It always seems work is extra busy right before you are about to take a long vacation. I will be away 3 weeks for my wedding and honey moon. There is only 1 week of work time left before I take off. Although I have planned the vacation many months ago and schedule all my tasks around my vacation, according to Murphy’s Law things usually won’t line up nicely as expected. In a team work, you depends on other people’s work and other people depend on your work. I planned my deliverable to other team members around my vacation so I won’t be the bottle neck when I am away. Somehow everything I depends comes in late, my time ended up squeezed significantly. If I am not going away, I could just finish my work a bit later. However when I am going away for 3 weeks, delay is not an option. Other people are depending on my work, if I don’t deliver, they will be sitting idle. Luckily I take a week off before my wedding to recover form the pre-vacation work stress.
I am reading an article on business week about the ethics of taking vacations. In the article it says some people will feel guilty for taking vacation. They think they are stealing from the company and should work non-stop everyday. Are they nuts? Vacation is part of the compensation of your hard work. Why would you feel guilty for exercising their hard earned vacation. In a modern cooperation, any employee is replaceable. If the work load is structured right, absents form work a few weeks should not have much impact to the company. If you are so important that you can’t leave work for a few weeks, it implies the company will be in deep trouble without you, then why don’t you get the hefty pay raise you asked for? Taking vacation is not only good to your mental health, it also good for you career. The company will not know how important you are and appreciate your work until you disappear form the office. The ideal scenario is that company can feel the pain and inconvenient of your absence, but not bad enough it things start falling apart.
I’m glad that you said it…
I’m on my vacation and keep thinking about this same topic. I’m glad that you brought it up!
My supervisor is also organizing a wedding for her daughter… therefore, I’m off the ‘blame’ automatically when I can’t show up at work…