Only 36 days leave

There is an obituary, in today's Grauniad, of the biographer George Painter. Apparently he was an expert on Proust. A sentence in the obit got me:

he was appointed in 1954 as assistant keeper in charge of 10,000 15th-century books. He had to work on Saturday mornings and had only 36 days' leave a year, but he stayed in the job for 20 years.

Pity the man. Only 36 days leave. That's terrible. Where would the arts be if people could not take off all of August to go to Tuscany? The hardship.

By the way, 36 is the eighth triangular number. It is also square and the first number after 1 to be both square and triangular. Wow.