Respect the holidays of others

Daniele Catalanotto
Oct 11, 2022


A Service Design Principle for a more respectful workplace.

I ask a teammate if she has a bit of time to help me with a project. She is a lovely human, so she says: “Sure! Can we do that at my place?” Why not. On the day of our appointment, I arrive at her home. I enter, and my teammate welcomes me with these words: “Thanks that we can do this at home, I’m officially on holiday today, but I wanted to help you out. “

I just discovered now that she is on holiday. Shit! To me, resting time is something nearly sacred.

So I say: “Thanks so much. I appreciate that you want to help me during your holidays. I’m going to leave now so that you can really rest. Don’t worry. Your help can wait until you are back at work. I’ll get in touch with you to set a new date.”

As humans, we just need rest time if we want to be active for the rest of the time.

But when it comes to holidays in the modern workplace, things can get tricky as our smartphones bring our office anywhere with us. So many workers find tricks not to get disturbed by work during their holidays. For example, they delete their work apps for a few days. Or they take out the notifications of these apps.

But that’s only the first half that makes it possible for modern workers to rest fully during holidays. The other half is that every other worker and manager has to show respect for the holidays of others so that people understand how much it’s a “sacred” thing.

When teammates respect the holidays of others, they know colleagues will appreciate theirs too, and they can then fully rest.

So let me ask: how can you show respect for the rest and holiday time in your workplace culture?

Daniele’s personal notes

  • You just read the second draft of this Service Design Principle.
  • The length of this principle has been reduced by 37% compared to the first draft.
  • Once improved even more, this principle could be part of the book “Service Design Principles 201-300.”
  • As always, feel free to share comments, feedback or personal stories to improve this principle.
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Daniele Catalanotto
Oct 30, 2022

The third draft of this Service Design Principle

I ask a colleague if she can help me with a project. She is lovely, so she says: “Sure! Can we do that at my place?” On the day of our appointment, she welcomes me. “Thanks, we can do this at home, I’m officially on holiday today, but I wanted to help you out anyway.“

So I say. “Oh, I didn’t know that. I’m going to leave now so that you can rest. Don’t worry. Your help can wait until you are back at work. I’ll get in touch with you to set a new date once you get back. Enjoy your vacation!”

Taking vacations is a good first step to getting much-needed rest. The second step is that the people around us and ourselves need to respect it.

So let me ask you.

How can you respect vacation and rest time in your workplace culture?

Daniele’s notes

  • This is the third draft of this principle.
  • I’ve reduced the length of this principle by 52 % compared to the previous draft.
  • I removed big chunks of examples to focus only on the one story that matters for this principle.