Imagine working for an employer who treated you like a grown-up and let you take as much holiday as you liked. Wouldn’t that be lovely?
想象一下，你的雇主把你当作一个成年人，让你想休多少假就休多少假。这不是很棒吗？
This is the deal Sir Richard Branson is extending to his private staff, and almost everyone has judged it very lovely indeed. Last week, he wrote a blog post extolling his own smart move and in the comments below he was deemed to be showing the way to a better future. Sir Richard isn’t the first to introduce this policy – for years Netflix has been declining to monitor how much time its people take off – but he is the first to see how much good publicity can come from it.
这是理查德•布兰森爵士(Sir Richard Branson)提供给手下员工的待遇，几乎每个人都认为这个主意的确棒极了。上周，布兰森在一篇博客中赞美了自己的明智之举，在文章下面的评论中，他被认为指明了一条通向更美好未来的道路。布兰森不是第一个引入这种政策的人，数年来美国视频流服务商Netflix一直实行不记录员工休假天数的政策，但他是第一个发现这种政策能带来多少好名声的人。

“It is left to the employee alone to decide if and when he or she feels like taking a few hours, a day, a week or a month off,” he explained, his words accompanied by a photo of him lolling in a hammock, smartphone in hand, the Caribbean Sea lapping beneath him, and the fronds of a palm tree almost touching the locks of his hair.
“员工自己可以决定，是否（以及何时）想休几小时、一天、一周或一个月的假，”布兰森解释道。文字旁的照片上，他懒洋洋地躺在一张吊床上，手里拿着智能手机，身后是加勒比海，棕榈树的叶片几乎碰到他的一绺绺头发了。
Alas, there is a catch to all this sunshine and sand. Sir Richard goes on to explain that staff will only take time off when they “feel a hundred per cent comfortable that they and their team are up to date on every project”.
唉，这些阳光和沙滩可是有陷阱的。布兰森接着解释说，员工只有在“百分之百确信自己和所在团队手头项目进展良好”的情况下才会决定休假。
Suddenly the deal looks like a staggeringly poor one for the people who run the entrepreneur’s office. In all the decades that I have worked, there has never been a single moment when I was 100 per cent comfortable that I was on top of everything. I can’t believe it is any different at Virgin.
突然间，这种待遇对那些为这名企业家打工的人成了一个极其糟糕的主意。在我几十年的工作生涯中，我从来没有百分之百确定自己完全掌控一切事情。我无法相信在维珍(Virgin)集团事情会有什么不同。
The trouble with modern work is that it is endless. You are never through it, which means that judging when to take a break is very difficult indeed. A fixed holiday entitlement tells us it is OK to take a break – even though our work is far from done.
现代工作的问题在于它是无穷无尽的。你永远无法完成它，这意味着判断何时可以休息一会真的非常困难。固定的休假天数告诉我们，就算我们远远没有完成工作，休息一下也是可以的。
When it comes to holidays, we are pulled in two different directions. The more disaffected we are, the more holiday we want to take; the more ambitious, the more we’re inclined to take none at all.
谈及假期，我们可以分成两路人。我们对工作越不关心，我们就越想休更多的假；而我们在工作上越是雄心勃勃，我们就越倾向于完全不休假。
In neither case should the choice be left entirely to us. Those who would rather be on permanent holiday need to be told to come to work; those who can never bring themselves to take a break need to be told to take one.
任何一种情况下，选择都不应该完全留给我们自己。那些希望永远休假的，需要告诉他们去工作；而那些永远不会自己选择休息一会的，需要告诉他们去休假。
It is possible that the no-fixed-holiday policy might work if we all had a clear idea of what an acceptable amount of holiday looked like. But we don’t have a clue. It varies not only between people but between countries. In Europe we like a great deal of it – particularly in France where workers take a delightful 30 days – while in the US no one believes in holidays at all. The normal amount is 10 days, but only wimps actually take that. What is thought reasonable also varies between sectors – some teachers view anything less than three months as an outrage – and even between companies in the same industry.
如果我们都能清楚地知道可以接受的假期天数是多少，“不固定假期”政策或许是可行的。但我们毫无头绪。可接受的假期天数不仅有人与人之间的差异，国与国之间也是不同的。在欧洲，我们期望有很多假期，特别是在法国，法国的工作者每年可以享受令人愉悦的30天假期。而在美国，根本没人相信假期这回事。美国的正常假期是10天，但只有没出息的人才会真的休假。行业不同，被认为合理的假期天数也不同，一些老师认为少于3个月的假期是令人愤怒的。即使是在同一个行业，公司与公司之间也不一样。
Given all this, when we take a new job we need to know what the going rate is. If our employers won’t give us a hint, we have to work it out ourselves. A no-policy rule does not mean that no one is counting, but that we will all start monitoring each other’s holidays obsessively in order to work out how much to allow ourselves. It will take a brave person to book two weeks in the sun if their boss always settles for a long weekend.
考虑到这一切差异，当我们找到一份新工作的时候，我们需要了解公司的相关规定是什么。如果我们的雇主不给我们任何提示，我们就必须自己搞清楚。不固定假期的政策并不意味着没人计算你休了多少天，而是意味着我们会开始互相密切关注其他人的假期，以搞清楚我们自己能休多少天。如果老板总是用一个长周末（周末前后加上一两天——译者注）花掉年假，员工要有足够胆量才敢去阳光灿烂的度假胜地欢度2星期的假期。
Sir Richard says he hopes the scheme will be soon be copied by all his subsidiaries. But here I spot another catch. Is he really going to tell Virgin stewardesses, who currently are not at liberty to choose their own shade of lipstick, that they can take off as much time as they like? Or does he mean that the enlightenment will spread only as far as managers – which doesn’t sound terribly enlightened at all?
布兰森表示，他希望所有的子公司很快就能效仿这个做法。但我在这里发现了第二个陷阱。他真的会告诉维珍的女空乘她们想休多少假就休多少假吗？这些空乘连选择自己唇膏色泽的自由都没有。或者说他的意思是这个开明的举措只惠及经理层？那听上去就一点也不开明了。
Although the deal itself is a dud, it does have logic on its side. Netflix points out that as we no longer expect people to work 9 to 5, and we trust them to work from home, it is madness to cling to the idea of fixed holidays. This is quite right. But it still doesn’t make it a good idea, at least not for the employee. Flexible working has been the worst deal for professional workers – and the best one for their employers – that there has ever been. Productivity soars, not because everyone is happy to be given freedom, but because they find they never stop working. Netflix reports that its choose-your-own holiday policy has made productivity go up even further. I can quite believe it, and don’t approve one bit.
尽管这种待遇本身是一张空头支票，它的确有它的逻辑。Netflix指出，既然我们不再期望人们朝九晚五地工作，而我们又信任他们可以在家工作，还固守固定假期的观念就神经不正常了。这说得很对，但依然不是一个好主意，至少对员工来说不是一个好主意。弹性工作制对专业的员工来说是有史以来最坏的待遇，而对雇主来说是最好的事情。生产率上升了，不是因为每个人都对自己被赋予的自由感到高兴，而是因为他们永远无法停止工作。Netflix还报告，采用“自选”假期政策后，生产率进一步提升。我相信这回事，但我对此完全不赞同。
This doesn’t mean the traditional way most employers approach holiday – keeping a minute track of all absences – is the right one. Excessive monitoring is almost always a bad idea. And the notion of an annual entitlement that cannot be carried over so that people end up taking holiday when it suits no one – that makes no sense, either. The answer is simple. Companies should state how much holiday people are expected to take, and then leave it up to them to take roughly that amount, give or take a day or two, as they see fit.
这并不意味着绝大多数雇主对待休假问题的传统方式——详细记录员工的离岗时间——就是正确的。过度监控通常是个糟糕的主意。而年假无法保留至未来年份，致使人们在对谁都不合适的时候休假——这个规定也没有道理。答案很简单。公司应该清楚地声明它期望员工休假多少天，并让员工大致上休那么多天假，员工可以随自己心意增添或者减少一两天。