ImageRhonda have good brake foot for $5 massage.

Only 5 weeks until Rhonda go to Bali.

Okay, so we are all familar with AAMI’s popular Rhonda commercials but it can be annoying if your office incarnation of “Rhonda” has decided everyone needs to know of their forthcoming holidays.

But have you noticed in your office, its only the select few who seem to have holidays every year? Since the mid 1970s, Australians have been entitled to four weeks paid annual leave but it comes as no surprise that at least 60% of workers stockpile their leave with the stockpile estimated at 117 million days.

As Gittins’s article continues ‘But if people like annual leave, why don’t they take it all? According to  Pocock’s survey, 31 per cent of full-time employees say they’re too busy at work  and 13 per cent say they couldn’t get time off that suited them. Nine per cent  say they prefer to work.’

Let’s talk about the 13%.  The 13% who are more likely to be single and childless and thus far more restricted when they can sojourn. Consequently, it rules out holidays at Christmas and Easter as these are seen as sacrosanct to the families with children.  No prizes for guessing which poor slaves get to be on skeleton staff over the seasonal break.

It also rules out times of the year that coincide with school holidays. Okay, this might not be such a bad thing  as hell is other people’s children but school holidays total up to 12 weeks per year!!! Three months of possible annual leave scrubbed from existence.

Also gone is peak season at work.  So this rules out overseas holidays in the northern hemisphere’s summer.  Stuck at Heathrow due to snow is not my idea of fun.

If you can’t get the time off because higher priority is given to employees with families what is the point of annual leave?

It’s all very well to wax lyrically that staff need to take time off work to increase productivity, reduce sick days and reduce workplace accidents due to over work but organisations need to stop undervaluing  leisure time of unattached cubicle slaves.

Oh and Rhonda, if there is no duty free in it for me then I don’t care how cheap Bali is so STFU.