Some vacationers just can't leave the office behind

You never would have guessed Jodi Burack was vacationing recentlyin South Carolina. When she received an e-mail from me asking if shewas doing work during her time off, she responded within 10 minutes.

"Well, there was an outage of service," she pecked back on herBlackBerry. "I was nuts calling my office too much." But then theservice was finally restored, and she was barraged with more than 200e-mails. "My husband was playing golf. Did not catch me but we arewith friends and they grabbed the pager away," she typed.

The attitude of family and friends forces Burack to do what anyself-respecting nonrelaxer must do: deceive, beguile and swindle.Last March in Hawaii, for example, her husband expressed shock thatshe hadn't brought her BlackBerry. But "I had it," she admits. "I washiding it." She used it when everyone else was asleep, and if theyweren't, she would sneak into the bathroom or the closet. The closet?"Oh, yeah, that's nothing," she says.

Some people just can't take a real break from work. Harboring anabiding certitude that something tragic will happen when they aren'tlooking -- including possibly to them -- they spend great sums anddrive great distances dowsing for a few bars of cellular signal orBlackBerry link. Loved ones, though, rarely understand that the verypossibility of missing something big at the office is more tragicthan spending hard-earned money to effectively set up a satelliteoffice beachside. That forces the helplessly connected to abandon allsemblance of dignity just to get their fix. It's another sign of howmuch work can contaminate leisure.

Workaholism is nothing new, particularly in a nation founded bypeople who distrusted idleness. "Everybody who's observed Americanculture, beginning with de Tocqueville, has said that Americans areuneasy with leisure," says Geoffrey Godbey, a professor of leisurestudies at Pennsylvania State University. The difference is that nowpeople have a way to calm themselves when a vacation is packed withtoo much fun: "New technologies make it easier (to channel) thoseimpulses," the professor says.

In June, Bryson Koehler, a director of Internet services at ahotel company, went with his extended family to Hilton Head, S.C.,where he discovered that only in one corner of his parents' bathroomwould his BlackBerry and wireless laptop connection work. So hecamped out in the loo, even after his mother, unaware he was sittingthere in the dark one evening, began to undress for bed. "Whoa, Mom.Wait, I'm back here," he shouted.

When his family went biking on island trails, Koehlersurreptitiously planted his laptop, cell phone and BlackBerry in thebicycle trailer carrying his 9-month-old son, leaving them with theirpower on to collect messages during the ride. It worked until hiswife caught him. "She accused me of giving the baby cancer because Ihad the cell phone under him," Koehler recalls.

The persistence of his connectedness "gets on my wife's every lastnerve," Koehler concedes. As a result, she'll "accidentally" unplughis BlackBerry from its charger, "accidentally" switch it from ringto vibrate, or just hide the thing. Her newest tactic is to bookcruise vacations, where Internet access is exorbitantly expensive.

A vast ocean didn't stop Juliette Anthony, a legislativeconsultant for a solar energy company in California, who went on acruise in February with a friend. She fibbed to her friend, whoworried she didn't know how to relax. "I'd say, 'I'm going to thegym' or 'I'm going to get a massage,' " she says. Instead, she wouldbe in the ship's bar, drinking ginger ales and racking up Internet-access charges.

For his transgressions, Jeffrey Cohen, a sales director atinsurance information provider Advisen, gets the "evil stare" fromhis wife, as well as such comments as, "Oh, nice of you to join us,"he says. If he needs a pen or paper and asks for it, no one willfetch it for him. At the same time, his twins mock him in unison,pretending they're typing on a handheld.

Workaholic Henry Franceschini took his first vacation in fouryears last Easter, but the 48-year-old sales manager soon discoveredthere wasn't much cellular service in Destin, Fla. So he spent a lotof his time driving in search of a signal.

Altogether, Franceschini probably spent as much as four hours eachday working. He'd tell his family he was using the Internet to find agreat restaurant for dinner but would answer e-mail instead. He'd sayhe was going to the bathroom but call the office. He'd say he wasgoing to the grocery store but phone work instead.

Because he's tired, he vows to reform, sort of. "I won't take thelaptop, but I will take the cell phone," he says. He plans to use his371,000 frequent-flyer miles to go anywhere in the world, so long asit isn't to the Caribbean. "There's no cell phone coverage" there, heexaggerates.

There's another solution: try to persuade family members you don'thave any choice about working. Failing that, you should just hopeyour kids turn into normal teenagers. "When they're teenagers, you'reinvisible anyway," says Jeff Porter, a Dallas attorney.