Take Real Vacations

The office went nuts last week with all of the year end deadlines. Everybody was scrambling trying to get stuff done before the Christmas holiday. I was under the “gun point” to finish a design document for my client. Luckily, we had a guy from our software division to help us out by providing telephone consultation everyday. On the third day, our manager asked this guy, “Can you fly to Colorado so we can do this face to face? It will be more efficient that way.” The guy said something that nobody was quite expecting, “Oh, I am actually on vacation this week….”

I was shocked. He wasn’t just spending a couple hours a day, but almost entire 8 hours a day to help us by calling into the meetings, reviewing our architecture documents and even fixing our diagrams. The first half of his vacation was pretty much all devoted to our little project without much rest, let alone enjoying his vacation.

“We appreciate your help.” My project manager said, “Can we still call you if we need help?.. “
“No problem. Call me at any time. Glad to help.”

So we did. We called him and scheduled meetings with him everyday for the rest of his vacation. Hey! It’s not that we are mean. He offered it!

A lot of people feel guilty for totally being detached from work while they are on vacations. Although on the HR paper, you’ve taken 4 days off this week, you ended up working 3 and half days helping people out. If you are interested, here is an article about how severe the problem is in today’s corporations.

If you are struggling with the same problem, CNN has a good article that is worth reading if you are looking for some advices:
Vacations Are Easy. Taking Them Is Hard

This past Friday was my first day on vacation. Stupid me couldn’t resist the idea of being a good worker and opened my work emails. I was kind of pissed when I saw a long list of emails demanding me to work.

“Christine, please attend the discussion ASAP. We need your input.”
“Christine, please answer the following questions..”
“Christine, please review … “

It seems that nobody is respecting the fact that I am actually ON VACATION.

The guilt trap once again worked on me. I spent a couple of hours answering emails and reviewing work stuff again.

Nah, that’s wrong. I gotta be more responsible for myself and take this goddamned vacation I have planned a while ago. . So I finally convinced myself to disconnect from the Internet all together.

I am flying to Vegas in a couple of days and I am going to switch my brain from WebSphere Servers to the Ballagio Buffet. I can’t let my client’s data mapping questions mess with my real money at the Black Jack table! I am taking my vacation for real this time!

It’s Saturday night and I haven’t opened my work email yet. And I am going to continue staying away from all things related to work until I return. Well, let’s just see how long I can really last…