'Tis the season to take a break

IN every company, there will always be those few who seem to keep accumulating their leave as if it's gold. That would make some sense if the leave can be rolled over to the next year or if you actually can cash out the unused days. But it is completely mind-boggling to me that some people have no qualms about letting their annual leave go to waste. It's your statutory right, for crying out loud. I want to shed a tear at the squander of it all.

But times are tough, you may argue, it's all hands on deck. Or you think that you're lucky to even have a job at all, so a long vacation is out of the question. Without a doubt, there will be peak seasons where the company or department may have blackout periods when it comes to annual leave. And in today's climate where retrenchment is at an all-time high, the anxieties about keeping a job are very real.

I don't want to play down the concerns of the ordinary worker. But if your solution to keep your job is to slog 24/7 to make your presence felt, something is not quite right. Even if your work quality doesn't suffer, it's not rocket science that such behaviour is unsustainable and will eventually lead to burnout.