Do you use up all of your vacation time at work?

Talk about this week's poll!

Um, I don't really get vacation time because I am self-employed, so I guess I am cheating!

But I have never, in any position I have held, used up all of my vacation time.

You better believe I do! I worked as a consultant and for myself for WAY TOO LONG to know what it is like to not have paid vacation. Now that I have it, I absolutely use it! But when I was independent I never took vacations. Every hour I worked was more money. It was hard to justify taking time off to screw around. Of course I come from a LONG LINE of work-aholics.

Nope, but I try to use as much as I can. My employer is actually pretty generous with making the time available (18 days to start in your first year, accrued from day one, and more with seniority), but the workload can make it tough to use it all, or else you use it a day here and there rather than taking a longer break. And this year we've been short-staffed for the last three months, so it's been really hard to keep up. It's good to get away, but it's hard to really get away when your co-workers know how to reach you all the time, and you're worrying about what you're missing.

(I had a post on this topic on my blog a few weeks ago.)

When I left my last job, I owed THEM 2 DAYS vacation because I was overdrawn.

Here, we get 8 paid stat holidays (Christmas, Boxing Day, New Year's Day, Good Friday, Victoria Day, Canada Day, 1st Monday in August (Provincial Holiday), Thanksgiving), plus my former employer started everyone with 15 days paid vacation plus we had paid days off between Christmas and New Years (it was a university and we were paid for the time it was closed.

I always took all my vacation.

I only worked with one person who didn't. She was a workaholic, the LEAST efficient and effective person because she rarely took a break. She was always there late, always in on weekends, and quite frankly, almost never got anything done. The rest of us, took every moment of vacation seriously - from the top dog down to the newest staffer.

I think it is so important to take that time away. I'm self employed now and we took a 4 day vacation last week. I checked email and worked for an hour on Thursday night and then packed it in, took work off my mind and had a ball! I came back re-energized and have had a hugely productive week and...IT'S ONLY TUESDAY!