THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

This is such and easy choice.  Jobs come and go.  Sons pitching the college WS do not.  If my employer ever tells me I can’t go watch my son play in some similar competetition, that will be the day I tell him/her to go sit on a sharp stick and spin.

I work hard to make myself valuable.  Even in a down market, one does not replace a smart, educated and experienced employee without some pain.  If they could, they shouldn’t have you in the first place.

Winners: Dad, son.
Losers: That dealership, if word gets out which one it was.

That is one awesome, and smart, dad. He will have no trouble finding a job.

Easy choice.

Our secretary did the same thing last year. I was just sad that I couldn’t go with (former pitching coach of the player). But, she has lots of vacation days stored up.

Here’s the thing we DON’T know .... how much time dad has already missed from work. There are sick days, vacation days, etc. It is possible that dad already used up all his days, in which case, the business doesn’t owe dad any time off, even if it’s unpaid.

Let’s hear the rest of the story. My guess is there’s much more to it. Let’s not throw the dad a parade until we find out more.

Oops. Our secretary did not do the same thing last year. She used vacation days, not “quit her job”.

Folks, there are parents that quit their jobs to go watch their kids play in the LITTLE LEAGUE world series. I’m not sure that’s “great” parenting, or praise-worthy.

The point could also be made that dad is looking to have son support him (with his new, small, pro contract) while he’s out of work as well ... or looking to get a new job using his son’s name/status as a key.

There’s more to this ... just like the handicapped kid that was cut from his high school team (the details painted a completely different scenario).

USA has 2 weeks as standard vacation.  In Canada, it’s 3 weeks.  In some European countries, it’s 4 or 5 weeks.  Not to mention that 7 or 7.5 hours is more the norm in those countries than the 8 in USA.

It’s praiseworthy for the guy to quit, because the US businesses already are pretty harsh on the American worker, and the zero-tolerance policy in exceptional cases should be challenged.

***

I got 6 tickets to Game 5 Stanley Cup (Montreal went on to win the Cup that game).  One of my friends was in his MBA class.  He had a test that day, and told the professor he’s going to have to only do part of the test because of the game.

The professor said: “You have tickets to the game?  Then what are you doing here?  Go!”

He got a makeup test later.

That’s how you deal with people… as people.

Circle,

I’m not ready to assume the dad’s motivation is leach off his son.  Yes, we don’t know all that much about the situation, and as such the only assumption I’m willing to make is that Dad wanted to go see his son pitch in a once-in-lifetime type event.

When I was a senior in high school, my dad quit one of his 3 jobs (the one that would have him gone almost every weekend) to make sure he could watch me compete in the final season I would ever really be in competitive sports.  Now, we didn’t exactly need the money, and if we did I’m sure I would look at this a little different, but him doing that meant the world the to me.  His priority was sharing a fleeting moment with his kid, not the extra few 10’s of thousand dollars he might have made.  Now as a father and being able to see it from both sides, I can assure you that is good parenting.

Now back to this guy, even if he had already taken his fairly standard 2 weeks vaca and 2 weeks sick, so what exactly?  Are you trying to suggest he’s a slacker?  I don’t get it.  Sure, the dealership has a business to run, and autosalesmen are probably a dime a dozen.  But on the other end, autosalesmen can generally pick up jobs pretty easily because they are largely, if not entirely, paid on commission.  So, it might be fairly easy for this dad to find another job quickly.

Why is everyone looking for weird hidden motives in this?

The kid was a low-round draft pick.  The father won’t be leeching off of him any time soon.  Indeed, I would expect the son to need financial support during his time in the minors (pay plus the signing bonus won’t cut it).

The father is not making some dramatic self sacrifice.  He had a choice; he didn’t have flexibility to avoid the consequences.  He made the right choice.

The dealership has its personnel policies in place.  With deep pockets, it would not be hard for a manager to see a lawsuit on the horizon if s/he made an exception in this case but not the next one.  The dealership made its choice, too, and I won’t argue whether it’s the right one.  OTOH, it’s quite possible that the father will be hired back by the same dealership.  Best to wait and see what happens.

Of course, if we wait to see how it all plays out, it will no longer be news.

I’m not condemning the dad for quitting his job. IIRC, from the article, he did not attend the CWS last year when SC won it all and promised to not do that again.

But I also don’t condemn the business for not giving him time off if he had already used his days. I agree with Tom that Americans already spend too much time at work, and as a boss I’d treat people like Tom described. When our secretary went to Carolina for the D2 CWS the first thing I did was give her $50 to buy her and I a t-shirt. But not all bosses view a baseball game as an approved reason to leave work for a week or longer.

The “leech off his son” thing was sort of an insinuation at the end of the article. I don’t necessarily buy that because that type of pick is getting 10 grand and a minor league salary.

My over all commentary was in regards to how we’re often presented one side of the story to elicit an emotional response even though the full details may reveal a very different picture.

I am very much the type of person that would be like the college prof that told the guy to go to the game. In my experience that is atypical and most would receive the cliched “priorities” lecture.

I’m mostly guarding against being mislead by the media to arrive at a conclusion/emotion that may not be accurate. They tend to do this quite a bit.

Tom, your commenting on challenging zero-tolerance policies is a good one.

An obvious example are bereavement policies that stipulate that it can only be used in regards to a blood relative. So if my best friend of 30 years is killed in an accident, I can’t use bereavement days? Even though I’m allotted 3 per year? We’ve had situations where people have submitted requests for bereavement days for the death of a pet and have had to use unpaid days instead.

The article didn’t really say whether the dad wanted paid days, how many absences he had over the last 12 months, etc. I find it strange that a business would deny a valued employee such a thing unless there was more to the story. However, some companies have policies like this out of fear that if they allow it for one, they have to accommodate every request or be vulnerable to discrimination-type suits ... under the idea of who’s to say a son pitching in the CWS is any more important for leaving work than other reasons other employees might have. Certainly as dads and baseball fans, we view it differently.

It’s doubtful that we’ll know the whole situation due to confidentiality of records. It’s also doubtful that we’ll hear from co-workers or the business ... so we’re left with the story we have and the big mean company is an easy villian, that people can rally against.