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I want a vacation desperately... not just to use vacation time, I want to go somewhere and completely forget I have a job. The last 3 times I've tried taking v

I want a vacation desperately... not just to use vacation time, I want to go somewhere and completely forget I have a job. The last 3 times I've tried taking vacation time I've been called to fix an issue.

minsight 17y ago
The only way that you can be called in to fix an issue is if you let them. If you want a vacation desperately, then take one. And don't make yourself available to work, because when you do, it stops being a vacation...
- blhack 17y ago
  The unfortunate reality is that this is a great way to make it onto your boss's shit list. This might not be a big deal for some rock-star, well known developers around here who have head-hunters beating their door down offering them truckloads full of money and a job in San Francisco, but for those of us who are the norm, we actually need to try and stay employed. I'm in the same exact boat. Every single time I've ever taken vacation, I have a blackberry tethered to my laptop and am helping people over the VPN. I am the sole tech for a company that has three offices spread across two states, and about 100 office workers...I also do all the ad design for any marketing things we do...what this means is that I'm the sys admin, the in-house developer, the desktop support guy, the creative director, and the graphic designer. Despite this, I get the feeling that my company is just itching to replace with me a recently unemployed best-buy geek squad employee who will work for half of my salary. Grr..sorry, now I'm getting a bit rambly, but sometimes I get the feeling that nobody at my office really even knows what I do here. Everything works, and there are rarely ever any problems that take more than a few minutes to fix. My point is that I hear this sort of advice all the time "Bah! Just leave your work at the door! They'll get the message!" Really? Cause the last time I was on vacation somebody let some people into my machine room who weren't supposed to be there...do you know what they did? They unplugged my mailserver...just unplugged it! (To their defense, they needed to charge their ipod, and the sign on the door that says "If you're name isn't Ryan you are definitely not supposed to be in here" obviously didn't mean them) Awesome! So what do I say? "Sorry, folks, looks like nobody is going to have any email for the next two weeks until I get back! Bah I'm on vacation, figure it out yourselves!" Do you think my job would still be there when I got back if I had done that? (This isn't as much of a problem now because I bought a serial terminal with a modem in it for when things go horribly wrong). During the same vacation, the phone system "went down"...verizon was doing some work up the street, and our voice T1 died...should I have just ignored my cell phone and told them to figure it out themselves? ("Uhh...what's a circuit ID? Errr...dmarc?") To be clear, I'm not complaining about my job...I love it and I love the freedom that it has given me to learn a lot of new technologies that I had never even seen before. My point is that your advice of "don't make yourself available" is absolutely horrible.

minsight 17y ago

The only way that you can be called in to fix an issue is if you let them. If you want a vacation desperately, then take one. And don't make yourself available to work, because when you do, it stops being a vacation...

blhack 17y ago
The unfortunate reality is that this is a great way to make it onto your boss's shit list. This might not be a big deal for some rock-star, well known developers around here who have head-hunters beating their door down offering them truckloads full of money and a job in San Francisco, but for those of us who are the norm, we actually need to try and stay employed. I'm in the same exact boat. Every single time I've ever taken vacation, I have a blackberry tethered to my laptop and am helping people over the VPN. I am the sole tech for a company that has three offices spread across two states, and about 100 office workers...I also do all the ad design for any marketing things we do...what this means is that I'm the sys admin, the in-house developer, the desktop support guy, the creative director, and the graphic designer. Despite this, I get the feeling that my company is just itching to replace with me a recently unemployed best-buy geek squad employee who will work for half of my salary. Grr..sorry, now I'm getting a bit rambly, but sometimes I get the feeling that nobody at my office really even knows what I do here. Everything works, and there are rarely ever any problems that take more than a few minutes to fix. My point is that I hear this sort of advice all the time "Bah! Just leave your work at the door! They'll get the message!" Really? Cause the last time I was on vacation somebody let some people into my machine room who weren't supposed to be there...do you know what they did? They unplugged my mailserver...just unplugged it! (To their defense, they needed to charge their ipod, and the sign on the door that says "If you're name isn't Ryan you are definitely not supposed to be in here" obviously didn't mean them) Awesome! So what do I say? "Sorry, folks, looks like nobody is going to have any email for the next two weeks until I get back! Bah I'm on vacation, figure it out yourselves!" Do you think my job would still be there when I got back if I had done that? (This isn't as much of a problem now because I bought a serial terminal with a modem in it for when things go horribly wrong). During the same vacation, the phone system "went down"...verizon was doing some work up the street, and our voice T1 died...should I have just ignored my cell phone and told them to figure it out themselves? ("Uhh...what's a circuit ID? Errr...dmarc?") To be clear, I'm not complaining about my job...I love it and I love the freedom that it has given me to learn a lot of new technologies that I had never even seen before. My point is that your advice of "don't make yourself available" is absolutely horrible.