Originally Posted by
WhiteOut
My rule of thumb is travel time = work time, so i rarely travel on Sundays and late friday nights. easy to justify when i do reports and admin work on sat AM or all evening/late with news/ball game in the background.
therefore, when i take actual vacations, my vacation begins the last workday, usually around 6-7pm that evening, and I'm not plugged back in until that first actual workday (normal start time for me is usually around 8:30...but some days it's 5-6 am start or midnight-2am end...just depends on what's happening.
the main thing is, when i vacate, I make it known to the team and my clients that i will be unplugged and will *not* be checking messages. clients get an escalation list for emergencies.
we work too darn hard to work during vacation also...i love what i do but vacation = total unplug, and i guard that like gold.
That is how I look at it as well but my schedule this past year has had a lot of late Friday/Sunday travel. It makes the weekend very short when you get home at 11:00pm on a Friday and leave at 2:00pm on Sunday.
Originally Posted by
darthbimmer
I guard not just my vacation time but ordinary weekends as well. Travel that involves going out Sunday afternoon or coming home late, late Friday night (or late, late Thursday night in your example) is taking my personal time. I'm willing to give that time when I feel it's being compensated appropriately, but people need to understand it's mine to give.
I find that how well this attitude works with colleagues and managers really depends on two things: First, do they travel for work themselves, or are all these issues just theoretical to them? Second, do they have loving families?
Talking about how someone's family situation informs their professional behavior is very un-PC but it is fairly accurate. My coworkers who have spouses and/or kids and mutually get along with them virtually never pressure me to work over weekends. They plan meetings and trips around work/life balance. I'm not saying they're slackers because they're married with kids. They do get the job done and they do make sacrifices; they just go about it sanely. The jackasses who routinely schedule me for onsite meetings 3000 miles away on Monday morning 8am or Friday afternoon 5pm are invariably divorced and estranged. It's like they've got nothing to go home to so they don't understand why anyone else would.
That is a good point - I hadn't thought about the scheduler and their situation. In my case, the guy who creates my schedule is single and in his mid 20s. That probably impacts a lot of the "why" he schedules things. Also, I don't think he has been west of the Appalachians so the sense of geography is a little lacking. It took a while to convince him that Sioux Falls, St. Paul and Fargo (in that order) was not a logical or cost effective three day schedule.
Originally Posted by
CreditSense
Having worked for Microsoft, Visa, Wells Fargo and a few other big companies I'll tell you that it definitely depends on the work culture. For example at Microsoft it's common for people to leave early on rainy days just to get across the 520 bridge, and certainly on a vacation day it would be easy to leave early and arrive late on a Monday due to vacation. Other companies frown on vacation even when it has been accrued and would expect to have you there until 7pm on a Thursday even if you were leaving on vacation. I'd recommend you get a sense of what other co-workers you respect are doing and go with what your company culture will allow
Corporate culture as well as direct managers have a lot to do with it. My supervisor used to have my role and is very understanding of the travel schedule. Unfortunately the department head has not been in this role for a while so has maybe forgotten a little bit of it. She also works in NY but lives in LA and only makes the trip twice a month so has no problem working some weekends (though I don't think she expects us to - at least not directly).