The elves didn't cover for me

We just got back from a short vacation. I hope to write more about that in a later post. But what I want to talk about here is how you really don't get to go on vacation. Yes, you can go away. You can be out of the office. You can do something besides your job for a short time. But in the end, the work doesn't get done and you have to work twice as hard when you get back to catch up. It puts up a barrier to taking time off. I love to be with my wife and children and the more time I spend with them the better. But when I think about taking time off, all I can think about is that when I get back, I'm going to have to work harder for a least as long as I was away.

This time, things went better than I could have hoped. We are nearing the end of a months-long project and we're now just needing to finish up the testing and we'll be ready to release a new version of the application. Only two new bugs were found while we were gone so I only had those to work on (besides the usual paperwork of getting the application ready for release). So, while I do have more work to do than I would have if I had not gone on vacation, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. And now I am refreshed and I can work better. But I'll still have worries for the next time we want to go on vacation.

The problem is that businesses have had to streamline their processes and cut down on "redundancy". I put redundancy in quotes because it's not really redundant to have two or more people working on one thing. It may mean that the people have some down time every once in a while but it also means that the work doesn't stop when one of the people takes time off - or gets sick - or gets fired - or quits. But I'm afraid fewer and fewer businesses think about work this way. The new way of doing things is to have people have so much to do that there is no down time. It can be wearing.

My title refers to one of the fairy tales collected by the Grimm brothers.  It's the story of the poor shoemaker who finds that elves have come into his shop at night and finished the work that he started during the day. You can find a version here if you'd like to read it yourself.