Time Off

  • Having read all this years ago and agreed that we all should all take our days off, I am still struggling. As a freelancer I do not have an allocation. I also have additional pressure to impress continually. Some people, or perhaps most people, seem to manage it better than me.

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

  • Just trawled through all the posts on this thread and still am surprised that guys are still doing shed loads of extra hours without compensation but can easily understand why.

    Without being too personal, both my husband and I are 'retired' but spend a lot of time covering for/helping children and grandchildren. If we were not, I'm not sure where the family would be. If you don't have the luxury of people like us, life must be extraordinarily difficult at times.

    P.S. Major Bloodnock? How many people still remember 'The Goons'? (Sorry to anyone who finds the phrase offensive but it was the name of a BBC radio show in the 1950s)

    Madame Artois

  • S Hodkinson (9/1/2016)


    ...How many people still remember 'The Goons'? (Sorry to anyone who finds the phrase offensive but it was the name of a BBC radio show in the 1950s)

    +1

    How many people remember Ned's Atomic Dustbins who pinched their name from The Goons?

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

  • I was once asked if I would be available for calls during a 3 week holiday I'd booked 10 months in advance. I

    said no. If they are unable to survive without me then that is their problem to solve, not mine. This may sound a bit abrasive but it is not up to the employee to bail out bad planning/management and if we keep doing it they never learn!

  • Ah yes, it all comes back... The Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler of Bexhill-On-Sea. Eccles doing the weather forecast ("Winds light and variable. Dark tonight"). The time Bluebottle was rescued from some bloodthirsty natives:

    Bluebottle: Er-hee! It was agony...they was going to dead me. But just as they was about to, I took my teeth out, and I showed them round!

    Neddie Seagoon: But... but Bluebottle - you haven't got false teeth!

    Bluebottle: I know! It was agony!

    MarkD

  • I've not taken holidays because job changes meant that I've lost holiday allowance but I cannot think of an occasion when I've thought "I'm glad I didn't use my holiday allowance".

    I'd be interested to know the reasons that people don't use their holidays

    • Fear that they will do without you and then think "well why do we need them anyway"?
    • Implied threats i.e. the project is urgent and you won't be considered for promotion if you are absent?
    • The need to feel important?
    • Financial incentive/disincentive?
    • Love the job so much that time away is painful?
    • You can choose your friends but you can't choose your family...apart from that once
    • ...etc

    I think your perspective changes when you get older. Just this morning on my FB wall someone has posted a note about a popular local character dropping dead unexpectedly at the age of 49. I'll be 50 in 6 months. It makes you take a good hard look at your priorities.

    I enjoy my job, the intellectual challenge, the act of creating something to the best of my abilities, the rapport etc. Sometimes a total tech switch-off does more for your creativity than anything else.

  • David.Poole (9/1/2016)


    ...Sometimes a total tech switch-off does more for your creativity than anything else.

    One of the things that stops me totally switching off in the daily SSC Editorial. Ironic or what.

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

  • So true. First of all I love stay-cations. I don't need to travel the world or even just the countryside to relax. Second, I often use of a week or so of my vacation just taking a day off here and there, making it a longer weekend. That actually makes that shorter week at work more pleasurable.

  • skron (8/20/2012)


    I actually ended up going back to work early after heart surgery because HR would not stop calling me to tell me that I did not have short term disability and I needed to go back to work.

    Sounds like a very toxic company.

  • Raoul Bastendorff (8/20/2012)


    skron (8/20/2012)


    I actually ended up going back to work early after heart surgery because HR would not stop calling me to tell me that I did not have short term disability and I needed to go back to work.

    Reading something like that leaves me speechless. It certainly confirms my thinking that I will never work in the US as an employee, unless I am high enough in the command chain.

    I work in the US and I've never worked for a company that is this bad.

  • skron (8/20/2012)


    And that is what I did last year. I found a better employer that values me as more than a resource.

    Good for you.

  • Ah the classic line....'Enter Bluebottle wearing Arab headdress and cardboard knees'. Or the Ying Tong Song.

    And while we're on it......Navy Lark or Round the Horne anyone?

    No actually is there something a bit serious in here? A sense of the absurd or surreal which made us a bit more doubting of everything we were being told which still persists today? Imagination of alternatives to the given narrative?

    Enough of this heavy stuff, as I said, a few years ago, those who think they are irreplaceable are in for a rude shock; they're not

    Madame Artois

  • Enough of this heavy stuff, as I said, a few years ago, those who think they are irreplaceable are in for a rude shock; they're not

    Indeed - leaving a company is like taking a stick out of a bucket of water, within moments it's as if you were never there...

  • S Hodkinson (9/2/2016)


    Ah the classic line....'Enter Bluebottle wearing Arab headdress and cardboard knees'. Or the Ying Tong Song.

    And while we're on it......Navy Lark or Round the Horne anyone?

    No actually is there something a bit serious in here? A sense of the absurd or surreal which made us a bit more doubting of everything we were being told which still persists today? Imagination of alternatives to the given narrative?

    Enough of this heavy stuff, as I said, a few years ago, those who think they are irreplaceable are in for a rude shock; they're not

    Frequently you find that the whole team is irreplaceable just not indispensable. i.e. when someone leaves the position is never filled and stress levels rise and you find it difficult to take holidays and end up being off sick or leaving putting even more stress on everyone else - vicious circle.

    Yiddle I Po!

    Oh and you can follow HMS Troutbridge's misadventures on radio 4 currently. I think they are up to the 1965 episodes atm.

  • Marcia J (9/1/2016)


    skron (8/20/2012)


    And that is what I did last year. I found a better employer that values me as more than a resource.

    Good for you.

    Where?

    Rod

Viewing 15 posts - 61 through 75 (of 76 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply