My credit card is a platinum Visa card that requires annual fee. Through my Visa card, I get free travel insurance up to 15 days, auto rental insurance and road side assistance. I never used any of those services, so I have no idea how it works. I search carefully in my bank’s website, it only list the benefits under the credit card program but does not have any detail information. I called the customer service of my credit card for more information and all I got is 3 telephone number for further inquiry. I called the number one by one and got all the information I need for my wedding and honeymoon. Most important of all, I asked the maximum coverage and how the claims work. It works pretty much the same ways as the travel insurance you purchase from the bank, which costs $72 for two people. The annual fee of my credit card is only $79, so the free travel insurance already make my card worth its annual fee. Maybe I should look into the purchase and security warranty when I have time, see how it works to utilize more benefits from my credit card. I think the bank deliberately not putting the detail information on its website, so that less people would use those benefits.
Monthly Archives: August 2008
Workload before vacation
It always seems work is extra busy right before you are about to take a long vacation. I will be away 3 weeks for my wedding and honey moon. There is only 1 week of work time left before I take off. Although I have planned the vacation many months ago and schedule all my tasks around my vacation, according to Murphy’s Law things usually won’t line up nicely as expected. In a team work, you depends on other people’s work and other people depend on your work. I planned my deliverable to other team members around my vacation so I won’t be the bottle neck when I am away. Somehow everything I depends comes in late, my time ended up squeezed significantly. If I am not going away, I could just finish my work a bit later. However when I am going away for 3 weeks, delay is not an option. Other people are depending on my work, if I don’t deliver, they will be sitting idle. Luckily I take a week off before my wedding to recover form the pre-vacation work stress.
I am reading an article on business week about the ethics of taking vacations. In the article it says some people will feel guilty for taking vacation. They think they are stealing from the company and should work non-stop everyday. Are they nuts? Vacation is part of the compensation of your hard work. Why would you feel guilty for exercising their hard earned vacation. In a modern cooperation, any employee is replaceable. If the work load is structured right, absents form work a few weeks should not have much impact to the company. If you are so important that you can’t leave work for a few weeks, it implies the company will be in deep trouble without you, then why don’t you get the hefty pay raise you asked for? Taking vacation is not only good to your mental health, it also good for you career. The company will not know how important you are and appreciate your work until you disappear form the office. The ideal scenario is that company can feel the pain and inconvenient of your absence, but not bad enough it things start falling apart.