Ugh, I hate wasting time

The last 2 or 3 weeks at work have been pretty frustrating. They are changing vacation rules, not allowing as much carryover as before. So people are taking off weeks at a time to burn their accumulated vacation days. This means that even though I've got a pile of projects that are starting to get time-critical, I can't do them properly because the people I need to talk to aren't around, and they didn't get the stuff to me before they left. One team finally got enough people back in to finish up preliminary specs YESTERDAY and they're supposed to code freeze on the 28th. Yes, prelim specs to code freeze in 5 working days. I got their files processing on the server about 4 hours after getting the specs, handed back a bunch of items that wer broken for their next round, and they didn't get anything back yesterday or today. I'd hate to be the programmer over there. He's got 5 days to do about 2 months worth of work.

The most irritating thing is, the company announced this policy change TWO YEARS ago, yet people screwed around with burning their vacation until the last 2 months. I burned mine up earlier, but all that means is that now I might as well be staying home for all the good I can do, but I have no vacation time to use. OK, I have a week or so, but I kind of want to save that up for special days over the next couple of months.