Fifteen years ago, I spent my entire Labor Day weekend in an airless, windowless closet programming voice mail boxes for 300 people. My boss had discovered on Friday that the phone company setting up the new system in our new building wasn’t building the voicemail boxes for the hordes of employees set to hit the building Tuesday morning - instead, the consultant we’d hired had blithely said that we’d do it in an attempt to shave costs.

I wasn’t responsible for the phone system, mind you. I was merely my boss’s assistant. But since I was one of the few computer-literate people there, knew how to read manuals, and wanted to get out of my assistant position someday - well, I volunteered.

Working on Labor Day wasn’t exactly new to me - holidays get lip-service treatment when you’re working your way through growing pains by waiting on tables or managing a kitchen staff. But I mistakenly thought that one of the perks of working in ‘corporate America’ was the M-F, 9-5 schedule.

That particular volunteer stint paid off - I worked my way into a job managing the phone system, then leapfrogged into other interactive ventures. But I soon learned that having a laptop, cell phone and home network made that M-F, 9-5 dream more myth than reality - and I remember parts of more than one Labor Day weekend since then given up to work emergencies, both real and imagined.

I’ve gotten better at reclaiming weekends, though. Better at carving out work time and me time. And I’ve been on vacation from work since Wednesday - and haven’t even cracked the laptop open, or bothered to check voicemail.

Luckily, I now work for a company that expects vacations to be computer-free ones. Thankfully, I’m not looking ahead to a ‘black Tuesday’ - many Intel employees may be spending their last Labor Day weekend with a job at Intel, it appears.

And finally, I can now get up, walk away from my computer, and head outside now after completing this little labor of love here…

Related posts:

1. Laboring on Labor Day
2. Some thoughts on Labor…
3. Reflections on My Own Labor
4. One Ugly-Ass Website
5. Did Intel lose their minds?