It's the Least Productive Time of the Year!

Want to really get my goat?  Tell me that something really important here at work that I need you to help me with will have "wait until after the holidays".  Since when did it become standard operating procedure in the business world to use two holidays in the space of eight days as an excuse to blow off an entire two weeks of productivity? I don't begrudge the people who take vacation the last two weeks of the year.  You get that time off and if you want to waste it at a time of year when it's too cold to do anything fun outside--knock yourself out.  My problem is with the people who still come into work these last two weeks--and treat it like a vacation.

Their first excuse is usually that so many people are on vacation, there's no one around to get anything done anyway--so why should I try to make up for their absence?  They also like to spend the days leading up to Christmas talking to each other about what gifts they bought their family members, or how hard it was to buy the gifts for their family members, or they are going around passing out the goodies they spent hours slaving in the kitchen to make, or they are sampling the goodies that some other co-worker made, or they are sharing recipes for goodies they may want to make next year, or they are doing some pre-post-Christmas shopping so they know how to use the gift cards they are getting, or they are "elfing" themselves in a video to post on their Facebook page.

Then right after Christmas, these slackers are showing off their new jackets or sweaters or pants, or they are showing all the pictures from their family gatherings (which they had already posted to Facebook--where all of their co-workers had already seen them), or they are talking about how excited the kids were to open this gift and that gift, or they are complaining about how they need to take back the rinky dinky doo dad to Shopko because it didn't work when the kids took it out of the box, or they are checking the on-line ads and websites for post-Christmas deals to use all of their gift cards, or they are using the Apple help site to figure out the new electronic toys they got actually work.

Now next week, they will need to tell everyone their big plans for the big party on New Year's Eve, or they will discuss whether Dick Clark is still alive and will be on with Ryan Seacrest this year, or how they used to look so forward to New Years when they were younger, but now they can't stay up past 10:00, or they need to know what everyone else has planned for New Years--just in case they might want to crash the party, or they talk about the limo they rent so nobody has to drive home.

And then for the few days after the 1st, they talk about how drunk they were on New Year's eve, or how sober they were, or how they were in bed by 10:00 New Years Eve, or how sick they were the next day, or how they are never going out on New Years Eve ever again, or how they are going to host a party on New Years next year, or how they were yelling at the TV that the Badgers weren't giving the ball to Melvin Gordon enough the bowl game, or how they don't need to have the Rose Parade on six different tv channels, or how they look forward to things returning to "normal"--now that the holidays are over.

Some industries became so fed up with the whole wasted holiday season that they just shut down of the two weeks and tell everyone to just stay home.  I'm beginning to think that might be a good call for the rest of the workforce as well.  Except of course for retail--wouldn't want everyone to miss out on the 75% off sales on gift wrap and snowman decorations.