Did You Take a Vacation This Year?

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    Year

Did you go on vacation?

  • Yes, most certainly

    Votes: 17 68.0%

  • No, it's not done here

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • No, can't affort missing anything at work

    Votes: 1 4.0%

  • No, I can't fall behind

    Votes: 2 8.0%

  • No, the project would stall

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • No, I would risk getting fired

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • No, for other reasons

    Votes: 5 20.0%
  • Total voters
    25
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Just one this year in Cancun. We really want to go on a second one but, indecision and scheduling conflicts got in the way. Because of my flexible work schedule, I rarely have to use vacation days for a random day off. As a result, I have over 350 hours built up. I really need to burn off some vacation time. :smile:
 
It may have been noticed, but I have reversed my productive life. Normally I'm retired, but this year I went on a three+ week vacation to help my sister with the plethora of chores that an accommodation facility brings about.
 
I get 44 days leave this year and in using all of them, nice little all inclusive trip planned to the maldives!
 
At my work, people almost never take more than a week at a time. Some of the technicians do, but for the scientists/engineers/managers, it's rare.

So my answer would be, a few days here and there throughout the year, but we don't take big chunks of time off.
 
Its kind of rough because I would typically take a few days around Thanksgiving and a few days around Christmas. This doesn't leave me with much time for a real vacation. I don't really consider hoilday time to be real vacations.
 
Each year we try to go somewhere for a week or two, Nordkapp trip was much longer.
 
I know many people who take 4 weeks of vacation at one time and then a week here and there during the year, I'm jealous! I guess I unusually take 5 vacation days a year, but this year I'm already on 10, so it's a good one :smile:
 
Each week, most people get 2 days off. In addition, there are always labor, turkey day etc. I believe those should be sufficient.
 
I don't know what's being asked. I took a week off work, but I didn't "go on" vacation. I didn't go anywhere.
 
I get 10 holidays and 23 vacation days. I take them all.
 
I took my week this month and a week at the beginning of summer. I don't think I'm ever going to be able to use up all my vacation time though. They changed policies about a year ago from being able to bank vacation time for 2 years (about a month and a half of vacation time) to a "use it or lose it" policy. They keep setting back the deadline for using it, because, not surprisingly, it's really hard to suddenly take that much vacation time if you haven't been taking a lot of vacations in the first place to have banked it.

So, I took two one-week vacations that really were vacation, and have sorted out my teaching schedule to leave me with Fridays and Mondays free after the first month of classes is done, so will just take a bunch of long weekends to use up the rest of my time before I lose it entirely. They haven't put any limit on sick leave, so if I'm sick, I'll probably just call it a vacation day this year and keep banking the sick leave time.
 
That sucks, Moonie! The last place that I worked was really restrictive about vacation time, so it was impossible for me to take all the vacation I was entitled to. The GM was a creep, and impossible to get a straight answer from, making the situation much worse. When I was having medical problems and needed to see specialists, he was always a road-block. One large complication was that my immune-system specialist worked at Dartmouth's teaching hospital, and it takes a whole day to get there and back from here.

Another problem was that I was a one-person department with an administrative assistant. I had built the department up into an industry-leading powerhouse, but when I was out for some vacation, nothing got done, so I ended up working 2-3X more hours just to catch up. One should never be indispensable - that way lies slavery.
 
Yes, I got busy with work, then took vacation...and time flew by until Georgina called me and asked if I was alive and well.

Even my department chair commiserates on vacation time, so that makes it easier to take it, but none of us really has the choice of when we take that time. Pretty much, course schedules dictate the few weeks a year we have free. I don't really complain much, because we get a lot of days off that don't count as vacation time, but are still holidays and time off. I get off as much time as I need.

This year will still be a bit chaotic. I'm up for promotion this year, so have a lot to do to put that package together (only in academia do employees need to put together a binder full of documentation to justify they deserve to be promoted even when your department chair knows you're due for it and deserve it).
 
Moonbear said:
This year will still be a bit chaotic. I'm up for promotion this year, so have a lot to do to put that package together (only in academia do employees need to put together a binder full of documentation to justify they deserve to be promoted even when your department chair knows you're due for it and deserve it).
That's very nice, even if building the package is a drag. In my last job, I got pay-raises by contract (incentive pay). I made the boss a millionaire, and he tried to slash my incentive pay because he thought I was too expensive. He's the idiot that wrote the incentive agreement, and when I was making him $1.25M/year in net profits (beyond what he and the GM could hide) he was still ticked off at paying me my share.
 
I went to Lake George, NY early last week. But it was only for 2 nights and 3 days (most of which were spent driving). It was pleasant enough though--it was the first real vacation I've had since 1995! I even went parasailing.

Here's a shot of my two sisters, brother, and nephew...

[PLAIN]http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs388.snc4/45140_128116093900774_100001071534511_142729_7621435_n.jpg
 
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rootX said:
Each week, most people get 2 days off. In addition, there are always labor, turkey day etc. I believe those should be sufficient.

Really, the odd day here and there is sufficient? But that means you won't get to go anywhere, but just be not working. The point of a vacation is to get away from everyday life and for that, at least in my opinion, you need a week or two off at a time.
 
cristo said:
Really, the odd day here and there is sufficient? But that means you won't get to go anywhere, but just be not working. The point of a vacation is to get away from everyday life and for that, at least in my opinion, you need a week or two off at a time.

Camping out (getting away from normal life) only requires two days because most of the cities here have nearby camping sites.

It becomes difficult for coworkers when people decide to take long vacations. I prefer taking 1 day before and/or 1 day after a long weekend which makes almost a week.
 
Monique said:
Last year I had 438 hours banked, which is almost 3 months of vacation days.. you really need to be a lazy bum in order to consume all of those hours :smile:

I'm sure Greg could use up those three months :wink:
 
Paid vacations?! Jeez, talk about freeloaders.

No vacations for me. The years of travel for my work left me with a profound hatred of hotels, airports, and suitcases. Tsu made a trip to Hawaii but that was last spring, I think. She also has a family thing to attend in Michigan.

Tsu goes to Hawaii a lot. She has a cousin on Kawaii...

Edit: Odd, just as I was making this post, I got a call for a roadtrip from an old customer. No, thanks!
 
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Monique said:
Last year I had 438 hours banked, which is almost 3 months of vacation days.. you really need to be a lazy bum in order to consume all of those hours :smile:

That's why my vacation policy has changed to a "use it or lose it" one. When they were banked, it was a huge cost liability for the university, because they'd get paid out when you left (I got about a month's extra salary when I left my last university because of all my banked vacation days). Bad enough with us faculty on our sad salaries, but it was a huge liability with all the physician salaries also accumulating those banked days.

The silly thing is that there have even been a few times I tried using them, and then I guess so many other people wanted the same day off, the university tossed an extra paid holiday our way (usually they do this around Christmas or New Years), so I didn't need the vacation day to take the day off.

Though, I also agree with Cristo that a day off here and there isn't a vacation. Sure, everyone needs that day here and there to just tack onto a long weekend for a family event, or to stay home and wait for something to get repaired or delivered, or run errands you can't do on weekends or evenings. But that's not vacation. A week is the minimum for a proper vacation. That's usually all I can take off at a time, and it's barely enough. A full two weeks is much better, in my opinion, with 10 days of actual travel time, and 2 days on either end for packing, unpacking, doing all the laundry before returning to work, etc., so you aren't exhausted after one day back from vacation.
 
Moonbear said:
That's why my vacation policy has changed to a "use it or lose it" one. When they were banked, it was a huge cost liability for the university, because they'd get paid out when you left (I got about a month's extra salary when I left my last university because of all my banked vacation days). Bad enough with us faculty on our sad salaries, but it was a huge liability with all the physician salaries also accumulating those banked days.
Here it is also use it or lose it. You can take a maximum of 192 hours to the next year, but you get 315 new ones at the start of the year. There is no way to get those hours back in salary or in other means, so when my contract ended all those hours went up in smoke. Even more interesting is that we need to work for 40 hours in a week, but only get paid for 37.5 hours. You are supposed to take a day off every few weeks to make up for the extra time you've worked :rolleyes:
 
I said "no," as it was a "working" vacation, driving cross-country to pick up some household goods and my son.

We did have fun!
 

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