In hindsight, that was not the smartest of ideas, but at the time it was hard enough adjusting to everything, taking vacation just seemed like a way to compound things. I also couldn’t shake the fact that, during the first year of employment for my whole adult life, the rule is you don’t take vacation your first year. No one will say it outright, but you have to prove your worth in your first year, and taking vacation is viewed as not pulling your weight. That very well might be an American mentality, a well engrained American mentality.

Such a mentality does not exist in Canada, or at least not here on the West Coast. This year, that doesn’t seem as strange.

I’m a big believer in things happening for a reason. I got laid off in 2008, the recession made it impossible to get another full time job so I freelanced, and that allowed me to spend so much time being a support for my family. Then Clio knocked, and by early 2011 relocating to Vancouver was the next logical step. One thing to note: logical steps are fraught with emotional turmoil, so be aware. It’s actually typical, generally labeled as homesickness or separation anxiety, but everyone experiences it differently and there isn’t a timetable, even if you try to impost one.

And now that it has been a year since my visa was issue, I moved to Vancouver and joined Clio as an employee, it’s time for something different: renting a house.

Yes, renting a house. With a couple of coworkers and a friend from softball.

I wonder how different house hunting with three people will be v. apartment hunting by myself.