Vacation woes
by SouthernFriedInfidel | Published on July 7th, 2008, 11:37 am | Travel
Over the past couple of days, I've encountered a couple of notions regarding vacations that were frankly alien to me.First, I read in the News & Record that studies have been done to verify that taking regular vacations are good for the heart. Not a surprise there... but apparently, the study compared people who take at least 2 weeks per year as opposed to people who take one week or less every six years. I seriously have a hard time imagining that. Even in the darkest, most debt-ridden days of my years in the wilderness after graduation, I ALWAYS had a job that gave me a week off every year. And I bloody well took my time off, even if all I could do was stay home and do a day trip to Pilot Mountain.
Second, there apparently are some poor souls who have trouble leaving their work behind when they vacate. This actually happened to my wife last year -- a manager called her while we were standing in line at Disney's Animal Kingdom park... to ask her where he might find some trash bags. Needless to say, she has not activated her phone while on vacation ever since then.
But seriously, who goes on a trip and keeps in contact with work? It seems to me that if you feel the need to "stay in touch" you over-estimate your importance to your company. The world will keep rolling without you for a week, at least. It always has when I've gone away.
I guess I over-estimate my impotance to my company.
After that I was a lot more selective about the calls I would take when I was out of the office. I had to get used to being out of the office and having messes to clean up when I returned rather than using my personal time to prevent them. That was also a lesson about my boss... the muddafraka had no appreciation for what I did. Yet another reason to not waste my personal time on work.
