The depressing reality of quiet vacationing

20.06.2024 - 12:29 / insider.com

Who among us has not done a little fibbing at work? A little résumé embellishment here, a fake dental appointment there. Now people are taking full-blown holidays while on the job as part of a trend that's been called "quiet vacationing."

There's no set definition of quiet vacationing, and it can encompass a variety of behaviors — traveling to a faraway place and not saying anything while still getting your work in, or not working but keeping your mouse moving to appear as if you're online in hopes that no one will notice your drop in productivity.

On the one hand, this sounds like an awesome, novel possibility brought about by the rise of remote work. Responding to the 10th email of the day while sipping a margarita on the beach sounds a lot nicer than doing it from an office desk as a coworker nearby munches loudly on their sad salad. If work gets slow in the summer, there's no good reason to sit and stare at your computer.

On the other hand, the idea that people are under so much pressure at work that they feel they can't take true disconnect-from-everything time off or even tell their boss they're working out of town for a bit is deeply depressing. It's a stark reminder of how broken American work culture is, just in time for summer.

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"It may be a question of just psychological safety, or lack thereof, that the employee doesn't feel like they can openly have a conversation with their manager about taking real time off," said Rebecca Zucker, an executive coach and the founding partner of Next Step Partners, a leadership consultancy. "We're all big boys and girls, and it's a question of not where we're working or when we're working, in terms of the hours we're working, but are we doing what we need to get done."

The whole quiet-vacationing discourse got kicked up by a recent Harris Poll survey on out-of-office culture. It found that 28% of workers said they'd taken time off work without telling their bosses — basically, they're out of the office, but not "officially." Millennials in particular have picked up on the practice, with 37% saying they'd dipped out of work on the sly.

It's not that these workers are unhappy with the vacation their companies offer: 83% of respondents said they were satisfied with their company's paid-time-off policy. The issue seems to be that employees don't feel like they can actually use the time off they're given. Eight in 10 workers said they didn't use the maximum amount of PTO allowed; some said they felt pressure to always be available, while others cited a heavy workload as their reason. Almost half said they got nervous about requesting time away, and three-quarters said they wished their workplace culture put more value on taking breaks. Workers