Why say “I'm on annual leave”? blog discussion

Former_Spice

Not a good idea to tell potential burglars that you are on holiday out of the country and your house is empty!

Lu_T

I go on holiday - and have updated my autoreply to say just that today as we're off to Portugal on Saturday (I'm part time).

Annual leave implies you only do it once. I actually have around 6 weeks of holidays each year, so I'm away from the office way more than just the once!

halia

I use annual leave because half the time when I take time off i'm not 'away on holiday' and I hate coming back to the questions about 'did you have a nice time/where did you go'

I get annual leave from my employer and I'm just as likely to be using it to care for a sick child/fit a kitchen/deal with aftermath of flu etc as I am to be going away!

Pitstonerock

I avoid anything like this in an out of office message ever since a senior person in our organisation left an informative message that he was off to sunny Spain and the burglars helped themselves at his home!

JimmyTheWig

Lu_T wrote: »

Annual leave implies you only do it once.

I disagree. I think it refers to your annual entitlement. You are using part of that entitlement, and so on annual leave.

offpat

a friend who "worked" in criminal law had one on his own website that said, (ahem) "I am on leave pleasuring her majesty"

stronglanguage

Alfie_E wrote: »

If we’re specifically talking about email auto-replies, could it be an Americanism?

Actually, I had never heard 'annual leave' before coming here (from the States) other than as a very formal term printed in some manual somewhere. We say we're going on vacation on those rare and lovely occasions when we get to!

ThreeNineThreeFive

I use Annual Leave as the "Customer Services Manager" or somebody with a similar title insists upon it.


I don't even know why we have a Customer Services Manager!

MrsE_2

Errata wrote: »

The term Annual Leave comes from the British Civil Service, who in turn pinched it from the armed services who used the terms Annual Leave, Embarkation Leave, and probably many other sorts of leave.
The term was taken up by the NHS when it was set up, and now people use it to indicate they do a white collar job rather than not being around because they work in a factory and it's works shutdown fortnight !
Pure snobbery.

That will be why I use it then, as I work for local government.

cas1701

When I left school I joined the Royal Navy and it was always called Annual Leave and was a privilege. It was the same when I joined the Police some years later and again it was called Annual Leave. I've never used any other term. Probably more through habit now, more than anything else. It's just something I'm used to and I doubt that I'll use anything else.

But I can understand why it would be annoying to use it in other areas of employment that most likely have no association with either the Armed Forces or the Police Service as it's called these days.