euphemistic use of "exempt"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Sun Sep 21 03:16:32 UTC 2014


On Sep 20, 2014, at 3:34 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> 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

Yeah, same here.  I guess they can't really be snow days even when everyone is urged to leave campus (or "non-essential personnel" at least), because they're not made up at the end of the school year.

LH

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