Taking Vacation? Then Please Do It Ethically.
This is just a quick rant about one thing that I observed at my workplace. It’s about taking vacation or rather about not taking vacation and exploiting the flexibilities that are provided to you at your workplace.
We usually plan long distance trips on Thanksgiving holidays because it’s a long weekend period. Sometimes we don’t find 4 days enough for our vacation, so we need extra day for travel or relaxation. Typically, when we know that we need extra day, we take official leave for that extra day.
But what I observed recently at my workplace was little disappointing.
I observed that there was a set of people who were on vacation for that extra day, but still showed up in the office for few hours to attend some important meetings or line up everything in place before they go on vacation. This was really appreciable of them. It shows dedication, sincerity, loyalty and ownership attributes of those individuals.
On the other hand, there was a set of people who were not on the vacation on that extra day, but had plans to use that day for their extended-long vacation, so they left the office early before noon, without really informing anyone officially. This was terrible behavior. It’s ethically very wrong.
Just because most of the employers have flexible work culture and just because your boss doesn’t question you for every hour, you shouldn’t exploit such situations. If you are sure that you are going to use that extra one day for traveling, then better tell your boss about it upfront and apply for official leave.
The worst situation is when you lie that you are coming back from vacation on so and so date, but you already have plans to come one day late and then on the returning date, you call up your boss and lie again that you will be late or may not show up in the office because your flight is delayed or canceled. Again, this kind of behavior is highly unethical.
Probably, your boss is not going to worry a lot about you not working for a day. Probably you taking off for an extra day will not impact the deadlines much. But this is not about what affects or what doesn’t. It’s about being ethically wrong and exploiting given benefits.
I have a request for you before you decide to do something like this the next time – put yourself in the shoes of your boss, and think about the day when your subordinate is cheating with you using one of these tricks. Think how will you feel on that day. And accordingly decide if you want to exploit this situation or not.
