Now THIS is the kind of outfit you want to work for

A company I know in Dallas auctions off collectible items of all sorts. Vintage guitars, autographs, rare wine, rare coins, rare comic books, old books, sports memorabilia, music memorabilia, etc. etc. etc. They have about 400 employees worldwide.

One of the guys there who started off as sort of a go-fer several years ago worked his way up to being responsible for a lot of their logistics. So, except for going to their auctions to supervise local security and transport, he doesn't get out much.

They had some auction consignment to pick up in Hong Kong that needed to be handed over to the security service for shipping back to Dallas. Big responsibility, but not a lot of time involved. He mentioned that he had never been to Hong Kong, and though this wasn't his department, might he be the one, this one time.....?

Management thought for a minute, and said, sure, go ahead, and take a few days off for yourself on us to see the sights while you're there. The guy was over the moon when I talked to him today.

I realize that not all companies are doing well enough these days to permit themselves to offer this kind of thing to their employees, but I'm betting that most companies that can, don't.