Columbus Day

Today is Columbus Day which is a federal holiday. You would THINK that since the Federal Reserve Bank is closed for federal holidays that financial institutions would be closed, too. We can only close when Fed is closed so federal holidays are very important to us! :-) However, these days a lot of financial institutions decide to remain open on Columbus Day. Ryan's bank where he works is one of those financial institutions that chooses to remain open on Columbus Day. SunState where I work chooses to close our offices but it certainly isn't a day off for us. Honestly, though, I would MUCH rather be at work all day than have to sit all day doing what we have to do on Training Day. We have our Training Day each year on Columbus Day. It is the longest most boring day of the year for me every year - and today was my 10th year attending Training Day (I can't believe how long I've been employed at SunState!). Training Day is the one day a year when all employees from all of our offices meet at once at a conference center and we go over all of our mandatory compliance training. Our attorney came to remind us how important it is to follow all the rules that are set in place by the federal gov't for us to follow...the consequences could be as stiff as a fine of 10 million dollars and 30 years in federal prison - federal prision as in no option for parole!!! Most of those rules are set in place for front line staff (tellers and member service reps) but some of those rules apply to my position in the Accounting department as well. I always follow the rules, run all saftey checks, and document all verification but it's still scary to think of a fine of 10 million dollars and 30 years in federal prison! :-) They also had presentations on I.T. security (which was nothing new at all) and a presentation to remind us that drugs don't belong in the workplace. Darn! Just when I thought of starting an addiction to drugs! :-) We are usually there from 8:00am until 5:00pm but today we got out at 4:15pm which was a wondeful treat since we were all expecting to finish with the compliance training at 5:00pm. I picked up Libby at 4:30pm and she was VERY happy to see me walking through the door early to pick her up.

Tomorrow it's back to work and time for our bi-annual performance evaluations....keep your fingers crossed that it's a good one for me! :-)