[ad_1]
Commentary
Commentary
Annual vacation lists have always been a nightmare, but now they have become impossible, says Pilita Clark of the Financial Times.
Don’t feel too comfortable when working from home. (Photo: Unsplash / Designecologist)
LONDON: Earlier this year I made a plan to spend this Easter break flying on easyJet to a house near a beach in the background of Spain. Along with the plans of many others, it failed.
EasyJet is grounded. I am locked up in London.
The beach in Spain is closed and in a town near the coast, some locals greeted an ambulance convoy trying to bring retired evacuees from a virus-ravaged care home by throwing stones at vehicles.
EXITING IS MUCH HARDER
All in all, staying home has been fine, especially since I still have a job and moreover, managed to take a little annual vacation before the world closed.
READ: Commentary: The Great COVID-19 Race for Protective Medical Equipment and Ventilators
READ: Commentary: Bitter truths for Singapore Airlines about this collapse of the aviation industry
A lot didn’t, which is one reason why the office’s churn list policy has gotten into a crown overload, while the idea of vacations is flipping.
Once I had the job of putting together vacation rotations as a team, I know you’ve always required the skills of a Nobel-winning diplomat and butcher.
The needs and wants of all staff must be carefully controlled and judged before a final and decisive cut. It’s hard to imagine how much more difficult that task is now.
HOW “SAFE” IS TO GET?
Last week I ran into people in the City of London who had been working grueling hours for weeks on flooded equipment. Now they needed volunteers to cancel the Easter vacation they had booked months earlier.
A laptop seen as a man works from home. (Photo: Unsplash / Christopher Gower)
No one risked their lives, as health workers around the world do. Everyone was able to work at home, unlike the bus drivers, supermarket staff, and couriers who don’t have a choice.
However, they still faced a dilemma. If they didn’t stay at your desk, how safe would your job be if your company started cutting back on your industry?
If you couldn’t take a vacation, how safe would your marriage, or mental balance, be after another exhausting week of work?
At the other end of the spectrum, I spoke to people whose bosses had told them they should leave now if they could, because otherwise they’d probably get too tired and if everyone tried to take time off right away, there would be chaos.
READ: Commentary: The Joys and Frustrations of Learning at Home
LISTEN: Home-based learning: good, bad, terrible … but mostly good?
“They said we can’t make everyone go on vacation in September or when this is all over,” said a bank analyst. “We have not received any formal rules on this from above, but this is what is happening in the division where I work.”
Right, I thought, until I joined a video hangout where one of the speakers announced that she was about to go on vacation for a week.
CREATIVE WAYS TO RECREATE THAT VACATION SENSE
To do exactly what, I wondered. It has been impressive to read about the “Yorkshire Coast” Britons who have dragged beach towels and pebbles into their living rooms to recreate the missing vacation spots.
The best notes are also for the confined French couple who went to the trouble of posting photos of themselves wearing sunglasses and bathing suits to look like they were on their canceled break in Mexico.
(Photo: Mimi Thian / Unsplash)
However, in real life, how much fun can you really have on a vacation locked up at home?
An exhausted colleague who decided to do it reports that it was better than expected. Completing a 1,000-piece puzzle for the first time in years was surprisingly therapeutic.
It was nice to see his surprised teens discover on family movie night that Alien and other movies made decades before his birth were actually pretty good. Great progress had been made in one or two pending tasks around the house.
Still, I would have preferred the week in the field I was originally supposed to take. And there was the not insignificant question of using valuable annual semi-captivity vacations. Or so I thought.
READ: Comment: Isolated with your abuser? Why does family violence appear to be on the rise during the COVID-19 outbreak?
READ: Comment: Blocking and Isolation Sound Simple, But Keeping People Home Isn’t an Easy Answer
RELAXED RULES ON OFF
It is a measure of the massive confusion of the crown overall that neither he nor I knew at the time that the UK government had made a noticeable announcement about annual legal vacations, which are mostly lost if not taken.
To help key industries, the rules would be relaxed so that workers could carry unused licenses for the next two years.
This move was widely reported, but in the coronavirus news tsunami, it has taken time to assimilate.
In other words, it was very much like almost everything else in this haunting and haunting moment.
CHECK THIS: Our comprehensive coverage of the coronavirus outbreak and its developments
Download our app or subscribe to our Telegram channel for the latest updates on the coronavirus outbreak: https://cna.asia/telegram
