Tips for getting the worst job addicts to take a vacation

I have been involved in travel for a lifetime, by profession and by passion, and in these months close to summer, when the Milanese begin to feel the call of beaches and mountain huts, my friends ask me for advice. From the generic: “Costa, where am I going on vacation this year?” to more specific questions such as: “Is it true that there is no smoking area in Bangkok airport?”. Among my friends, however, there is one who has never asked me for advice: neither for a trip outside the city nor for an adventure on the Beijing Express. This person, who out of respect for privacy we will call Pasquale, is pathologically dependent on work. If I call him to ask him what he’s up to, even if it’s mid-August or Befana, a holiday close to my heart, he always replies: “I’m working”. The fact that he monitors his smartphone even at night makes you understand that the cognitive economy of this man (self-styled leftist) is clearly neoliberal in origin, if not downright cyborg. The only calamity that can force him to leave Milan is a commitment beyond the Pillars of Hercules of the Assago Forum. In those cases, Pasquale says goodbye to his wife and daughter as if he were leaving for the front and packs his laptop, telephone and charger. The rest, except for a modest cosmetic bag in Blu Savoia twill with the legal minimum for hygiene, is of little importance. For him, sunscreens are not the serum for eternal life, but a marketing gimmick to make us forget that the beach is the antechamber of melanoma. Since we all know at least one Pasquale, here are five tips to convince the most immovable of your friends to take a break away from home.