And roses, too

LABOR DAY is a day off, remember? A time not just to polish one's shoes for the fresh start September always brings, but to rest and recharge and enjoy one more lobster roll. Unfortunately, American workers are resting less and less as competitive pressures and technology combine to keep everyone tethered to the office.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 33 percent of American workers will take just one week of vacation this year. In an annual survey, 60 percent of workers told the executive research firm The Conference Board that they had no plans to take a vacation in the coming six months, the highest number in 28 years.

So three cheers for PricewaterhouseCoopers, the giant accounting firm, which feels so strongly about its 29,000 US employees actually taking the vacation they've earned that it shuts the whole company down up to two weeks a year.

Barbara Kraft, human resources partner at the firm, described a scene familiar to every multitasking techno-slave: workers cutting their vacations short, keeping tabs on the office, and allowing work to leak into their leisure time. ``Even though they were off, they weren't away," she said.

Precisely. A vacation was not meant to be a branch office on a beach blanket. Fretting about Joe in the next cubicle stealing that new account and obsessively checking e-mail defeats the purpose.

So Pricewaterhouse turned off the lights, and issued formal guidelines. Managers were told to be role models, taking uninterrupted vacations themselves. Employees were encouraged not to take their BlackBerries or call in. Some had to be taught how to leave an out-of-office message on their voice-mails.

Enforced vacation sounds like an oxymoron, but it nurtures creativity, heals the body, and feeds the soul. Let's hope it becomes a best practice for the world.