How to Overcome Resentment Towards Your Vacation Colleagues
Life is a competition, and it’s especially easy to feel like you’re on a losing streak if your coworkers always take time off while you’re at home using a Netflix account that you share with four other people.
We all have colleagues whose Instagram accounts cause a surge of rage when you indignantly look at their sunset photos of Dubrovnik and think, “Weren’t you JUST in Iceland last month ??”
Social media makes it incredibly easy to create a deep and powerful reservoir of resentment about your coworkers’ vacation, either because you can’t quite figure out the discrepancy between your paycheck and the luxurious lifestyle they seem to lead, or maybe just because that they are really good at planning.
The obvious way out of this discontent is to ignite a class war that will overthrow the bourgeoisie and seize all of its extravagant capital in order to socialize plane tickets from here. But as a practical matter, you could probably just get over it, because their life is most likely not as pleasant as it seems.
To deal with this very real form of seething office resentment, we’ve spoken to several experts who have shared tips on how to suppress, exploit, or counteract your grievances against your fellow vacationers. It’s also a good reminder that, in general, everyone is more unhappy than they seem.
Identify the source of your resentment
First, narrow down your resentment and find out why you are really upset. Are you angry that someone seems to be making more money than you, even though you have the same damn job? Are you angry that they have a better job that you are probably just as qualified for? Or are you just upset because while your coworker probably gets the same salary as you and is offered the same number of vacation days, he seems to be better able to manage his time and budget so they can fit in a luxury trip to Portugal while you are trying to fit in two hours to pick up aUPS package on North Brother Island ?
The latter is more mundane and easier to deal with, but they are all manageable enough if you share your resentment and solve the problem from there.
“More or less people understand that salaries vary from office to office,” said Alison Greene, author of the column “ Ask a Manager at Work”. “Most of all I see people who are just overwhelmed by their workload and feel like they will never have time for a real vacation.”
Looking for time
If it’s all the same – for example, if you and the person you’re jealous have the same job and compensation – you probably just need to learn how to plan better.
Part of the problem may be our American tendency to overwork, the feeling that if you take advantage of vacation days, you will become weak and interchangeable, like a member of the Trump cabinet. “This is usually not the case,” Green said. Talking to your boss can be the first step to saving time and allowing yourself some mental break. After all, an overworked employee is likely to do more harm to your workplace than someone who travels to New Orleans from time to time for a week or two every year.
“Sometimes people feel like talking to their boss is useless, they think ‘I am irreplaceable, no one can cover my job when I leave,’” she said. “To be honest, very often when I see this, the boss doesn’t think so. If the person just said, “Hey, this is important to me, can we figure out how to make this work?” the manager will help them. “
In America, especially in a high-octane environment like New York or Silicon Valley, it can be easy to misinterpret the idea of taking a vacation to work without being a team player. But actually, Green said, we have vacation days for a reason – to go on vacation.
“In some offices, this is a real thing, if you use all your days off, people will look askance at it,” she said. “Which, of course, is funny. They don’t have to give you this whole weekend if you’re not going to use them. ” Even if you may get a sidelong glance from overworked colleagues or even a manager, you should make the most of the vacation days to which you are legally entitled.
If the problem is fairness
It is possible that your perceived unfairness regarding the travel difference between you and your co-workers is in fact a real injustice. Wage or compensation imbalances in the workplace can be a real source of strife among employees – another way capitalism pits us all against each other in a never-ending, bloody sport. But even the athletes involved in bloody sports are said goodbye to the weeks!
“If it really seems unfair, you can take stock of your work,” said Ryan Howes, a psychologist based in Pasadena, California. “Do you need to ask for a raise or more leave? Do you feel that your job is unfairly opposed to you, which means that you might need to talk to a lawyer or recruiter? “
(As it happens, we have a set of guidelines that can help you defend the equality of compensation in the workplace, by order , what to do if you think you are underpaid, before being asked to increase before how to ask for more time .)
Remember that rarely will someone come and demand that you take a vacation, or insist that your salary be on par with your peers, who are on the same level. You must ask for this.
Likewise, if the problem is that you are being forced to do an unfair amount of work every time a coworker leaves town instead of chatting about it, talk to your manager about how you can improve vacation preparation protocols and soften situation. next.
Just don’t talk about it
If subscribing to all of your colleagues on social media will trigger the class war rage, Greene advises that it’s probably best to simply unsubscribe from them.
It’s harder to avoid talking about vacation at work without showing yourself rude; but Green said they have their own built-in escape hatch.
“You can say, ‘I need to get back to work, I have a deadline,” she said.
If you really can’t avoid it, consider asking the person to help you plan one of those famous fun vacations they seem to be aiming to be famous for.
“If you can’t beat them, make them your travel agent,” Howes said.
Remember everyone is unhappy
The meticulously crafted Instagram photos are now so blatantly falsified that we’ve come up with a new word for them: a stubborn , strenuous photograph, specially crafted to evoke exactly the kind of jealousy you feel.
Everyone’s life on social media seems magical or full of carefree surprise when you remember how much better this trip to Brazil was the previous one when you are sitting at the Keurig office machine. But no matter how brilliant someone’s online life looks like, remember that Donald Trump is still president, none of us can ever afford to retire, we are all in one small visit to the hospital, away from crippling debt, and all in secret. screaming from within. … Or, more importantly, each person has their own private struggles and difficulties, most of which they probably don’t wear on their sleeves to soften your feelings about the good things that come their way. So your jealousy is almost certainly misplaced.
“Social media is a place where people emphasize how wonderful their lives can seem, but they rarely imagine their life as a whole,” Howes tells us. “Uncertainty, shame, failure and loss are often more common (and even more meaningful) than these happy moments, but they rarely make it to your feed. Try to accept that your normal lifestyle doesn’t have to match the other person’s best perception. ”
“Just like it’s foolish to comment on anything about someone’s life – from health to sobriety – without knowing him well, it’s dangerous to assume that you really know why someone can travel so much without asking him. “Green said.
“Maybe the reason they can afford a fantastic vacation is because they are head over heels in credit card debt,” she said.
She remembered a friend who had gone on a wonderful vacation with the whole family – but only because her parents were in the final stages of cancer and they wanted to take it one last time.
“You never know what the story is,” she said. “Sometimes things are not as perfect and shiny as they appear on the outside.”
The best solution? Run your business and put things in perspective. “If it’s about envy,” Howes said, “your negative feelings about their happiness are actually rooted in your dissatisfaction with your own life.”