Surfing (The Internet) On Vacation
from the everyone's-doing-it dept
It's that time of the year, when people start taking their summer vacations, so, as happens every year, we get the usual bunch of stories about how workers all seem to take their jobs with them on vacation. The study found that companies give their employees plenty of vacation time, but the employees are afraid of the consequences of actually disconnecting for that amount of time. This isn't too surprising, and doesn't seem all that different from what we've heard in past years. The fear of coming back to a huge pile of work doesn't seem appealing to anyone. At the same time, though, perhaps the most obvious study in the world came out, pointing out that kids tend to use the internet more in the summer time. So, perfect solution: when you go on vacation, just let your kids handle your work email while you're away. Then everyone's happy.
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Take your vacation
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Re: Take your vacation
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Easy way to disconnect...
1) My cell phone does not work (unless the office wants to buy me a sat phone).
2) Contacting me on the ship costs a ridiculous amount of money ($10/minute inbound last I checked, and that's after you go through the hour long hassle of figuring out how to call the ship).
3) Every ship I've been on has had internet service offered for an insanely high fee, available only on kiosk PCs and ... oops ... our nice web gateway to get into our internal Web mail is *never* works on the kiosks (thank goodness!).
Just to be clear, I'm happy that those three restrictions are in place not simply because I don't want to be "hassled" by coworkers while I'm gone, but because I am, personally, a work-addict.
I know if I go to some resort where I have an internet connection, I'm going to blow an hour or two fuddling through e-mail, checking up on my systems and not relaxing as I need to. This is going to have negative effects on the rejuvinating purposes of my vacation for both me and my wife.
Sure, I arrive back at the office and my inbox is hopelessly full, and I have to put in a few long days to catch up, but the effects of 8 full days of completely disconnecting from everyone but my family is *very much worth it*.
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However, I've learned to say "NO" to work.
However, employers ARE making it very hard.
I mean, I'm technically "allowed" to take any vacation at ANY time for any length up to a month (as long as my vacation bank allows)...however whenever I do take vacations, here are the following situations that occur:
1 - email piles up, regardless of any "away" messages (my record for 2 weeks: 645 emails, none automated)
2 - deadlines are NOT moved and anything missed counts against me in evaluations (so either I have to work a lot of unpaid overtime to get things done BEFORE I leave, or I pay for it after).
3 - because we are understaffed, I'm the only one with knowledge of certain critical systems, so I can get called because the guy holding the fort simply WON'T know...or is too much of a dumbass to learn..what needs doing)
I've TRIED to ignore point 3...the result of that last time was coming back to a system that was so hopelessly messed up, it took a month to set right.
Result? I have 9 weeks of paid vacation in my vacation bank (I get 4 weeks a year) and I only take 1 week vacations once in a while and I take a day or two here and there...sigh.
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