Monday, November 29, 2010

Blogging to the Rescue!

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—Today at work, my boss, in trying to figure out if I was owed more comp days for the rest of this year, asked me about certain holidays which she wasn't sure whether I had worked or not. At first, I panicked, because I wasn't entirely sure whether I had worked those particular holidays either. Oh, I had my guesses as to which ones I did work and which ones I didn't...but I admit that I wasn't good about keeping track of my holidays worked/not worked on my own, and apparently my boss wasn't obligated to keep track on her end. So even if I did have inklings as to which holidays I worked and which ones I took off, I didn't have any real way of proving those inklings correct.

Or so I thought.

"Maybe you could check Facebook, see if you posted anything on those days," my boss suggested. No, I said to her, it would take way too long to go that far back to see what I had tweeted on those days in question (same with Twitter, too...because I have my Twitter feed linked up to my Facebook account). But then, after thinking about it and temporarily blaming my less-than-ideal work schedule for getting me into this mess, I was struck with inspiration: What had I blogged on or around those certain days?

And sure enough, I went back to old blog posts and found perhaps-not-quite-definitive-but-close-enough passages like this:

—From "Spring Awakenings," published at 8 p.m. on April 1, 2010: "But wait a minute, some of you might be wondering: Aren't you supposed to be working today? In fact, thanks to the Asia and Europe editions of The Wall Street Journal not publishing on Friday and Monday, I have Thursday and Sunday off. Four-day weekend, woo-hoo!"

—From "Celebrating the Fourth of July—1776-style!," published at 7 a.m. on July 4, 2010: "As I am working both today and tomorrow—alas, the international Wall Street Journal editions don't celebrate America's independence; at least I get time-and-a-half for my holiday labors, though—I'll be celebrating Independence Day in my mind..."

—And from "(Late Labor Day) Weekend Film Round-up, Procrastination Edition," published at 12:01 a.m. on Sept. 8, 2010: "In the meantime: I saw a really mixed bag of films theatrically during my long weekend."

All of that was enough to get me four more comp days to use by the end of the year!

Earlier this year, I recounted the story of how one angry tweet on my Twitter feed somehow managed to catch the attention of someone up at Aetna's corporate headquarters in Hartford, Conn., and how that helped speed up the process of getting an increasingly exasperating hospital-bills situation resolved. It looks like something similar occurred here, except this time it was my blogging that came to my rescue!

Who knew that oversharing on the Internet could have such positive consequences?

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