Sabbatical Sickness..................
From what I see in this line of posting is pretty dang funny. Funny in a psychotic American 'work ethic' way. Americans are currently working more hours than anyone else in the world, more than the Japanese. I find the canadian self paid sabbatical refreshing. When I take vacation I meet people from canada, australia, holland, britian, they all take a MANDATORY PAID MONTH OFF, and it's typically ENCOURAGED by the employer and other employees help take up the slack.
Hearing that someone can't, or isn't allowed, or feels guilty, taking their vacation time is screwed. That's one of the main reasons I still work for the government, the vacation time. I'm not real crazy about my job, but the vacation and benefits outweight the complaints.
For supervisors not to encourage vacation time seems like very poor management. Why on earth would you want some poor bastard shagged out after working for three years straight only getting the normal government holidays off, looking forward to 'getting an extra day off for the BIG four day-er'. That's insane.
Like Moses told Pharoh 'let me people go' on a friggin' vacation. Probably make them alot happier knowing they didn't have to get email/voicemail, worry about projects, etc. If you can't leave it at work, can't take your vacation, are made to feel guilty about taking your vacation, have a use it or lose it situation, why would a person want to work there. I'm sure that Kathy Lee Gifford has a sweat shop opening..........
Whatever happened to co-worker support??? From most of the posts on this site, the majority seem to feel they are over worked, under paid, under appreciated, stomped on public servants/slaves. Let people take their dang vacation.......the longer the better. If someone here earns the vacation, we all try to help out with the extra work, and really it never amounts to much extra for such a short time.
I feel for Chet, Donk and Micheal S.........sounds like a nice mexican beach vacation is just what you need. I only spent a week surfing in mexico and it was the best week I had in years.
Looking forward to two weeks in Italy next spring and three weeks in Japan in Fall of '04.