As I have reported before, Americans are pathetic at taking vacation. The average American gets 12 days of vacation every year and only takes 10 of them. Europeans, on the other hand, get an average of 25 days of vacation every year and take every single one of them. That’s why Europeans always seem to be so happy, fashionable, and cultured. (It’s also possibly why that entire continent is suffering a crushing, seemingly endless recession, but I digress.) The point is, if you don’t take a vacation soon, you’ll end up sad, miserable, and you’ll probably lose your hair and get whooping cough too.
Everyone deserves a vacation – you deserve some time off, and your colleagues deserve some time away from you. And to help make sure that your vacation also seems like a free vacation to each one of them, here are a few things you can do to really annoy the crap out people. How could you using your vacation days possibly bother anyone? You’re about to find out!
Talk Incessantly About Your Upcoming Vacation! You know how teenage girls are often made fun of for talking on the phone for hours about a topic they could probably have knocked out in 10 minutes? Well, now you can relive your glory days! Answering people when they ask where you’re going and what you plan on doing there is perfectly normal, which is why you should bring up your impending vacation in every conversation you ever have – including ones you weren’t a part of and have to forcibly inject yourself into just so you can reiterate that you’re about to go somewhere better than everyone else you’re talking to. And you can do this with anything. The more you make every conversation about your kids (when they didn’t ask), or your physical ailments (when they didn’t ask), or your favorite television show (when they didn’t ask and possibly don’t watch it), the more people will find ways to be busy whenever you wander through the halls.
Go On Vacation Before You Actually Go On Vacation! I’m pretty sure Congress is the big winner here, since they take 23.5 weeks of vacation every year (that’s true – look it up), and they generally use every legislative session to say they can’t get anything done because they’ve got another vacation coming up. Unfortunately for you, you probably don’t get half the year off. But doesn’t mean you can’t take half the year off by wandering around and doing nothing on the week before and after your vacation. After all, how can you be expected to tie up business so quickly when you’ve got a vacation coming up – and how can you expect to work hard when you get back from a week of overindulging on Mai Tais?
Forget to Tell Your Clients That You’re Going on Vacation! How can this possibly happen when you’ve spent every waking moment telling your colleagues that you’re heading on vacation? Easy! Just forget to set your email notification, and definitely don’t change your answering machine message. It’s as easy as forgetting to finish a sentence in an article like this one, which I’m about
So there you go! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a vacation to plan. First I’m going to head to Russia and buy a refurbished Soviet-era tank. Then I’m going to the Maldives before they sink into the ocean; I hear they have some excellent dolphin-wrestling excursions, and I’ve always wanted to do that. Ooh! And I think after that I’ll go into space! Maybe then I can begin my plan to become the first King of the Moon. I’ll tell you about it when I get back – if I remember to start writing articles again.
Do you know someone who doesn’t take enough vacation? Share this blog post with him (or her)!
Or better yet, send them this video reprimand!
