These empty chairs were meant for you.
“I feel like I’d be less of a person, a bad employee, if I didn’t work on vacation,” says Jermaine Turner, director of current series for Walt Disney Pictures Animation in a recent BusinessWeek.com article.
Mr. Turner is not alone. A Harris Interactive study “found that 57 percent of working Americans will have unused vacation time at the end of [2011], and most of them will leave an average of 11 days on the table – or nearly 70 percent of their allotted time off.”
That is a remarkable finding: the majority of us take less than one third of our vacation time. And on those rare occasions when we do break away, we bring work along with us. Why?
Apple is Doing Just Fine
If the Devil’s greatest accomplishment is convincing the world he doesn’t exist, employers’ greatest accomplishment is convincing workers they are indispensible. It is a crafty enough trick to be worthy of the Great Deceiver. Convince everyone they’re needed, absolutely essential. Stroke their egos sufficiently to make them want to spend uncompensated hours working for you. It is diabolically brilliant. And absolutely untrue.
Long after we’re gone, the world will continue to move on as it always has – completely indifferent to our passing. After a short period of adjustment, our life’s work will be picked up by someone else. They too will be made to feel irreplaceable up until the point they are replaced, either out of necessity or convenience.
This was never clearer than with the untimely passing of celebrity CEO Steve Jobs in October 2011. Do you see the impact in Apple’s stock chart? Neither do I.
If Apple can hit new highs and become the world’s most valuable company within a year of losing Steve Jobs, clearly your office can manage five days without you.
So on this Labor Day make a commitment to use the rest of your vacation time; not only in 2012 but in every year. It is, after all, a piece of your compensation package. And one that is more valuable than money.
