They say that the time leading up to a vacation is as important, if not more than the vacation itself. The human mind needs things to look forward to, or we will spiral into stagnation. If we have goals to work toward with rewards at the end, we're more likely to do the work. This is especially true in a job setting. If there's no sense of forward motion, we will stop putting in so much effort. If we know that in a couple of weeks, we get some time off to ourselves, we have the motivation to grind a little harder. It's the macro version of letting ourselves have 1 Starburst for every paragraph of an essay we write.
So it's no surprise that people get very protective over their vacations. Like in this situation, when one worker refused to give up his long-planned time off. But his coworkers had a different idea. Read on for the story.