euphemistic use of "exempt"
Wilson Gray
hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Sat Sep 20 07:34:06 UTC 2014
On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 10:39 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> I was told that Harvard never had snow-days.
As is the case with "is," it depends on what you mean by "never." I've
never known a case wherein Harvard was, in fact, "closed" sensu stricto
because of the weather, but there are plenty of snow-days when Harvard is
technically open only because a skeleton-crew of upper management and
obligated underlings such as TA's, assistant profs, kitchen staff,
housekeepers, et sim. are on the job. And, since no one is obligated to
take a snow-day, lots of people come in voluntarily and add the snow-day to
vacation or whatever, if they're non-exempt. I used to do that during times
of no life, which was, sadly, most of the time.
--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list