Do you feel uncomfortable taking vacation days? (employer, job, company)

[findly185]

Like the title says, do you feel uncomfortable taking personal/vacation days?

Is your work delegated to other team members when you go on vacation? Or are you concerned with the amount of work you'll have to follow-up on after returning because you have no one to help with your work-load during your absence? Does it not concern you at all?

[bande1102]

No way. I live for my vacations.

However, my husband works for a company where there are three managers. If one goes on vacation, the other two get stuck working crazy hours to cover for the vacationing one. As much as I know his coworkers should get and deserve a vacation, I resent them for taking one--especially when they decide to take 2 or 3 weeks at a time. Part of that is because I know one of the managers is incompetent and the company should replace her. The other issue is that one of the managers could hire another manager so this wouldn't be an issue, but he gets a bonus for not doing so.

[nightcrawler]

NO.

NO ONE SHOULD FEEL UNCOMFORTBALE ABOUT TAKING VACATION.

if you do, then there is something wrong with you.


when I go on vacation, my job stops. no one does it but me.

[findly185]

I am asking because I get the guilt trip from co-workers when I delegate my workload to them.

[Mugatu]

Hell no.

I earned that time and will enjoy my vacation days guilt-free. I have no problem picking up the slack when someone else is off, so I expect the same from my coworkers. If they have a problem with that, then too bad.

[bande1102]

Originally Posted by findly185

I am asking because I get the guilt trip from co-workers when I delegate my workload to them.

I've never had a coworker go on vacay and delegate their work to me. I've never worked with coworkers who had the authority to do that. I work in a competitive environment and everyone tries to tell everyone else what to do. I listen to whomever has the authority to fire me--in my case, that would never be a coworker.

When my supervisor assigns work, I just do it. It doesn't require me to change my work hours or work extra hours or give up weekends.

[Garfunkle524]

I easily make up any time off I take in the week leading up to it and the week after. Kinda sucks that I'll work two 70 hour weeks just to take a week off, and I'll somehow end up LOSING that PTO anyway. I don't have a backup, and it's unacceptable for my projects to fall behind . . .

If I have to take a single day off, generally I'll work 12 hour days that week. 48 hours on the time card and I'll still lose my PTO. I don't get OT either. Crap now I'm all depressed.

[joe from dayton]

Originally Posted by findly185

I am asking because I get the guilt trip from co-workers when I delegate my workload to them.

Does there own work just pile up while they are gone or does someone else do it?

We share/split work when someone is on vacation; things simply cannot go undone.

[Charles]

I feel uncomfortable because my job is 69 less stressful than vacation. "Going on vacation" is extremely stressful and expensive.

Also, I don't take too much vacation until I hit the use or lose max. I want to carry as much vacation time as possible so if I get laid off, I get that vacation time as cash flow.

[Tekkie]

It depends on how poorly the company is managed.

I work for a sales organization (stay away if you know what's good for you). Order processing and client communication is paramount to our success. At one point, we had a 1-on-1 dedicated back up system. Essentially, you would be assigned to back up a person's workload while they were out. In my opinion, it was absolutely ridiculous because our workload would essentially double for the amount of time your backup person was OOO. If you have any experience in a fast-paced, volume-intensive sales org, you should understand what I mean. This system was extremely inefficient and placed a lot of stress on those doing the backing up. On top of that, who wants to come back to a ****-ton of work to catch up on?

Finally, our management is starting to wise up a bit and has implemented, at least for the time being, a dedicated back up team. There are three people who now split the workloads of those people who are out on PTO. That's all they do; they don't have any other responsibilities but to back folks up. If they are a bit bogged down, we do resort to a 1-on-1 back up, but that has become much more rare.

I do miss the days with my previous employer where taking time off was really not that big of a deal. The workloads were lighter, so it wasn't a burden for your back ups, not was it necessarily chaotic upon your return.