OK - RANT WARNING

Here it is, a week before the end of the year and EVERYONE is on vacation. The head of retail, his direct subordinate, the CFO, the CEO, the corporate secretary. Today, several branches ran cash short so the security officer had to run around and deliver cash. We're hit with retail fraud and the security officer is trying to work that. The GLs are way out of whack and the security officer is trying to work on that, too. Why is the audit/compliance/security department expected to clean up everything while the people directly responsible are off on vacation?

Sorry - rant over. I just get so ticked off when people don't take responsibility for their areas.

In my organization, we are not allowed to have vacation the last two weeks of the year. Your rant is a very good explanation of why.

Same here.

Oh Skittles, I'm soooo with you. The following will be off these next 2 weeks, Pres, SVP/Admin, SVP/Finance, VP/Ops & It, VP HR & Marketing, VP/Retail Loans. I beleive the only management members in the bank will be myself, SVP/Commerical Loans (useless only because he's caught up in his commercial world) and the VP/Branch Admin. Not cool!!!!

Key players should not be on vacation at the same time. Please don't jump the gun and say there should be no vacations in the last two weeks. We had that at my old bank. The knee jerk reaction made people like me lose out. I didn't see my presence as critical to the daily operations.

We were told it was a bank policy after that, then it turned out to be an Ops policy which was subsequently relaxed for some of the higher ups. That stank. It wasn't fair and it didn't resolve the problem that started all that in the first place.

Our rule is no officer may be on vacation after christmas... though it is generally looked down on for any one to take off at year end.

We are running a skeleton crew here, but our general policy is that officer's that take any time off at Thanksgiving must be here at Christmas and vice versa...This is the first year in AGES that I have worked at Christmas, however I took time at Thanksgiving because that's when we did our traveling to relatives...I guess this works pretty good and as fair as possible?

I second Andy's comments on this. Our former president had some irrational rule that NO ONE could take any vacation after December 15. It drove me nuts, because my staff (mortgage department) always wanted days around the holidays, and I prefer that they take those days, since we are usually less busy at that time (except for the the last two years ).

Since we have had a new president for the past 5 years, I have been letting my staff take days in December, which has worked out well, since it means they won't be taking as many days in the summer, when we usually are the busiest. Also, they appreciate that they can get the days they really want.

Now, as for the rest of the bank, I have no idea what the rules are. Frankly, at times, there doesn't seem to be any rules.

My feeling is, either let everyone have the opportunity to take time off, or let no one do it. People can see through a double standard like it's a clean window, and it makes them mad. Everyone, from the top guy down to the janitor, should follow the standard. Unfortunately, it never works out that way.

Dawg, I disagree, but that is just me. My belief is that some bankers are busier now than others. In compliance, this was a slack time for me. Audits were being put to bed, training on new requirements for Jan 1 was completed and I was usually exhausted by this time. I also took a bit of vacation to be with my young vacationing kids. An alternative would have been some sort of temporary day care a few years ago when they were younger. And when I had 21 days of vacation, it was optimal to take a week this time of year. It was difficult to work it all in otherwise.

Not everyone gets the same deal. Those tellers and seniors didn't cancel vacation because an exam was coming or a new audit HAD to be done right away.

There are only about 10 cars in our parking lot (should be about 50), but, the President is here!! I asked him what he was doing here...I don't think he liked that!!!!

We have the same rule..no vacation after the 15th. Now the President and Controller are both on vacation. Go figure. It's just like those who get to make the rules - break the rules. I have seen it bent and shaped every which way for years now.

I agree with Andy. For those of us in Audit & Compliance this does tend to be a slower time of year and I feel that if we want to take it then we should be allowed. Unfortunately our HR Mgr just this week explained that "this is not a fight I want to start" (with mgmt) so I will suck it up and watch those senior managers plug in for more vacation time while we stay here and keep the bank running.

My former bank had a "no vacation after the 15th" rule, but it was enforced by, and at the discretion of, the department managers. That way, people in the busy departments, such as Operations, had to be in during that time-frame. Staff in these areas were told when they were hired that this was the rule. It worked well for us and no one seemed to mind.

I would also agree with Andy. We have a rule here as well about no vacations after the 15th. However that seems not to apply to the boss and his family who are on vacation. For me it is a slow time as well, all the loan reviews have been completed, waiting on year-end financial statements now to start the whole process over again. Oh well, I need the time to clean off my desk and hit the new year running.

We used to have that rule here too. But when we really thought about the "why" behind it, we realized that things have changed and it really isn't that necessary anymore. Most of us have been here a long time and know if its busy or not at the end of the year (and mostly it is not). Gone are the days of manual entries at year end and even the customers are not in their offices. What is the sense of making the Commercial Lender be here when none of the customers are working? So we changed the rule.

It has been my experience, or, more accurately, my estimation, that blanket rules tend to be instituted and rigidly enforced because of prior abuses by one or more individuals, whom the powers-that-be had neither the desire nor the will to reprimand. So, because of one or two bad actors, everyone was subjected to a needlessly restrictive rule.

It reminds me of elementary school, when the teacher would threaten to punish everyone if the guilty party didn't come forward and 'fess up. In fact, a lot of banking reminds me of elementary school.

Our employee handbook says no vacation after December 1st unless okayed by a supervisor. However, we have officers taking off whenever they want to. The problem with that is that it is hard to keep morale up with the other employees that are always here before and after every holiday and the officers are just taking off whenever and leaving early, etc. Makes for hard feelings.