There you are. A margarita in one hand, the company cellphone in the other, sand between your toes on a Mexican beach. And although it might be better than being stuck in traffic at the Cariboo Road exit trying to get to the office, you're still working on your vacation.
Join the club. Apparently those shorter work weeks university professors predicted for the future have turned into - surprise - longer work weeks and even longer cellphone leashes tied to your employer. A survey by Expedia.ca found that 52 per cent of B.C. residents have cancelled vacations because of work, making them the most likely group of Canadians to do so. That number seems a bit high - and given that the survey is part of a vacation promotion site, we suspect it is not terribly scientific. The same site says that 40 per cent of Canadians say they suffer from vacation deprivation. That seems low.
In any case, more people are spending more time at work, or at home working, than in recent decades. No wonder. The fear of losing one's job, or rising expectations from bosses who fear losing their job, means more work all around.
And then there's just plain and simple greed and keeping up appearances. You get the new car, new house and voila - you need to work more to keep up those big payments. It's a treadmill that's increasingly hard to get off.
But folks at the lower end of the pay spectrum are also working harder to keep peanut butter on the table.
It's not good.
Nobody has time to stop and smell the roses. In fact, there are no roses because nobody had any time to plant them.
The good news is that experts tell us as Generation Y becomes the dominant ones in the workforce they will reshape the dynamic because they are making work-life balance a priority.
Let's hope these experts are better than the ones who promised us shorter work weeks.
