I want to preface this by saying that this article is NOT about how to turn cosplaying and guesting at conventions into a career, but rather how to balance cons and your career. For many this can be a struggle. And while not an expert, I wanted to share the ways that I've learned to help with maintaining a healthy balance.
I used to work a job where I had to work Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 7:45 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Clearly this schedule meant that for any three or four day conventions that I would end up missing the majority of the con. This is where trading shifts and managing your paid time off (PTO) comes into play.
When I worked at that job I would plan the cons that I wanted to go to months in advance. And when I say months I mean that in January I would already be planning my summer cons all the way through August. That's about eight months in advance. In the planning process I decide what days I want to attend and what days I'll be staying in the area.
I then also decide what days I want to try and trade and what days I want to use PTO for. The getting the days off is always the tricky part. At most jobs there will be certain days of the week that are slower and grant more PTO to employees. Those are the days that I targeted for PTO. The days that don't grant as much PTO I would trade with my coworkers. To trade I would find everyone on the schedule who was an option for a trade and put them all in an email where I would BCC them, requesting a trade. This ensured that no one else would be able to see that I'd emailed dozens of other people, thus encouraging people to respond (I’m a Slytherin at heart, I know). In the email I also requested that if they could not trade that they respond so that I knew to keep looking. When the responses started to roll in I would then mark who could and couldn’t trade, and then trade with whoever had the best shift for me.
In the picture I show a sticky note that was up on my work desk in February 2019, the cons listed took place in July and August of 2019. I did end up getting all of the days off or traded, but I left that job for a better opportunity before the cons took place so I never ended up having to actually use the PTO or trades.
Please note that if you plan to try and trade a lot of days around that you have to be prepared to accept possible trades from others in return. If you don't reciprocate, then people will feel unwilling to trade when you request it.
When the schedule opened for PTO requests to be submitted (usually about five months before at that job) I would submit my PTO request within the first week. If it is a big holiday weekend, then it would need to be submitted within the first two days to ensure that I would be at the top of the list for PTO. Then when I got accepted I would mark it down and I was done!
This method took me a few cons to get down, so don't feel like it will go smoothly the first few times. In fact, don't expect it to go smoothly at all. You may end up needing to request more PTO days than you expect, or not need PTO at all. I once didn't need to touch even an hour of PTO for a local con! I just swapped some shifts and was done!
A few things that I’ll warn against you doing just to get to a con are to…
Call in sick
No-call-no-show
If you call in sick and any pictures of you are tagged to your social media, trust me, your job will know. Even if your privacy settings don’t allow for anyone but your friends to see what you posted or are tagged in, they may be friends with the person who posted or another tagged person. Or you may not even be tagged in the picture and just in the background. This can result in intimidate termination for being dishonest. For no-call-no-shows, a lot of jobs have policies regarding immediate termination for no-call-no-shows unless you can provide evidence of an emergency (think a trip to the ER or a close death, not “I need a picture with my favorite voice actor”). It's also a strong possibility that you could run into a co-worker who doesn't know you're hiding the con from your boss and then they mention it at work.
If you are a contract employee then often it is far easier to ensure that you'll be at the con. Just make sure your contact doesn't state that you have to work certain days (more often it states how many hours or just what work needs to be done) and then give your supervisor a heads up. If it does state a certain amount of hours then just shift the hours around during the week. For example, if you work five 8 hour days per week, you could try working four 12 hour days instead that week. You can do that by taking shorter lunch and getting to work just a bit earlier.