From: http://www.boston.com/business

Taking time off around the holidays? Good luck.

Ah, yes, we’re treading into late December, when people tend to at least try and cut away from the office for a few days. And that means it’s time for another survey—the likes of which are often seen during the summer travel months—showing that Americans are just plain bad at stepping away from their work.

This one comes from the data protection company Zix, which polled more than 1,000 full-time employees and asked if they intend to spend part of their “holiday break”—as in, vacation time around the holidays—working. Fifty-seven percent said yes. Forty-nine percent said they’d work at least an hour a day; a third said they’d work at least two. Some (12 percent) said they plan to work more than six per.

For that latter bunch, it’s anybody’s guess what’s going on. As for those looking to toss in a little bit of time, it’s pretty understandable in the smartphone era. For instance, the survey showed that 80 percent of employees who work off the clock cop to responding to emails even when they’ve enlisted an out-of-office reply to automatically swat away at incoming messages. When you feel your phone vibrate, ignoring it is probably easier said than done.

And while the idea of keeping up with the email deluge even under the cover of an auto-reply sounds pretty stressful, so does the thought of returning to work, firing up your inbox, and having to wade through hundreds of unread messages.

The moral of the story? Email is annoying, especially during a vacation, and there’s no real way around it.