Somebody’s on vacation and her name is ME!
I wanted to touch back on a previous blog this week because, well, I’m on vacation and am really trying to honor one of my 2024 goals of allowing myself time off by either working ahead or skipping a week altogether.
This is a working ahead version.
I thought it was a good time to look back at one of the most-read blogs of 2023, The Exit Interview (Don’t #TellDell) as my husband and I are experiencing yet another round of what working at Dell did to our mental health. As we began to prep for our coming spring break (also known as “our big vacation”), we both felt an almost immediate uptick in anxiety.
Like a serious uptick of anxiety that made no sense.
Why were we feeling so nervous? Why were we snippy 24/7? Why this sense of dread?
We then realized these feelings were not new feelings at all. These feelings were the same as those we’d experienced so often in our past and we quickly pinpointed its origin to life under the Dell Family’s thumb.
You see, at Dell, we were required to keep a running list of upcoming days off in our email signatures. This allowed everyone we had contact with to know when we’d be out of pocket and, thus, gave them the option of loading us up with work to be done before our departure. Gotta keep those stakeholders happy! This practice made the days or weeks before taking time off stressful and rushed because what if we simply could not get it all done?
We were also required to provide incredibly specific instructions within Out-of-Office messages providing clear steps to anyone who needed service right that very minute. Can’t leave those stakeholders hanging! This became quite challenging in our last years at Dell as the backup pool shrunk with each round of layoffs.
I will be out of the office from April 1-8, returning April 9th. I will also be out on Friday, April 12th for minor surgery but hope to be back by Monday. I will be out of the office August 29-September 7. Our US offices will be closed between Christmas and New Year’s. If you need immediate help, please see Tonia for assistance with onboarding; Eric for assistance with freight-forwards; Jen for CRM; Bob for federal; Sandra for linkages; …
We were heavily encouraged to take our laptops with us when away or to check in with our managers a few times if we were home sick. The irony on this one was that I worked on federal accounts and, per federal policies, could not take my laptop out of the country. As my backup options continued to dwindle, that policy was changed to take your laptop but, wink wink, just keep it quiet.
The struggle to get to vacation was only slight more awful than returning. Faced with hundreds of emails, work that was never completed, and an edict to get caught up quickly eventually forced us to wonder whether taking vacations was even worth it.
I have been running around my house this week looking everywhere for to-do’s that might fall through the cracks. Of course, there are none. Everything will be fine. Still, I am consumed with the what if’s and who will’s as that learned behavior emerges once again.
So much of employment at Dell revolves around which list one’s name will inevitably be placed on. This is common chatter at Dell, even today.
The goal, of course, is to make the layoff list rather than the you’re-fired list.
Mishandling vacation or sick time? A guarantee for the latter.
Click Here to read the original blog: The Exit Interview (Don’t #TellDell)