I’m getting fed up…

Essentially I end up thinking leave is pointless as when I come back there’s still all the ‘non face to face work’ that the locums leave from my time away waiting nicely for me on a Monday…

It seems people end up doing the very basic work, ‘passing on’ the important but non urgent stuff..

I suppose it’s the nature of the job, and the pay/responsibility are reflected in the content of this ‘rantette’, but I just frustrate myself that as soon as I come back from leave (even 1 day, as it was last week) I start to get stressed that it’ll all be there waiting..

Does anyone else feel like this, or tell us your enviable tails of returning back to a clean in tray.. !

DrP

Citalopram helps me deal with it.

HTH.

I usually winder whether my pass will still work or if someone will now have my desk.

I usually winder

Post war cuts to the gendarmerie? 😆

Being party to support emails, I get 1500-2000 emails a week. I read about 200-300 of them, that’s always fun when I go back.

Otherwise, it’s just a worry about somebody having done something wrong that will result in a lot of work for me when I get back.

I have a few rules to mitigate the first day back stress.

1. No meetings in the first 4 hours back.
2. Late start – no earlier than 0930
3. Read only 3 days emails, mark the rest as read – they will email again if it is important.

Put in place when a couple of colleagues had heart attacks on the first day back from leave.

You are defo not alone.
When I first set up in business 20+ years ago I found it easier working the weekends as well then 2 days crap would not end up on my Monday desk and no Monday morning feeling as everyday rolled into the next, soon realized this was not the way forward,like you say if you`re off for a day or a week there is still a load of complicated stuff to come back to with the nice easy tasks cleared,the other lads always came back to a clean tray , not anymore!!

Yes, I also get stressed before I go away and often during my time off. I think its the nature of our “always on” work culture and the march of technology. I used to work with a guy that took his work laptop on holiday and every morning he read and responded to his Emails. You may think thats mad but he argued that it allowed him to relax and enjoy the rest of each day as oppose to not logging on and being anxious throughout his holiday. I get the logic in that.

Hate it. Feel like there’s two weeks work to do before I go and the same again when I get back but I only went for a week!

It does put me off taking leave.

I should imagine that life must be very stressful, regardless of work load earning 90k+ p.a. as a GP. 😛

Do you dread coming back to work after leave/time off

Every monday buddy, every single monday…

Yes. Hundreds of pointless emails.
I am at a point where I hate my job (20yrs + of Policing) more and more officers have left the job, cuts etc. But at my age and with my qualifications I couldn’t get a similar paid job anywhere else.

You may think thats mad but he argued that it allowed him to relax and enjoy the rest of each day as oppose to not logging on and being anxious throughout his holiday. I get the logic in that.

I can see the logic, but it’s no good for me. It takes me three or four days to switch off from work – only after that can I get my good relaxing done.

Thank you for your email. As I am currently on leave until dd/mm/yy it has automatically been deleted. Please try again upon my return or if urgent contact forename.surname@company.co.uk.

^^^^^ that’s what I do on recommendation from our union.

It’s a good union.

(Don’t actually delete, just move into a folder somewhere, so I can find the automated ones that I might need later……)

i came back from my last leave to find i had been booked on a 5.45am flight on the monday morning.

My laptop didnt work

my PPE was all in another country.

Was interesting watch them all scramble to sort it when i dropped the bomb that i wasnt landing in uk till sunday night when they gave me “heads up” on the friday.

I’ve got a work iPhone which I’ll take with me on holiday (separate to my personal phone)
I generally look at my emails every 2-3 days and delete/forward/file as appropriate.
It de-stresses my holiday as I know the monkeys aren’t trashing the place whilst I’m away, and I know what I’m coming back into.

jimdubleyou – Member

Being party to support emails, I get 1500-2000 emails a week. I read about 200-300 of them, that’s always fun when I go back.

Otherwise, it’s just a worry about somebody having done something wrong that will result in a lot of work for me when I get back.

I find the ‘clutter’ feature on Outlook really helped with that.

A locum for a day’s leave? I wouldnt have bothered TBH, could your PM have not just cancelled your session s for the day?

Can’t for a minute think that was cost effective

^^
We’re a small practice, so cannot simply cancel clinics if we take leave..

Plus it’s not the ‘face to face’ – that’s the easy part of the job nowadays – it’s the hospital letters, tasks etc etc…

DrP

Erm, bit of a mixed bag for me.

Downsides, I’m the only one that does what I do in my place, only 1 other person can actually do what I do, that’s the boss – he ‘fire fights’ for me when I’m off, but he can barely his stuff these days without trying to cover for me. Also we tend to be on holiday one after the other in August, he takes the first week, me the middle two then he takes the last one. I usually come back to a LOT of work to do. I also keep on top of things on Hols which I shouldn’t do, but I do.

Upsides, I’m not very good at taking holidays I get bored and start feeling lazy after a few days, by the end of the fortnight I’m climbing the walls and can’t wait to get my brain working again.

I hate coming back to the emails. But I think part of the problem is that I hate having to go back anyway.

km79 – Member

Thank you for your email. As I am currently on leave until dd/mm/yy it has automatically been deleted. Please try again upon my return or if urgent contact forename.surname@company.co.uk.

Public Sector?

I really wouldn’t be impressed if I got that, it goes against the whole point of e-mail, it’s not an instant messenger – would you have someone in your office return all your post with a note “try again in 2 weeks”.

I have to admit, I might have ‘accidentially’ dated my return date in the past to give me a day to catch up before the ‘urgent’ calls started.

My current (small) employer have an annoying habit of being very happy to find fault with people’s work, and not being too keen to reward good work.

I used to get very stressed about coming in to a bollocking, but they’ve taken to texting me on my days off instead, so all is well 🙄

This is why promotion doesn’t interest me 😆 sod that!! What’s the point of time off if you have to worry about going back? How can you “unwind”?

Get this feeling every Sunday evening. Hate coming back after just a weekend off. Still would never stop me from taking leave though. Job just provides money for bills etc and funding the time off. I’d stop working in a heart beat if money allowed

Plus it’s not the ‘face to face’ – that’s the easy part of the job nowadays – it’s the hospital letters, tasks etc etc…

Can the temps locums not do those tasks too? Sounds like you need to review the contracts for them to include those tasks.

I really wouldn’t be impressed if I got that, it goes against the whole point of e-mail, it’s not an instant messenger – would you have someone in your office return all your post with a note “try again in 2 weeks”.

It is the grown up approach IMHO

The way I look at it is that I have x amount of stress to come out, and its going to come out one way or the other. Earning a decent living doing a “stressful” job will make me stress about work, but if I had a simpler, less well paid job I would be stressing about not earning enough to pay for things, or being without a job would bring on a load of other stresses. I have been in all these situations and the “work stress” is the lesser of the evils.

But in answer to the OP yes, every time I have any amount of time off I spend the next 2 or 3 days back at work looking at business to buy in spain, or trails to thru hike in the US and am generally suicidal about being at work

My colleague picks up my emails when I am on holiday. The junk is deleted immediately and 95% of the remaining emails are sorted before I get back. I usually end up with 2-3 emails that I have to action on my return.

I used to check and respond to emails when on holiday but realised that its not right and not fair to the rest of the family.

Public Sector?

Nope, a large private company. It’s only set to auto reply to internal emails, not external from clients etc. Some people don’t like it, I’ve been running it for about 2.5 years now and had a number of complaints but **** them. I have had far more positive responses though thinking it’s a good idea.

It’s nothing like returning post, most of the internal emails are pointless shite in the first place, some are from people who know I am off and trying their luck dropping some actions on me, the rest can email me when I get back (although seldom do, so they must have managed fine without me).

When I take leave I am taking time away from work, I don’t do 52 weeks of work condensed into 46 weeks. That’s a mugs game.

Nope. Fundamentally if something important had happened then either my boss, one of my staff or another colleague would have to work on it. I’m entitled to leave so won’t get stressed at taking it. Easy enough to sort stuff when i get back if the ones who report to me can’t fix it

Thank you for your email. As I am currently on leave until dd/mm/yy it has automatically been deleted. Please try again upon my return or if urgent contact forename.surname@company.co.uk.

I do something similar, but more broken down.

“I’m on annual leave until XX/XX/XX with no email or phone access. Emails will automatically be archived until that date, so to ensure you get the help you need, here’s who to contact (but please allow a bit of time for them to pick up on things!):

For sales enquiries XXXXXX
For creative supply XXXXXX
For billing/invoicing enquiries XXXXXX

For anything else, drop me a line after XX/XX/XX when I’m back”

Sadly, there are always people who reply to autoreplies asking if I’ve read it (during the “time off” dates), so they get auto deleted when I get back.

It’s super important to have time for yourself, to reiterate and manage people’s expectations that you are not “always on”, and that if you’ve provided them the right people in your absence, they should rely on that person.

Can the temps locums not do those tasks too? Sounds like you need to review the contracts for them to include those tasks.

Unfortunately my industry (specifically being a partner) suffers from being on teh wrong side of teh supply/demand see-saw…

Locums can demand £90/hr (which costs me circa £110 with on costs) and dictate what they will/won’t do…
And there’s enough demand that they can just naff off to another practice if you kick up a fuss.

Hence, why primary care in the NHS will collapse if the partnership model falls down…

DrP

Absolutely, first day back after a week off tomorrow – a mixture of extreme terror and despair. Quite honestly the stress is to the point that I take at the most a week off a year just to placate Mrs Nipper and have done this since 2010 with the effect that I’m ‘quite tired’ now. Hey ho.

Last week I booked all my remaining Night Shifts off, so all I’ve got now is around 50 something Day Shifts until I retire at the end of May. 😀

You just have to be prepared to deal with it, a lot of those emails will be “general enquiries” or corporate information (in my world) or colleagues who have forgotten you are away, or simple “cc’d for info” where actions arising will normally have been taken care of or salient points left to you.

I used to be one of those guys who took both a phone and needed access to mails whilst away, I must have looked a right twunt.

However, getting the right “help/replacement” in for short periods in any work environment is both tricky and full of woe. Even some close colleagues, you think you’d trust, have rather odd ways of “passing the buck” on your behalf.

I used to be one of those guys who took both a phone and needed access to mails whilst away, I must have looked a right twunt.

I am still that twunt. I find it easier to delete the noise when I get a spare 5 minutes, reply to the quickies and flag anything important than to spend a day sifting through emails when I’m back in and everyone wants my time.

For the last few years I’ve always added a day to my return date on my auto reply. It just gives me a day to read/filter emails and workload and prioritise my work. That way when people think you’re back and ring at one min past 9 to “just wanted to catch you before you are bogged down in emails, but I sent one last week and…..”
Unfortunately emails are an unavoidable necessity now a days.

Wow I must be lucky..never had a job I’ve hated…(I’m not trying to be smug)..