At the risk of dating myself, I remember going 12 rounds with Human Resources over taking time off. This was before the people in charge of that glorious department were known as people officers.
Times change. Goldman Sachs, arguably the top investment bank on Wall Street, now offers at least some of their talent, unlimited time off. You want next week off? Happy trails. You say the next two months would be nice? Vaya Con Dios.
Surely there is a catch you say. Of course, there is. You have to be fully caught up on your work and able to take care of your future work without your current need for warmer climes and time away from your pain-in-the-ass-boss getting in the way.
And then there is the unmentioned worry. If you are telling your company you can get your job done while taking more and time off, what kind of a statement is that making to the folks making your direct deposit?
Glassdoor, the company right in Sausalito that can give you a crystal ball into many companies, public and private in terms of hiring practices and Bennis, says that mentions by companies of unlimited paid time off is up 75% compared to pre-Covid levels—that time long ago when masks were something worn for Halloween.
But vacations are a little bit like Virtual Reality, the hype fails to live up to, well the reality.
I don’t write that lightly. I recently spent two out of three weeks off, and I’m here to tell you that the down time wasn’t what it was in the past.
Now I know the quality of the time off is influenced by a diverse list of factors, everything from the cost and ease of travel to the destination to your companions to the activities. In that way I was blessed, sitting in a Sierra foothill river with my wife, watching our dog learn to swim and eating leftover ribs.
No, my hang up is with the expectations of those working regarding me, the person on vacation.
Besides the words I write for this fine magazine, I toil on a daily basis for a financial news outlet called The Deal in Manhattan. That company is, in turn, owned by Euromoney PLC out of London. So, when I wrote a story on a Friday speculating that hedge funder Bill Ackman was about to have a large issue with one of his investment vehicles, and on the following Monday he announced that he was returning $4 billion to investors, my editors wanted me to write a fresh story. The tricky part was that I was on vacation and not checking my email.
This caused some consternation in New York, with the concern being not so much that I was on holiday, but rather where was the new story they wanted?
I won’t lie. I was happy that I had wrote the story earlier and then Ackman did what I thought he would have to do. There was a part of me sorry I was on vacation and missing the chance to write a new story and, perhaps, gloat.
But the whole idea for a reporter taking time off is to not be on deadline, to not write. Being on deadline five days a week for weeks on end can make one tense, disagreeable, and requiring several mixed drinks, with a severe desire to sever connection with much of the outside world.
Disconnection from deadlines, keyboards and online access is a valuable thing. But according to Fishbowl, a professional social network tied to Glassdoor, 54% of respondents said that even when they were on vacation, they could not “fully unplug.”
Some of that has to do with work norms here in the US of A. The average American who receives paid time off gets 14 days year. In Europe that number is 24. My company, Euromoney, extended a policy last year where everyone company-wide works half a day on Friday, the European influence don’t you know.
But that said, I frequently work seven or eight hours on Friday as I cover for the East Coast when they leave for the day or try to get ahead on a feature. As “Mericans,” we are simply wired to labor when there is work looking us in the eye, or a story looking promising.
And there is the vacation prep that must be done. Take the laptop, leave the cannoli. Download the books onto the Kindle. And one must set up the out of office email message for the hundreds of unwanted PR pitches.
“Hi, I’m on vacation this week. Thanks for calling. Leave me alone.”
