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monkeying_around369 t1_jcknbv7 wrote

When my work load is overwhelming, taking time off just usually means it will be completely untenable when I return. I much prefer to take vacation when things are slower, and I’m caught up so I’m not overwhelmed when I return to work. It’s present me trying to look out for future me.

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BooBeeAttack t1_jclp3ne wrote

I find that when the workload is overwhelming, it is the best time to leave. Let's employerknow the importance of the position. It may also help ensure work builds some redundancy in place so when I NEED to take time off, say for illness, I can.

I look out for boh future and current me.

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Soccermom233 t1_jclt0u8 wrote

Yeah but in a lot of roles the work just piles up until you're back.

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Spadeykins t1_jcm2xft wrote

I just do it at the pace I did before it got backed up. You can kinda just choose not to get too worked up or care. I clock out at the same time whether the work is piled up or not, and I do it at the same pace too.

Not sure how that applies to other industries but it works for me.

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Skal0laz t1_jcprgvw wrote

But at the end these things would affect your career

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Spadeykins t1_jcpvfjg wrote

Not really. Just change jobs if they have a problem.

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meno123 t1_jclwgra wrote

I dealt with this last year. Covid brought my team down to a skeleton crew, and then poor management caused further departures without replacement. After two years I took a single week of vacation and I know the whole time that nothing of my job would get done while I was gone because there was quite literally no one else to do it.

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timoshitskiy t1_jcqqvm5 wrote

Investing in good management should be the first priority of any corporate. Without the presence of a management team who can handle the work stress of their employees, the corporate word never be able to achieve success

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doizecedoizero t1_jcrifat wrote

You would have to complete your work even if you are taking break

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nillerwafer t1_jcmi0j4 wrote

When my workload is overwhelming, I do what I can and I return to my boss with the work orders that haven’t been completed and say “I’ll add one or two of these in tomorrow and the next day to see if we can get caught up, but this is too much for today.”

I’m not going to pull the impossible and set crazy expectations for the future.

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monkeying_around369 t1_jcsiyo5 wrote

Yeah my boss is actually pretty great and works with me a lot on keeping reasonable deadlines. I will just tell them no go on things sometimes and have adopted more of a “it’ll get done when it gets done” attitude.

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kingmea t1_jcmpo4b wrote

Agreed. And when you do have to leave you stress yourself out trying to find folks to keep your ball rolling. Or complete time sensitive tasks in a shorter timespan.

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spicyIBS t1_jcmu9rj wrote

You didn't take enough off. I took 3 years, paid but then again not USA

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monkeying_around369 t1_jcsioue wrote

I do have a pretty generous leave package for most Americans. But I like to take a decent break roughly every quarter rather than all at once. I get about 4 weeks a year plus other random holidays and paid sick leave. I also have a toddler in preschool so I take my sick leave a lot.

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Fleinsuppe t1_jcjysra wrote

As a nursing student having experienced the hospital environment, the guilt of using breaks is palpable. Partly because urgent patient care needs are unpredictable, but mostly because you leave your patients with coworkers who now have double responsibility. There is also the anxiety of not finishing the workload before end of shift.

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Revenge_of_the_User t1_jclfc3c wrote

My roomie works in a warehouse and his thought pattern under load is that if he takes a break, hes just going to have to do all that work anyway the next day, in addition to the rest of it.

So he cant enjoy days off, even if he got them. Its bonkers.

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0002millertime t1_jcmnv7c wrote

The system is working exactly as designed.

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Criticalhit_jk t1_jcniy9o wrote

And this, despite overwhelming evidence that shows they could be making more money if only their employees were well rested, well fed, well clothed, well homed and well educated.

You hear it alot, but it's always true. The cruelty is the point. They don't care how much they have - after a certain point increasing your buying power is meaningless after all. It's about having more than you and they'll go out of their way to stomp on the heads of anyone treading water to keep you there. They like how it feels

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esotsmer t1_jcr7jvz wrote

It does not matter how much evidence you provide them

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draculamilktoast t1_jcpd1bv wrote

If you're a billionaire and your victim has $1000, it's easier to take $500 away from them than to make another billion, because ultimately only relative wealth matters to human beings. If you're the victim, it's better to perform poorly by not taking breaks because you can claim to have done nothing wrong while punishing your owner by performing poorly. Working extremely hard without producing actual results is basically a form of quiet quitting which is immune to detection because all metrics point towards the quiet quitter being extremely productive.

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greendude90 t1_jcqmm7k wrote

The system is designed in the favour of managers and corporates

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prepaidmillions t1_jcqs8h7 wrote

Exactly if you are taking break then you would have to complete a work next day

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FwibbFwibb t1_jclvn4c wrote

So the management successfully pushed the guilt onto you for them not hiring enough people. Start taking your full breaks. This issue needs to reach management and it won't if you keep covering for them.

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woozhou t1_jcq2ufe wrote

The management is always successful in making people feel guilty about their breaks. Even though there is sufficient evidence that taking breaks can increase efficiency in work

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r2y4o6t8a t1_jcp9nva wrote

Being a junior doctor I completely agree with you about the work environment. You are always under the pressure that someone might die because of your break.

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HylianSW t1_jck91xc wrote

Cool, tell that to “LEAN” manufacturing practices which have become the standard in the industry.

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XLostinohiox t1_jclnqpv wrote

As a process engineer who works a lot in continuous improvement, that is not a function of lean. The principals of lean are; doing more with les, doing things in a structured manner to increase performance and figuring out the optimized process to make the best use of the working time. When setting standards in lean manufacturing you do time studies and you then pick the most repetitive time as the standard. If you instead give in to management and allow the standard to be set as the best time the fastest employee ever achieved you have not complied with the principals of lean and are just being a pawn in the age old management style of work em till they are dead.

When doing improvement events, my company's standard for selecting a process is 1. What is the safest 2. What is the best quality 3. What is the most stable process. Time optimization come in the order of operations and reducing wasted movement.

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darktourist92 t1_jclqpj3 wrote

Exactly this. Lean is not a cost-saving methodology, it’s about producing the most efficient results.

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Ishidan01 t1_jcn3ebc wrote

>doing more with les

And this is why Les is overworked and stressed out.

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Ribbys t1_jclq2hs wrote

I was in employee health in healthcare in Canada, and LEAN was used to reduce staffing levels. Now we have worker shortage and burnout problem. Robots are laughing at this because they don't have to deal with psychological demands.

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XLostinohiox t1_jclssmx wrote

My point was, if the business had the goal of reducing staffing levels, then they did not practice lean, they just told you they did. Lean is a principal that grows a business. If you are implementing lean, you are never firing people. You make people more efficient at their jobs so you can get more business. Then you hire more people.

Your company lied to you and you fell for it. And now you are beating up on their straw man.

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Ribbys t1_jcmgnl9 wrote

Ok I see. Yes I live in a corrupt place run by fascists mostly.

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Ishidan01 t1_jcn3oqw wrote

You wait, robots.

Your manual says change filter A every 500 hours, change tubing B every 1000 hours, replace pump motor C every 10,000 hours?

Nah. Do more with less, we can't afford the downtime to be changing filters.

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BestInference t1_jco0ldk wrote

You probably right but I never got to work in anyplace with something approaching sanity. So I'm sayin my peace not to disagree with you just frustration really. The general trend whether physical labor or not has always been the lazy people get the same pay and the light work and anyone dumb enough not to be lazy got the hard work and writeups for not meeting impossible deadlines set on averages not accounting for the hard work. Definitely not sayin you're wrong just sayin good ideas seem to get real lost in translation a lot by people who don't have to work all that hard in practice, and they conveniently never get the consequences. Anyone can ever fix that damn problem I say vote them for president.

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DonRoos t1_jcku9cd wrote

Wife is like this. She gets run ragged at work for 50+ hours per week because they’re so busy. But she’s so instrumental in keeping the place running, that she can’t get away. People call her when she’s off, away on trips, late at night as she manages a 24 hr trades shop with emergency overtime callouts (necessary in her field). She never wants to take time off because the work just piles up when she’s gone. It’s sad to watch and I can’t help other than picking up the slack at home, but the money is so good she can’t leave. She’s caught in a trap but she’s compensated in every way to make the trap comfortable.

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siegewolf t1_jclslz7 wrote

Obviously financial situations differ, but I hope she can get out. No amount of money is worth working yourself to death on your one life.

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zenalphany t1_jcmnq5f wrote

The golden handcuffs. I'm sure many of us can relate.

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Wagamaga OP t1_jcju97z wrote

Researchers from the University of Waterloo found employees often kept working despite wanting to pause. One potential reason is employees may have felt pressure to continue working to get everything done on time.

"Our research provides a comprehensive account of the processes involved in the decision to take a break and provides insights into how employees and managers can make more effective use of breaks at work, potentially improving both well-being and performance," said James Beck, professor of industrial and organizational psychology at Waterloo.

To conduct the study, researchers asked 107 employees about their reasons for taking a break and not taking one. They then surveyed another 287 employees twice daily over five days about their sleep quality, fatigue, performance concerns, workload, and the number of breaks they take each day.

The researchers also found that although previous research has shown that breaks can benefit employee well-being and performance, they may resist taking breaks if they feel supervisors discourage breaks in their workplace. Although there may be a misconception that breaks are unproductive, Phan notes that many employees take breaks because they are committed to staying focused and maintaining high levels of performance.

"We recognize that it may not always be possible for employees to take more breaks, but if employers can promote employee well-being by addressing the conditions that can make work unpleasant, they may be able to reduce the number of breaks needed," said Dr. Vincent Phan, first author of the study, which he led as part of his doctoral thesis in industrial and organizational psychology at Waterloo.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10869-022-09866-4

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z01z t1_jclc2gv wrote

a high work load just makes me care even less overall. as there's so much to do, and i dont feel like im making a dent in it.

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Queasy-Bite-7514 t1_jclmhgc wrote

Yes, the best is when my manager says “use some good self-care, take some time for yourself” but gives no time in my schedule to do that. Breaks lead to backed up work.

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Trisamitops t1_jckfy2i wrote

Why do I keep reading headlines that sound like "New research indicates (thing that just sounds like common sense of you think for a minute)?

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BigBennP t1_jckn195 wrote

Because having documented scientific evidence to prove common sense is useful in some cases.

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Trisamitops t1_jckr4ug wrote

True, but does that always mean it qualifies as "news"?

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BigBennP t1_jcjvv6d wrote

I had to dig for a minute to find it. The sampling is a little bit questionable but not in a way that seriously impairs this study I think.

The sample is 107 people that signed up for a Mechanical Turk poll about their work habits. 27% came from customer service jobs, 17% came from Information Technology and 11% came from research and development.

I suspect that if you had a better sample you would find that this way of thinking is very endemic Within "high pressure high reward positions."

Customer service workers can be busy but it is the supervisor's job to put bodies on the line. They often use guilt trips about how busy they are and how they are short-handed. That particular in the last two years the prevailing sentiment seems to be that that's the company's problem and not the individual's

On the other hand for people like a software developers or lawyers or accountants, you are usually working with a team of people on a specific task and you have a workload that is individually assigned to you. Being busy means that you have more work than you can reasonably complete and often it will simply be waiting there for you when you return.

I suspect that would be the core demographic of people who say things like " God I'm so burned out I need to take a break, but I have too much work to do."

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buntopolis t1_jcknhef wrote

The feeling of “chained to my desk” seems apropos.

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ARCWuLF1 t1_jcloafz wrote

I'm often swamped at my (fairly physical) job, but I find that I can't take my last break when I am supposed to, because if I leave my equipment unsupervised for even five minutes other employees will steal it forcing me to waste even more of my limited time to find more.

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Eklectic1 t1_jcln776 wrote

It makes sense to me why this is...once I was in gear with a heavy workload, I didn't dare stop because it seemed counterproductive to me to do so. Just keep going until I was actually useless. With so much work, stopping just seemed wrong. An as-yet undeserved break.

Not saying it's right...just saying that worker-bee logic tells you to keep going. It's ground into us. If you stop to think about it, you'll go mad...and won't want to go back to work. You'll sit there, feeling the truth of your fatigue. You'll get angry about it...that is, if you still have the energy for feeling anger at that point. "I'll think about this later"

Stupid but true. And "later" seldom comes. If you're lucky, sleep comes.

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DFWPunk t1_jcm1ogf wrote

And to quit, usually right after getting their bonus.

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WaterDragonGirl t1_jcmsimw wrote

It gets even worse if you work as a nurse or day-care worker. Because you know the moment you take that break you overburden your co-workers and put the people under your care at risk.

I had to take a break yesterday from my daycare job, because I'm sick, pregnant and had to take care of my even sicker family. I had to take that break fully knowing I wouldn't be paid for it and that I would spend the next day fixing whatever my useless last minute replacement screwed up.

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DST2287 t1_jclnc49 wrote

Good thing that’s illegal.

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tjarod11 t1_jcm98hy wrote

At my current job I have only been taking breaks for lunch because I won't be able to keep up with my coworkers otherwise. It is burning me out.

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macroober t1_jcm3aqf wrote

It took official research to know this?

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tokikain t1_jcney7u wrote

research done by asking anyone in the working class

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