A note to of"ce managers and bosses everywhere: a drone freshly back from leave is not refreshed. A drone freshly back from leave has not spent the previous 24 hours thinking of ways to increase productivity or decrease costs. A drone freshly back from leave is quite likely to need to be reintroduced into the workplace in the same way a criminal is reintroduced into society after a lengthy prison term. The longer the holiday, the longer the probationary period.

My own personal return from holiday hell began last Monday. Exhausted from the night and, I hate to admit it, the fortnight before, I arrived at my desk 20 minutes late.

No point in changing the habit of a lifetime, even though I'm just back. I was the opposite of refreshed and needed coffee. I had fallen into bed at 1.30 (sober I might add) and my muscles now ached from lifting bags and children up and down seemingly endless "ights of stairs throughout the previous day and night.

It appears to be the policy in our of"ce not to replace staff on leave. Whether it's a "nancial decision or an exercise in human resource apathy (or a worrying combination of both) I don't know but, either way, it renders the holiday experience almost worthless. There was now two weeks work awaiting me on my desk and, on that, a computer which works only when it feels like it. It will take me the next week to catch up again, during which time I will have to work twice as hard as I would have to otherwise.

Not to mention the extra hours.

I opened my e-mail and virtually all of my fears were realised. There was a familiar "ashing red light indicating voicemail on my phone too, but I immediately decided to hold off on that one until after lunch, when the food and caffeine had kicked in properly. I hate the sound of client's voices at the best of times. The last time I was away (a mere week) it took the best part of an hour simply to listen the voicemail I had received in that time. I'll attack that one piecemeal.

First things "rst though. When "ltering through a fortnight's worth of e-mails you must be ruthless. Several people had left in the time I was away. Bad news for the company image. Good news for my pocket.

Every time someone leaves, a brown envelope is passed around to be "lled with cash from his or her co-workers. In the past 12 months I have worked out that this has cost me almost 300. This, to the best of my knowledge, is not tax deductable. I once resolved to check this with an accountant but, like so many other things, it never materialised.

Goodbye messages apart, it was time to delete the numerous spam and joke e-mails (Twink is still "avour of the month).

Company announcements are never very important in retrospect . . . they're either things we already knew or stuff that has nothing to do with us. Of the 327 e-mails I had received since I left, 199 were gone within 10 minutes. I was making progress.

The rest, I am loath to say, were important and to this day I'm still trying to catch up.

I have come to a conclusion. Insofar as I can get away with it I am avoiding holidays. I can never work up the enthusiasm to clear my workload before I go away, in fact my general mood in the week leading up to time off lends me to avoid doing anything at all so, even before I go away, I'm behind.

Holidays are pointless if they serve to make your working life worse, a point which seems to be lost on my employers. So I'm taking a holiday from holidays, just to give myself a break. Let's face it, after the last two weeks, I could do with the time off.