Escalations before week off

[Whentoretire]

I’m having a week off but it’s down completely at the wrong time as far as work is concerned. It’s not going to be a relaxing one. I’ve already worked all of Saturday and there’s a few other things that I’ve not been able to do! All deliverables seemed to come at once and I had a request to be taken off a project before my annual leave due to not being proactive enough and providing generic presentations! It has stressed me out even more! I have a client also who is expecting me to still cover work while I’m on PTO and they made me feel Guilty about taking the time off and asked how they can get in touch with me while on my break 😤. WWYD. Say stuff them and carry on with your break or do some work before I go off to a cottage for a few days. I still have to check in but feel burnt out and that I’m failing!

Take your leave, don’t answer calls etc. I am sure anything life threatening can be handled by someone else. Did you handover any of your work?

This is what it is like when I take leave. I can’t have someone cover for me, if I am not present, the work simply stops. The result is that before leave everyone panics and piles on the deadlines.

Some of my colleagues do work on holiday. I refuse to bring my laptop. We don’t have the kind of job where you can just work for 20 minutes and do something useful. It’s hours of intense focus to do anything productive.

I now deal with it by lying and saying I’m leaving a day earlier than I actually am. I wfh and finish up my tasks without people piling on more. This works with how our leave request system works because it isn’t very formal. My boss also does it so she doesn’t care. I repeat the process on my return. I am back, but it’s stealth for a day. That gives me a day to deal with what came up while I was gone before people start getting too excited.

I just realized people might wonder why my boss doesn’t care I stealth work if she was trying to give me work to do. That isn’t how our company is structured. She is my manager in name only. She never assigns me work. It’s a strange place.