In the United States, the vacation appears to be dying as people maintain their electronic tethers to the office, fearful that if they don't, they'll get shit-canned or, even worse,  be passed over for promotion.

Some excerpts from the Aug. 10 NYT story:

SOMEWHERE on a faraway beach, a cellphone rings, a BlackBerry buzzes, a laptop beeps.

It is an electronic requiem for the American vacation.

“I never go on vacation,” said Ellen Kapit, a real estate agent in Manhattan. “And when I do, I have my computer, my Palm, my e-mail and my phone with me at all times.”

Ms. Kapit’s habits are typical of today’s employees, who check for e-mail messages from work in between parasailing or floating in the hotel pool, consider a long weekend a major excursion and sacrifice vacation days by not taking them.

But even as the American vacation is dying, the anxiety surrounding it is surging, according to surveys of workers released in the last year. Employees are sweating over every aspect of their getaways, from whether taking time off dooms them to the want ads to whether the work they will face when they return will keep them from ever leaving their cubicles again. And if they finally do make their escape?

“You picture this great fantasy trip and it’s nothing like you ever imagined in your head,” said Randi Friedman, 27, a publicist in Manhattan who likened this lofty expectation to the high hopes Bridezillas have for their weddings.

“Nothing will ever be good because you have an expectation level that’s so high,” she said. “And that’s the problem.”

Indeed, expectations of just how wondrous the ever-shrinking American vacation should be have been ratcheted up to levels usually reserved for New Year’s Eve. ...

Ambition, fear of being fired, feeling indispensable and self-imposed getaway guilt all help to explain why workers do not use all of their vacation days and why many prefer to take respites that are shorter than two weeks, even if they have banked significantly more vacation time.

Erin Krause, a spokeswoman for the travel Web site Expedia.com, which publishes an annual Vacation Deprivation online survey, said, “Americans are not using all of their vacation days and it seems to be getting worse.”

“We are not taking advantage of the time our employers are giving to us,” she said.

That is particularly surprising given that in the United States full-time employees have 3.9 holiday and vacation weeks off a year. But this is paltry when compared with European countries, including the United Kingdom (6.6 weeks), France (7) and Italy (7.9), according to the 2004 figures compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

A study released last year by the Families and Work Institute found that American workers have on average 16.6 paid vacation days but that more than one-third of employees (36 percent) did not plan to use their full vacation. (The data for the survey of 1,003 adults who were employed full or part time by someone else was collected by Harris Interactive over the telephone between Oct. 7 and Nov. 15, 2004. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percent.) ...

About one in five people do some amount of work during vacation, according to the Families and Work Institute study.

Downsizing, labor market volatility and the country’s shift from an industrial economy to one based on service and knowledge have helped create what Ms. Galinsky described as a “rapid-fire” way of working. People expect instantaneous responses to their e-mail messages at all hours, vacation or no vacation. The boundary between work and home life is now fluid, she said, adding that “we plan life off the job the way we plan life on the job.”

And that may not be a good thing. The Families and Work Institute study found that overworked employees are more likely to make mistakes, to be angry at their employers and at colleagues who do not work as hard. These employees are also more likely to have higher stress levels, experience symptoms of clinical depression, report poorer health and neglect themselves.