with Britt Reints
Forget the 9 to 5; Full Time, All the Time is a blog about the mobile working life - when you have the freedom to work from anywhere and the responsibility of always having your smartphone turned on. Britt Reints works as a freelance writer while traveling fulltime in an RV with her husband and two kids. She explores balancing real-life bills with an unconventional work life, and finding time to maintain relationships with family and friends.
You can also find Britt at InPursuitOfHappiness.net.
Categories: break from reality, office life, relationships, vacation
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I’m planning our summer vacation. It’s nothing fancy – a trip to the South to see my Grandmother. One week of hanging out in extreme humidity, eating her home-grown tomatoes, and drinking glass after glass of sweet tea. To say I’m looking forward to it is an understatement.
Only one problem: my spouse can’t get the time off. It’s not month-end close or end of year craziness. It’s not that he doesn’t have the time off. It’s because at his company people just don’t take vacation. Like ever. At his company, it’s acceptable to take a day here or a long weekend there. But an entire week off? Practically unheard of.
My spouse isn’t alone. In a study by Orbitz, the online travel company, one-third of respondents said they took five or fewer days of vacation in the past year. One in four said they felt their bosses did not encourage them to take vacations, and one in three said they stayed connected with their office via phone or computer while on holiday.
The longer I work in the corporate world (ten years and counting) I’ve noticed that the vacation balance you carry often gets associated as good behavior. As in the higher balance you have the better employee you are than some schmuck who actually takes a vacation. I can’t tell you how many people brag about how they’ve hit their vacation accrual cap or how it’s been three years since they took a day off.
We’ve become a nation of workaholics. It’s like the corporate version of a macho culture. “I can work more than you can. I don’t need sleep or rest. I’m a real man.” We have a perverted view that not taking time off and keeping our nose to the grindstone will advance our career or keep our jobs from ending up on the chopping block.
And I have to tell you, I not only find it rather pathetic that people can’t tune out of work for a week or two a year, I also find it rather deplorable that companies encourage this type of behavior.
Not taking time off can lead to burnout, emotional and physical illness. All of those will end up jeopardizing your career far more than taking a summer vacation. So be a corporate culture misfit and schedule some time off. You’ll thank me later.
**Photo taken in Portugal during my mommy-vacation last May.
I’m so with you on this.
Right down to the husband who only takes off a few days for Christmas.
Miss Britt | April 13th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
oh I am with you. The last company i worked with didn’t like that i used up my days. so glad i don’t work for them anymore.
vera babayeva | April 17th, 2009 at 7:22 am
I can’t remember who said it, but there’s a quote out there that says at the end of your life you’ll regret the things you didn’t do, not the things you did.
I have never regretted one vacation that I’ve taken. Life is too short to work yourself to death.
Finn | April 17th, 2009 at 8:24 am
My company doesn’t discourage vacations, but we’re project driven, meaning our CLIENTS discourage vacations. We received an RFP from one current client on December 15 with a due date of January 15. So many of us worked days we had planned as time off.
Additionally, in this economy, people are scared to take time off for fear that the company will find that it works just as well without them.
Grace | April 17th, 2009 at 8:53 am
right now my company is sending us very mixed signals - take your time off so it helps the company financially to get the $$ off the books, but make sure everything is done and with less staff to do it. ummm this just leads to people taking time off and WORKING or as we call it “Pretend Time Off’ (PTO)
vacations are just REQUIRED for sanity!!
kate | April 17th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Robyn, you’re spot on!!!
I am a horrible vacationer and a workaholic… until the twins (that helped balance the workaholic thing a bit). To help me achieve my goal of getting rid of the 40 carry over days each year (you’re right, it does feel secure saying that!), I was lucky enough to meet Elaine! She is a GREAT vacationer!!
Our families went on a great vacation for a week this past Spring Break. If she hadn’t planned it and dragged my butt along, I would have never done it.
So, I’m with you! Life it short… it has GOT to be done
Kate @ | April 17th, 2009 at 11:46 am
Nice picture…Angela
Holly | April 17th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Last week, I put in my vacation request for the summer: Two whole glorious weeks off in a row. I’m turning 40 (eegads!) and I have a couple of short trips planned. Also, I haven’t worked on my birthday in like forever, and for the past couple of years I’ve taken my whole birthday week off.
Before I hit send on the email to my boss, I thought long and hard about it. I, too have worked in those life-killing factories where taking a day off EVEN ON YOUR BIRTHDAY is frowned upon (I still did it!). And if you’re sick, still come to work and pollute everyone else, too.
Now, I work for the State, in a university. Everyone in my office takes vacation days, vacation weeks, vacation half-months. We accrue so much vacation so fast that our HR director is taking every Friday off from now through June just to burn some up.
So I hit send. And my boss replied, “Have Fun!”
My fiance works in restaurant management, on the other hand, and if he ever gets to take a full week off, or two weeks in a row off, I’ll fall over from the shock of it. We’re battling right now so he can get a half-day off to take me on my birthday trip.
Lynn @ human, being | April 17th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Like workaholism in general, it’s hard to shake it off and take the plunge. But I will say this: I worked for 13 years for a company that claimed to give 6 weeks vacation per year, with a carry over bla bla bla. Well, first of all, nobody dared to take 6 weeks, and there were years when I took less than 1 week total. Secondly, lo and behold, when it came time to cash in on my carryover upon quitting, they found an excuse to steal a large chunk of it. Thirdly, be assured that nobody ever, least of all in the end, appreciated the sacrifice. Yet if I had it to do over, would I have the guts to go on vacation? I’m not sure.
Now I am a partner in a business and it’s actually worse. My partners are my friends and we do most things together, including vacations. In the 14 mos since I joined the company, we’ve taken one vacation: from Jan 1 - 4. Yeah, that included one business day (January 2). One. And besides that, like all of our vacation travels, it was more hectic than a regular work day. R&R? What’s that? Basically you rearrange your thinking so you can appreciate the little bits of R&R in every day. Just think - for most of human history, there was no possibility of traveling to an exotic place and chilling out. Yet the human race didn’t die out. To some extent, it’s about attitude.
SKL | April 17th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Oh yeah . . . I was one of those workaholics. Worked every day from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., always worked Saturdays, often worked Sundays. Rarely took a vacation. Took pride in it.
Then my daughter was sick. Very sick. I was out of the office for 3 months. Still got a high performance rating, still got my raise and bonus. I’ve regularly taken all my vacation ever since. Often the need to not take vacation resides only in our own heads.
Elaine at Lipstickdaily | April 17th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
i couldnt agree more. My hubby is the same way. He worked for 4 years ..wasted accrued vacation days sitting home alone(and working in the backyard each month) before finally coming up to taking 4 weeks off this year for a trip to our home country india!! (that too after i threatened a few wifely things!!)
ugh..the corporate culture sucks!
Keyomi | April 17th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
My husbands works in the same type of place. And he is often looked down upon for having the audacity to leave before 5 to attend one of our kids sporting events! I’m thankful to work for an office that forces us to take our yearly vacation time.
Lucrecia | April 17th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
My husband rarely takes a week off either, but that’s cuz he works for himself now. I remember telling him I didn’t want to take 2 weeks off for our honeymoon, so we split it, but now I totally see the benefits of 2 weeks off. My parents were really good and giving me the heads up - managers are trained to tell you it’s never a good time for vacation, so you have to just do it anyway and most are then supportive. This was after 20 years of hardly taking vacations and learning the errors of their ways.
Nicole Pelton | April 18th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Last summer, my husband and I both got out of the corporate world (after about 18 years for each of us) and took big pay cuts to enter academia. We are both in our early 40s, with a preschooler, and decided to make these changes so that we could have more family time - including vacations. I haven’t been on a vacation in 3 years. In June/July, we are taking FIVE weeks off to go to various family events and to settle in a mountain rental for awhile. We live in the South, and our son is going to be in a Northeastern day camp in the mountains for half-days…where he will play in the woods and swim in a lake (if you’re in the South, you know that our summers are largely spent indoors). This transition time has been a struggle - both the loss of pay and the work involved in any kind of start up effort. No doubt, there will be some distance working, but I can’t even tell you how excited I am about this vacation.
Pat | April 20th, 2009 at 7:54 am