The Post-Holiday… Holiday

‘I am currently out of the office. I am in Santorini. It will be very hot and very beautiful where I am going. When I return from holiday I might respond to your pleading request/s. It’s highly unlikely, though.’

I love a holiday, don’t you? Apart from the travelling, which is rubbish. But I adore the aimless walking around, the beer drinking, the sleeping, the visiting museums and pretending to read the plaques, all that. The beer drinking. The unique holiday moments when, after a few drinks, you come to the earth-shattering realisation of what you want to do in life. You want to be a Dolphin Trainer! Or an Ice-Cream Seller (in the park only, sunshine a must). Oh yes. Everything is beautiful on holiday. Even the rude, filthy locals who gaze upon your pale, sad features and spit. Holidays, what I would do for a holiday…

I get through work by thinking about my next holiday. Or the weekend. Is it a bank holiday yet? I constantly talk about holidays, compare holiday ideas with people who are equally holiday-minded. We talk dates, itineraries. It’s extremely fulfilling. What’s the weather like in Barcelona right now, eh? Should I go to Morocco or Cyprus or should I splash the cash on India? There’s nothing like a good holiday chat at lunchtimes to patch up awkward gaps in conversation. At home, the wife and I spend our evenings surfing the web for holidays. It’s all about the offer. The deal. The saving. Christ, it’s all about bloody Tripadvisor. Eventually, after several months of arguments, we decide. And we can go to work with a smile on our face and fill out the holiday request forms.

The problem is holidays last a week, or two, or whatever you can get the boss to agree to. Sometimes the boss is kind enough to grant an employee a month or more, if it’s that special trip of a lifetime. Whenever he makes crucial decisions, the boss wears that kind boss face, that understanding boss face. To give or not to give?

The trick, friends, is to link holidays. Public holidays, like Easter, or Christmas or whatever, are great. Free time = great. But they’re even better if you can get a week off either side so that a few days becomes a week and a half, or a week becomes three. Once you have it figured out, you have to get through the pre-holiday nightmare, when the whole world dumps their to dos on you. Everything, of course, needs to be completed before you go on holiday. Which means nothing will. Think of it that way, nothing will get done because you’re going on holiday. They’re monstrous morons if they expect otherwise.

After the holiday, you have the post-holiday catching up to do, days in which you can’t work because you’re catching up on stuff that others have not done. Remember this: it’s not your fault. It’s the other workers’ fault for not working hard enough while you were on holiday. If you do it right, if you’re smooth, you can make a one week holiday last three weeks. Twenty-five days a year, shove it up your…

Work. Boring. Boring. Boring.

No one expects you to work in-between your post-holiday and your next pre-holiday. It’s stupid for them to have these evil feelings. After all, they’re also thinking about their next holiday. They, like you, know that the time between holidays is like a void, a black hole of resentment. Perfect for the internet. Or for planning your next holiday. Don’t worry about your job responsibilities. You’re an adult now, going by the numbers. You know better than that.

Bogdan Tiganov