Returning to Work – After Vacation

I don’t think the anticipation of going on vacation nearly outweighs the slump a person hits when vacation is over.  And when I say slump, I mean those thoughts of whether your family sees housing as a necessity or if you could make a go of it renting umbrellas on the beach.  My goodness it is so much more than dreading the return to the cubicle farm and that boss who cannot even remember your name.  We spend months thinking about it, we mark it on the calendar and some of us even start a countdown.  Not that I would know anything about wasting company time, paper and printer ink on obnoxious displays of days leading to vacation.  (it must be in color so everyone can see it)  We don’t do it to rub it into our co-worker’s faces, okay maybe just a little, we do it to remind ourselves that the grind is worth it. My friends, there is actually a bigger prize than a weekly direct deposit to be won here.  That little day by day calculation convinces us that we are sacrificing our hours and days for the greater good of overpriced meals on the beach and screen printed shirts which scream “I go on vacation!”  Those receipts will fade and the print on the shirt will crack and eventually we all suffer the return to our daily lives.  It isn’t so much the fact that you spent hundreds of dollars, drove two thousand miles or slept on a subpar mattress for over a week…rather it is the fact that the vacation euphoria is so abruptly replaced with life.  Yes, that life of 9 to 5 which most of us seem to live to escape just once a year.  That first slice of reality cannot be digested so easily after days of sunshine, recreation and zero responsibility.  I mean sure, you were in charge of keeping your kids alive and financing that 50’s era hotel room but now you have to actually earn your keep again.  You are literally asking your body to go from drunken abandon to boot camp upon return to the office.  Where is the weaning process?  Shouldn’t there be a detox for people who are still high on vacation days?  Like maybe instead of working eight hours each day the first week, maybe it would be more advantageous to all involved if we did half days and happy hour instead.  The answer is no, there is no slow adjustment period in existence.  We are expected to go from selecting our next adult beverage served in a fruit to deciding which of our five hundred emails can be deleted without reading.  (I vote for all of them)  Once again, we have to race for that last parking space and make the coffee when we really need it but Frank in accounting leaves the empty pot sitting on the burner. (jerk)  So go ahead, at least pick out an outfit for post-vacation Monday that accentuates your tropical glow.  When someone asks, spend an outrageous amount of time talking up your time off.  Not only will you enjoy reliving your days off but you’ll also shorten the shift and be that much closer to subtracting a day from your next vacation countdown!