Happy Juneteenth National Independence Day, everybody! Since this holiday is all about well-deserved freedom and emancipation, we’re giving our staff some freedom today as well. We’ll have a couple articles go up today that we held for this, but today is a day off for our hardworking writers. At least our American writers. Our Finns and Canadians and Brits, they didn’t go through the Civil War and the horror of slavery and the final, long-awaited joy of Emancipation, so they can write some stories, dammit. But for all of you Americans out there, I hope you can take a day to reflect on how wonderful freedom is, how alarmingly easy it is to lose it when your moral compass starts pointing to the worst possible things. That needle can swing back, though, which is why we’re celebrating today.
In previous Juneteenth posts I’ve highlighted some notable Black car designers and engineers and drivers of rocket-Beetles, and this year I had another something planned, but I realized that maybe that’s missing the point of the holiday. It’s great to feature Black people in the automotive world, no question, but that really can happen any time, and this holiday is about something much more specific, the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation and the end government-sanctioned slavery in America once and for all.
Well, I guess it did take an extra six months for Missouri, Maryland, and Kentucky and Delaware to end that nightmare, since they held out until the 13th Amendment was ratified, just to be jerks, I guess.
I don’t really have a car-related thing to associate with all of this, and I don’t want to try to force anything stupid, or at least more stupid than usual, so let’s just focus on the date, 6/19, and talk about the only car named 619 I can think of, the Wallys 619.
Wallyscar is a Tunisian automaker, only about 20 years old and I think best known for their very Jeep-like cars, starting with the Wallys Izis:
These used Peugeot 1.4-liter engines and, despite its look, it’s not a true 4×4, but rather a fun, fiberglass-bodied open vehicle, much in the same vein as a Volkswagen Thing, Citroën Mehari, or Mini Moke.
There’s also a newer version out now called the Iris, which modernizes the visual theme, which seems to be based on the idea that if Jeeps had their own culture with its own mythology, this is what their equivalent of elves or trolls might look like.
But we’re here to talk about the Wallys 619! The 619 is a different from the Izis or Iris in that it’s essentially a rebadged Saipa 111, which is itself an Iranian version of the Kia Pride, which we knew here in America as the Ford Festiva.
Here’s what looks to be a Wallys 619 modeling sizzle reel:
Wallys now seems to be selling what I suspect are CKD Chinese SUVs and trucks, which I’m sure makes a lot of sense, but I do miss the homegrown charm of cars like the Izis and Iris. Or even the nostalgia of the 619!
This is all a pretty tenuous connection to Juneteenth, I realize, but here we are.
Regardless, happy Juneteenth, and I hope everyone has a fantastic day off!
For Juneteenth, I dressed up as my favorite Black person.
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That did NOT go over well.
Stainless Steel Fords!
Have you ever seen a Ford, completely normal Ford shaped thing making normal Ford noises but something about it seems missing? Like paint, or rust?
That’s a stainless steel Ford! And you’re a lucky S.O.B. if you’ve seen one in this century. Some of them are alleged to have over a hundred thousand miles on them, so I bet a few people saw them in previous decades.
I’ll let Ford Authority fill you in on the back story. There aren’t very many of them, but they do seem to get around a lot. Pre-war Deluxes, Continentals, T-birds.
I’ve only seen one or two in real life. Back when Roadside America was a book you threw in the car and cell phones didn’t exist my pal and I washed up on the shores of Lake Erie at an automobile museum that had at least one (I can’t remember; that wasn’t the first automobile museum we found by sheer happenstance.)
Not sure how you landed on this topic, but I clicked the link you provided, and now I’m in love! Amazing cars, for sure!
After a car show in my town we were talking about the strangest cars we’d ever seen. I’m sure I’ve seen weirder cars than these, but they jumped to mind because they’re so obscure.
I think if the Autopians are gonna leave us to ourselves for three days, and Juneteenth is over, threadjacking is justified. (Nay, ’tis our duty!)
I wonder how difficult it was to stamp and work the stainless parts, since we know this was an issue with the Cybertruck. Also, did the cars suffer any weight penalty due to the use of stainless steel? I’m writing notes for myself at this point, as soon as I’m in a computer I’ll try yo answer my own questions 🙂
Glad when people can get a PAID holiday. My company I work for swears by the Dei except apparently when it means giving employees a paid day off. Hello on top of that less then a week before June they help a meeting letting us know they are changing our from 38 hours a week to cutting a half hour from 4 weekdays and extending an hour on Saturday and while they didn’t mention it cutting 800 employees pay by $1,000. But don’t worry they still let us know how valuable and irreplaceable we are and are coworkers at corporate were able to avoid the paycut. So in a revenge act I say never rent a Storage unit for a minute longer than necessary, with my company it is cheaper to burn your property for heat and no matter what the upfront discount is they will fucking jack up your rent the longer you are there. I got new tenants paying $100 a month for the same size unit tenants of 20 years are paying $400 a month.
Let’s see, brits, nadians, a finn…. You have no aussie writers anymore.
There was one recently who came back
I love this car, and I will die on this hill: we should look at this type of platform re-use and upgrade as the standard in automotive history, and not just as the blueprint for making affordable cars for poorer regions of the globe. I wish I could buy a brand new, ultra-cheap car whose platform and body panels were tested and tried for almost 5 decades in all parts of the globe, and with the basic creature comforts the Wallys has (I would buy the hand-cranked windows trim if it had one). That blanked out 1-DIN slot almost brought me to tears. Why do we keep letting automakers get away with re-engineering and over-complicating solutions that are nothing but ways of bringing back all sorts of problems that had been solved decades ago?
To keep the illusion/fallacy of new = better, just look at people fawning at automatic door handles.
They gotta convince us that repairing the old model isn’t worth it, better to trade it in for the latest crossover. After all, you don’t want to be seen with a single din, crank windowed relic, do you? If the crossover have far hight margins, who cares?
Not to sound all preachy, but this is where “supply and demand” pull the rug on us. When supply is constrained to high margin SUVs and crossovers, but framed as “better” or “luxury”, demand will follow it. And no manufacturer will even be able to afford the old “penalty boxes” that will look bad on quarterly reports, filling up production lines that could’ve been printing money instead.
Back in the 90’s the govt. of my old country still tried to offer tax breaks for “popular” (as in “for the people”) cars, and this is how we got the Beetle back in production briefly from 93 to 96. I wonder if something like this would work today.
I don’t see governments interested in regulating the market with tax incentives for companies offering basic cheap cars. The truth is cheap cars don’t contribute as much towards sales/car tax revenue (and with tax incentives, governments would see this as actively subsidizing the decrease of tax reveue). This is the kind of thing that industry lobbyists and neoliberal policymakers will never allow to happen.
So I’m retired (sort of) and making today a holiday of sorts wasn’t a major effort. We went to a local place that was having a World Cup watch party for the multiple matches happening today. Watched the Scotland/Morocco match, there were lots of men in skirts and also a big contingent of folks of Moroccan descent. Scotland lost but there was great joy all around and congratulations among all. It truly spoke to the larger world community that this creates and I think what Juneteenth is about.
Skirts? Those are kilts, mate. And if you’re going “military,” there’s nothing underneath but the family jewels. But you probably already knew all that.
My Juneteenth was filled with hosting my mom’s 90th birthday party with some friends and family. The US v Australia match was on, and our conversations were drowned out by cheers twice when the US scored.
Wallys is a great name for a car company.
“What do you drive?”
“I drive a Wallys”
You can drive it to Wally World!
Wallys Izis sounds like a very drunk person saying “What is this?”
WHOYUCALNVRYDUNK!?
Canadians are Americans. America begins in Nunavut and ends in the Tierra del Fuego. Or the other way around, your choice.
The US is just a tiny part of America.
Yes, but America is also the shortened form of the United States of America, just like The UK is actually the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. and Mexico is the United States of Mexico.
The word “America” already has a meaning. If you say “UK” is short for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”, I say that “US” is short for the United States of America. And even this name is weird as Mexico is also a union of states in America.
For most of the world, the shortened form is United States (États Unis, Estados Unidos, etc.), precisely because America alone is used for the continent first, and as a joke, dumbed-down nickname for the United States second. “American”, however, is just the denonym for anything related to the United States.
Funny thing – it wasn’t until relatively recently. Teddy Roosevelt was the first US president to use America and American in a public speech. Before that it was the United States, The Union or the Republic.
Historians believe this change was related to the start of US imperialism when we started picking up foreign territories from 1898 to 1917.
Another fun fact- the Star Spangled Banner didn’t become the National Anthem until 1931
What’s another fun fact is that the Star Spangled Banner is set to the music of an 18th c. British drinking song, “To Anacreon in Heaven”. The original lyrics are high-toned (the drinkers were upper-class gentlemen) and somewhat bawdy.
Yes, the English music and difficulty of singing it were two strikes against it becoming our anthem.
Hello, World
https://share.google/U5KEg6H2FbsR7GF2P
Earth spins at roughly 1,038 mph (1,670 km/h) at the equator.
Orbits around the Sun at about 66,600 mph (107,200 km/h).
Galactic Orbit: The entire solar system orbits the center of the Milky Way at roughly 514,000 mph (828,000 km/h).
Cosmic Motion: The Milky Way and the Local Group of galaxies rush through intergalactic space toward the constellation Leo at around 1.3 million mph (2.1 million km/h)
Don’t know of anything comparable within reach. Hope we take care of it.
Jeez, Martin. Mind your own continent! JK.
As a resident of the USA, I am embarrassed with the general arrogance of referring to this country as “America.”
Many years ago, my boss (A Canadian born to Dutch parents in South Africa) verbally warned me not to refer to the USA as “America” prior to a trip to Quebec. I was already not in that habit, so it wasn’t a big adjustment. Likewise in LATAM.
Most of the people I interacted with in Quebec were at least bilingual and when I tried to use my California high school Parisian French, they came back in perfect English with a bit of a “Trust me. It’s easier this way” attitude. D’accord.
Events of the last 18 months or so make it so much worse. I remember USA citizen colleagues stitching Canadian flags on their backpacks to avoid harassment back during the Bush 43 years. I’m 1/4 Canadian (dad’s mom was actually born in China to Scottish missionaries who moved to Vancouver, BC after being shot at in a boat on some river in China) but if I want to emigrate, I can’t just drive over the border and settle down.
So, the boundaries of the Americas are geographically well-defined. I’m always a little confused about where Europe ends and Asia begins. And I don’t know whether that’s a contentious issue.
“I’m 1/4 Canadian (dad’s mom was actually born in China to Scottish missionaries who moved to Vancouver, BC after being shot at in a boat on some river in China) but if I want to emigrate, I can’t just drive over the border and settle down.”
Sounds to me like you are in fact a Canadian. Canada changed their rules at the end of last year and anyone born before Dec 15, 2025 that can prove they have a Canadian ancestor is a Canadian citizen. All you have to do is fill out a form and send in some paperwork to claim your Canadian citizenship.
(My great grandfather on two sides were Canadians so I’m working on my paperwork. I got the last birth certificate I needed last week)
Thank you for that. The paperwork is a bitch, right? I really can’t expatriate yet with my 90-year-old mother in assisted living and not mentally up to taking care of taxes, etc.
And someday I suppose I would have to confer with my financial planner about the implications of doing that. Whether it’s to somewhere in LATAM or Italy or Portugal where my old brain would take a while to get the vernacular, expanding from my high school French.
For now, I’m happy to be able to drive 2-3 hours N and be in Vancouver, BC. While working, I got flown to all the Canadian hot spots, Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City and eh, Edmonton.
Sorry Edmonton, in their defense, I flew in on Canada’s Thanksgiving Day 10/18, during an early blizzard and not at your most picturesque or hospitable. And I walked to, I think, Earl’s, and the two-member staff was annoyed that I showed up. Probably my only unpolite experience ever in Canada. “Sorrry to make you actually have to work.” You’re probably getting time and a half or double time for just being here. And I’m a generous tipper, so you could have done worse.
The paperwork is straightforward. The complicated thing can be getting the required proof if your line a descent goes back more than a few generations. Canada does accept scanned archive documents from places like Ancestry. That is where I found my great grandfather’s birth record in Ontario. The rest came from a visit the the County Clerk’s office in my father’s hometown.
The crazy thing is that I found out both my parents don’t have copies of their birth certificates! They have gone almost 80 years without a document that recently has become so important.
I got 2 official copies as in Michigan it would become near impossible to get after they pass. Michigan law only allows a copy of a birth certificate to be given to the person themselves or the parents listed on the birth certificate until 110 years after their birth.
One of us!
My kids and I got our proof of citizenship in January. We submitted the paperwork work in October, wanted to get that in ahead of the rush.
Wow, a 4 month turn around – I suspect is is a bit longer now.
I’m not in a big rush and need to do some better research on how it will affect things like my US 401K, IRA, and Roth IRA. Our retirement plan is based on the US tax code so I don’t want to rush into things and make a very costly error. My understanding is nothing changes unless I live in Canada after claiming citizenship.
So far nothing has changed for me, I’ll need to look into what would change if i move after retirement as well.
Depend where you are. Generally considered to be the Caucasus mountains. If you’re in Turkey/Türkiye it’s the Bosphorus.
Some would say a “very tiny part…”
The challenge is that, in English, we don’t really have a way to say “United Statesian,” the way some other languages do. My Mexicans friends say, “ estadounidense,” which rolls off the tongue in a way we’ve not figured out in English.
Brazilian here. We have history with US meddling in our internal affairs, usually with a boot to the neck. Meaning that my fellow Brazilians tend to resent the US often (not saying it is right or wrong, it is just the way we grew up).
However, most of us have no issue saying “americanos” for US people, maybe because we see ourselves as “Brazilians” before “Americans”, and there’s probably some interesting anthropological studies that can be made on this 🙂
Also, relevant for the conversation, most of us are pragmatic about our country (except on football), so you won’t see us wearing flags or singing the anthem or celebrating independence day – except for the far right nut jobs, who, funny enough, LOVE THEM SOME US IMPERIALISM! They copy every stereotypical “flag loving” quirk from Americans, so you bet those guys would have no qualms letting “America” mean “USA”!
Today is also my 21st wedding anniversary (neither of us were aware of Juneteenth when we wed in a small ceremony in Central Park), so, in essence, I am celebrating NOT being emancipated from my lovely wife.
I am glad our country could get over something so egregious as slavery, and I’m hopeful we’ll continue to rid ourselves of the systemic racist remnants still floating around in our society.
Hooray, congratulations! Coming up on #20 ourselves.
Happy Anniversary! You’re luckier than me; I got ‘International Men’s Day’ as my wedding anniversary. But at least when someone tries to attack the International Women’s Day with the “why no men’s day” narrative, I get to tell them it’s November 19th and ask how they celebrated last year.
How could you forget the 1928 Graham-Paige model 619?
Or the Fiat 619 heavy truck.
Also the 1931 Durant 619
https://www.autopaper.com/1931-durant-619-five-passenger-sedan-model-sales-brochure-original.php
https://durantmotors.shop/?page_id=8487
I don’t know about you, but I love new holidays so when I see a complete stranger I have an excuse to gleefully say “Happy (insert holiday here)!”
Yeah, just make sure the holiday isn’t commentating the massacre of their ancestors or something like that.
I have made that mistake a couple times. You get the look where they are thinking “is he a well meaning ignoramus, or is he wishing for the destruction of my people?”
Which is why I avoid religious/superstitious holidays of all types.
I’m going on a “Hot Take” on this comment because History Shows most wars, and populous manipulation/control/intimidation was in the name of divine providence. I grew up with a mostly free minded artist father, but also a religious zealot, and ” Elder” in a small sect known as the Plymouth Brethren. I respected their stand, that No Man is closer to God, and the congregation allowed anyone to publicly address. Their belief is that the King James Bible IS THE irrefutable Word of God. I got into many questions with instructors in the kiddo basement that got uncomfortable for them, and had many debates with my father about how I believed GOD “could” have done any of that. I was a pain in the ass of just about any of the private school or church instructors. BIG fortunate, was a Dr. Roberts PhD. in physics that I had in an otherwise cloistered private school. I was able to maintain strait A’s on all quizzes and tests, that allowed the freedom to pursue college level study in 9th grade. I’m not sharing this to brag, but fellow students would congratulate me on the back and forth, that would occasionally take up the period, between Dr. Roberts and myself. He was the stereotypical NERD. Pocket protector, taped glasses bridge,( this is not hyperbole) but I never, ever, stumped him.
Thanks for sharing that.
The KJB as I understand it was mostly a reaction to the then popular Geneva Bible that was less than favorable to the Divine Rights Of Kings, and property rights. Both positions King James understandably was eager to suppress.
When people talk about the inerrancy of the Bible, I always wonder which version is the one they are talking about, especially if it’s not in Greek or Hebrew.
I was raised in a Christian church, and it didn’t occur to me that they were taking things literally that I couldn’t imagine as anything other than metaphor until I was a teenager.
And even the metaphors—all those sheep and shepherds, I grew up on a farm and it never ends well for the sheep.
Now most of my family is Jewish which doesn’t make my head hurt, except for that time that my mother in law asked me to explain the Nicene Creed that she had been reading about.
Indeed. Not everyone in the UK celebrates Guy Fawkes night / Bonfire Night.
I have an Ulster Scots Irish ancestry, and as I point out to people who ask, those Irish in the Saint Patrick’s day parade who seem to be pissed off at some mysterious people other than just the English probably have my ancestors in mind. Of course my ancestors were just as pissed at the English after getting pushed out of Scotland, and left Ireland in the late 1600s and ended up in Pennsylvania.
I generally share the sentiments of the Irish Republicans. Also the home rule Scots, although that’s sort of tricky geopolitics.
We are likely related.
So, 25 years ago, my wife and I decided to go to Birmingham for some reason and took our children. Got to downtown and there was a giant party going on, which we knew nothing about. Asked around and it was Juneteenth, which being white from outside the South, we had no idea about.
What I remember is that we decide to take a free tour of the Civil Rights museum there. Being basically the only white family in Birmingham that day, we didn’t feel comfortable. Sort of gave me a feeling of what it was like to be a minority that stands out in a way that I hadn’t really felt before.
When we walked into the museum, an older lady took us aside and thanked us for showing our children what this was all about. She took us on a tour and was so welcoming and kind and not at all concerned with white people coming into her town and messing with her day. She was like the world’s greatest grand-mother to my children and just a wonderful person all the way around.
And she had her own story to tell. She was sick and didn’t go to church on a particular Sunday Morning. While she was at home, recovering, her best friends went into church just as a bomb went off.
At some point afterward, I found myself standing by a statue of Dr. Martin Luther King. I’d heard recordings of MLKs speeches, we had to write papers in school analyzing “I have a Dream”. I respected him, but I didn’t really get what made him so special until that Juneteenth all those years ago. Because he taught people to conquer Hatred with Love. There are very few non-family members that I can think of that showed as much love to me and my family as that woman did. And she had lost friends for no reason other than what they looked like to people that looked a lot like me. To accept and love on people that had shown her nothing but hate when she was growing up was pretty much a supernatural thing. I had seen stories about passive resistance and the like as a kid, but I didn’t really understand what that really meant until that Juneteenth so many years ago.
Great story! Our country would be a much better place if more people had experiences like yours.
Which gets back to cars. Road trips are the best. We went down to Birmingham, because the sun was shining, the kids were bored and the air conditioning in the van worked well. The entire “plan” was to visit a big Science Museum for kids. (McWane Center, which I had to look up). Driving down town, we smelled the world’s best BBQ and heard music and decided to explore.
The BEST vacations and adventures are like that (well in the US). be in a car, drive somewhere, get distracted and find something unplanned.
(In Europe, the train service is so extensive that you can do the same thing and trains are better than cars for exploring the unknown, because, at least for me, my wife won’t let me get a good nap in when I’m in the driver’s seat of a car.)
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Is this a joke? It isn’t funny.
Dude…
Rather than just discount what you’re saying, I’d like to educate you.
First, and most importantly, I think you misread the numbers. 10% of the Union Army was black, not 10% of free black men. It is hard to say exactly what percentage of free black men served, but there were less than 500,000 free black people in the USA in 1860 and 180,000+ served in the Union Army along with more in the Navy, so it was almost certainly more than half of free black men, despite not being allowed to serve until about halfway through the war.
Beyond that, there was good reason to be wary of the Union, too. They had a higher casualty rate and lower pay than their white counterparts and were certainly not treated as equals by many whites.
While the central issue to the war was slavery, it wasn’t, in fact, abolitionists vs those who supported slavery, at least at first. Initially, the secession was because the slave states did not want to have less political power than the non-slave states. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation a couple years into the war (1863), and that actually only freed the slaves in the states that were still in rebellion. It’s also when black men were actually allowed to join the Union military, as I mentioned above. It would have been easy to be suspicious of a government that wasn’t actually promising freedom for all.
There were also definitely those who did not join the military, but aided in the war effort. They would not be counted in my numbers above, but were working toward the same goal.
Finally, ending the chattel slavery that whites were enforcing isn’t really something to thank whites for. If I were stealing from you for several years, I wouldn’t expect you to thank me for your increased cash flow when I stopped. And that’s much less harmful.
Thank you (and Hugh Crawford below) for your detailed and informative comments. It’s worth mentioning, for clarity, that Juneteenth celebrates the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas, the last of the states covered by that which had not complied. There were several border slave states (MO, KY, TN, MD & DL) not included in the proclamation and as Jason suggested above, it took a while longer to get that sorted out.
Not to take any joy from those who celebrate it, but it’s also a reminder of what jerks historical Texans are.
The battle of the Alamo where Texans “Paid the ultimate sacrifice for freedom” gets my eyes rolling too.
More like illegal aliens fighting to keep slaves when Mexico outlawed slavery.
I’m sure that the only Texans on the Autopian are fine and wonderful people and not like that. As a matter of fact all the Texans know are.
You and Drew did a great job presenting historical facts, when encountering ignorance. I don’t think geographical position dictates disposition or understanding, and ignorance is not just a U.S. problem. We do seem to excel at promoting prideful ignorance under the current regime. Much to the consternation of free thinkers. It does appear that the more years one accumulates, the more reflective one becomes. I’m struggling to not use cliches, but “DAMNED to repeat” keeps popping up.
Yeah, that is a good point. Juneteenth is a memorable and meaningful date, but the full end to chattel slavery certainly came about later and more bureaucratically. And, of course, continued mistreatment after the end of slavery. Thank you for the thoughtful addition!
It’s “less THAN” and “fight for THEIR people”, genius.
Thank you for removing that .
It’s actually kind of funny coming late. All I see is comment deleted and someone saying “Dude…”
Your facts wildly out of context to the point of being racist propaganda.
For one thing, as late as August 22, 1862 Lincoln publicly stated;
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.”
Lincoln had already drafted the emancipation proclamation, but it was still a secret.
So the free blacks would not have known they were fighting to end slavery. Also some northern whites were often even more racist that the southerners in NYC, white mobs murdered hundreds of free blacks, and even burned down the colored orphan asylum during riots from from July 13 to July 16, 1863 https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/burning-of-orphan-asylum
This was the same time that the cofounder of the New York Times set up a Gatling Gun in the paper’s lobby to defend against the white mobs.
So, the free blacks had no idea that the civil war was about them.
Despite that, African Americans made up approximately 10% of the entire Union Army (roughly 179,000 soldiers) and around 1.5% to 2% of the total population in Northern states during the American Civil
So to sum up, blacks served at more than 5 times the rate of whites, even though there was no promise of freedom, and the north treated them pretty badly.
So you are either grievously misinformed, or a total jerk.
Thank you for removing this comment and deleting the (non member) commenter. I came on here earlier today to post something and was so disgusted by the comment (which had just been posted) that I just left. Probably should have tried to respond with an intelligent and educated post to refute the ignorance as some others have done, but I just didn’t have the time or strength at the time. Not sure how to report such ignorant and inappropriate crap but I appreciate that you all are on it.
Send it in to the “ tip “ email address.
Well that’s a relief. I figured to rodents of unusual size that power the Acorn Atom this site runs on had perished.
Nah, the the Giant Rats of Sumatra are attending the World Cup, and that’s causing some unrelated IT slowdowns.
My company’s take on holidays is a bit odd. We don’t officially take any holiday day off, we still work (if we want to), but we discourage scheduling meetings on such days. However, due to different and stricter labor laws in Costa Rica, our colleagues there take CR holidays off, but not US holidays. So, maybe I’ll work today if any comes my way, and if it does, I might work on it, or might not. This is the best job I have ever had!
My company is international and so are my customers. What’s interesting is that there is generally a lot of respect for all the holidays. Our banner right now on Teams is about Juneteenth. It will be something else on Monday, it seems like there is a holiday every day somewhere in the world.
The strangest thing I’ve experienced was being in the Middle East during Easter, which was also during Ramadan. I would go into a store and say “Ramadan Kareem” (out of respect) and the shop attendant would reply “Happy Easter”. In the US, we would not mention Religion much at all, just work on scheduling with “so how many people are going to working on Friday” and not mention why Friday was a likely day off for many, but in the ME, the religious reasons for holidays are very openly talked about and you are treated like an odd ball if you aren’t observing something.
I mean when I think of 6-1-9 it usually involves pro wrestling.
I am at work today, sadly, but for those who aren’t working, reflect on and enjoy your freedom.
I guess the next closest would be the Bertone (si)X1/9
“This is a, this is a damn fine automobile. You think you hate it now, but wait until you drive it.”
In metallic pea!
I had that before once…
If your pea is metallic, you should see a urologist asap.
Happy Juneteenth!
We had off for year. Then we got a “floating” holiday that we were told could be used for Junteenth, MLK, Good Friday – or any other holiday we might want to celebrate.
I’ll be using mine the week of the 4th as we are required to take the entire week off and burn vacation days. I’m not a fan of mandatory “vacations” but it is what it is.
We used to close the week of the 4th and burn 4 vacation days, boss didn’t care but bossette (wife) said our vendors/customers closed anyway so… But they didn’t.
She just wanted a week off. Great how about not making us waste half our vacation time?
I worked at a place that closed between Christmas and New Years. Which was great. Except I was a new hire and didn’t have any PTO saved up, so that was 4 days of unpaid leave during the holidays.
Oh she liked that as well. I swear the bulk of my vacation used to be Xmas and July 4th.
It seems like it should be simple, but it never is. My contract is by days worked. I need to hit 230 in a fiscal year. What I don’t work is between me and my superior. It’s not vacation, it doesn’t accumulate, because the only thing that counts is work days.
So the first year that Juneteenth was signed into law as a holiday I suddenly was short one day with less than 2 weeks in the year. I had to plead my case to get approved to work a weekend day. All just to say, there seems to be major unintended consequences and few, if any, are just getting an extra day off.
Back on topic: I’m reading Chuck D’s “In the Hour of Chaos” a memoir about art and activism. It’s great. At the last American Educational Research Association conference he was there as part of a panel to talk about Hip Hop education. Sitting next to him was Dr. Ladson Billings. An unbelievable experience. One statement from Dr. Ladson Billings: “you’re saying Hip Hop is representative of the Culture, but to me Hip Hop *is* the Culture.”
That is an interesting way to do it. Assuming you are paid a salary by my count you have 31 PTO days not counting weekends. What happens if you only work 229 days in a year – do they just dock your pay?
We start with 5 sick days (state law), 11 holidays, 20 vacation days. At 10 years vacation bumps up to 25 days. We can carry over 5 vacation days but the rest you use or lose. By far the best PTO policy of any
Yep, end up short, get docked the daily rate. But 99.99% of the time we would backdate a sick day instead of a non-working day.
Public education, which is why it’s strange. No vacation, no carryover. But in California our sick leave not only accumulates, but goes with us to our next district. I have somewhere around 1200 hours of sick leave.
I wish we had a state law mandating sick days. I get really good time off currently (6.93 hours per pay period and we can bank up to 400 hours, 2 floating holidays, 14 fixed holidays), but I had a job here in Idaho that offered no paid time off of any sort.
They gave a week of pay in lieu of vacation each year, but they rigged the calculations of the average week so that literally no one received the full amount. A woman who missed no days and always worked at least 40 hours had to take them to arbitration over it. If you want a healthy workforce, people need to be able to take sick days.
I hate sick leave. Well,, not me personally any more, my body is as unreliable as a Fiat and needs Audi level repairs. But when I was younger, I would get 5 days of use it or lose it sick leave, but I had to bring in a doctor’s note. Which meant I basically didn’t get sick leave for several years.
My favorite was a guy I worked with that had a friend who would give him a note about how he needed to have a sick leave because of an anal-ocular dysfunction. E.g. the guy couldn’t see dragging his ass into work on a nice day. Work never checked who wrote the sick note and accepted it for years.
Oh, the only places I have known to have sick leave didn’t require a doctor’s note. I just think having some guaranteed leave is good. Really rough to force a doctor’s visit when you can often know you are sick and need some rest.
I’ve always called that anal glaucoma, but I’ve never tried to submit it as anything official. Pretty funny they accepted it.
Requiring a doctor’s note is on the extreme end but is one of the ways companies try to keep employees from using sick days as just extra vacation days and then just coming to work when sick.
(Which is what many, if not most people, people treat sick days where I work today and every other place I’ve worked. There was a bit during COVID and shortly after where managers would send sick people home but that has ended.)
Before Covid it could be crazy. I worked one place were managers were made eligible for promotions based on how many people worked for them. I was a contractor there.
One of my managers demanded that everyone in her group work 6x12s, but didn’t give us a ton of work to do. We did a lot of busy work and sitting around and she keep saying “look, everyone in my group is working 72 hour weeks and I’m still behind, I need more people.”
Then I got sick, likely the flu. I came in and was sweating and white and shaking and she had me sit at a desk for 12 hours. Did this for a full week before I finally started feeling better. I don’t remember much about that week, I was running high fevers the entire time. I was there because of her stupid game. Then everyone in the office got sick. Including the manager.
The problem is that most people don’t use sick days when they are sick. I’m a fan of PTO – paid time off – use it for anything.
The contract job I had before my current one had no PTO. I was paid a hourly wage and that was it. I could take time off as approved by my manager but it was not paid. I actually kinda liked it because for the first time in my professional career I was also paid for every hour I worked and overtime after 40 hours per week. It was nice to see a much larger check after a 80 hour week.
I ended up having to work today because I approved time off for a subordinate (we are 24/7 here), but we were given Juneteenth as a holiday without any drawbacks. I suspect that will change the next time they recalibrate our holidays though. We all answered a survey a few years ago and ended up gaining Black Friday and losing Easter. I suspect Juneteenth will get dropped in a couple years when we next go through that. People definitely prefer to vote for the holidays that always fall on a Monday or a Friday.
I get 11 days for Holidays. 7 set ones (New Years, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Christmas) and 4 “floating Holidays”. Everyone basically uses the Floating Holidays as a way to get a day off without burning PTO. My first two “Floaters” this year was in early January for a colonoscopy.
What I’ve found is that the long term employees at most companies end up with high PTO balances. My company gives 240 hrs a year to the long term employees. That’s 6 weeks off. So, they can store up to 12 weeks off before they start being forced to us them.
Well, except this one guy who works here. He maxed out withholdings and bullied his way into still earlning PTO without using it. Had about 500 hours built up. The company got bought and he refused to use or be paid out for the giant PTO balance. Once again, he raised hell when that company started hitting the new PTO max and Company 2 backed off and let him still earn it. He’s currently at war with the 3rd owner and trying to go beyond max of that withholdings too. When he finally retires, we will be paying him for dang near a year already. It’s the strangest retirement plan I’ve seen and I’ve never seen anyone beat HR by just being mule-headed like this guy has.