I can confidently say that this is the only time I’ve asked the question, “Did you meet any penguins?” in an interview. And hearing the answer was just as delightful as asking it.

“I met thousands of penguins, but they don’t let you take them home,” Sarah Rigsbee, CFO at Farmer’s Fridge shared.

Rigsbee recently returned from her company-sanctioned sabbatical, which she used to explore South America and Antarctica with her father. And it wasn’t lost on her that the act of simply using the company benefit – taking up to 8 weeks off for every 4 years spent working at the company – was an example to the entire organization.

“I scheduled [my sabbatical] almost a year in advance and I did a presentation when I got back,” she said. “That’s now a regular thing and it’s really memorialized and celebrated as a company.”

And then, she said something that should be read aloud as a part of every commencement address: “The company can continue to exist without any one individual for a period of time and I think it’s important to see that.”

She was advocating for a degree of replaceability – or being dispensable – that would have been blasphemy in the girlboss, sleep-when-you’re-dead, hustle culture of the early aughts.

I think back to career advice that I was given in college and my early 20s around “making myself indispensable.” Let’s pause for a second before going back to Rigsbee to unpack that idea of indispensability, or making yourself “absolutely essential to the point that people or things cannot function without you.”

If your organization doesn’t have systems in place to fill in during your absence or if you simply don’t trust anyone to follow your directions while you’re away, then you will be the only one doing your job. It sounds like a recipe for job security, but I can assure you that it will never be worth it. You will be on your laptop by the pool on vacation. You will say things like, “I’m sick, but I have to be online.” You will brag about being back online 24 hours after a medical procedure. Being indispensable is not worth your mental health.

Back to Rigsbee.

Her tenure at Farmer’s Fridge overlapped with the company’s explosive growth. She assisted in growing from two markets to 20, from 100 fridges to more than 1,000, and in launching a retail channel that includes Target, Costco, and airport staples like Hudson News.

All of that hard work made this recent benefit an even more important statement to the organization – culturally, they see the importance of taking a break.

According to TIME, “Just 11% of employers reported having a policy for unpaid sabbaticals, and just 5% for paid sabbaticals.”

There aren’t truly a lot of employees in the US who can function financially for 8 weeks without pay. The average American under the age of 35 has $3,240 in savings, so let’s call this benefit available to 5%. But for a rarely offered benefit, it has some of the most lasting impacts.

According to Harvard Business Review, “Those who took sabbaticals experienced, upon return, a decline in stress and an increase in psychological resources and overall well-being. What is surprising, however, is that those positive changes often remained long after the sabbatical takers returned to work. This suggests that not only do the rested employees benefit from time away — the organization benefits as well.”

I asked Rigsbee to share guidance for companies considering offering sabbatical leave, her key guidance was simple: Honor it.

She shared that at Farmer’s Fridge, sabbatical leave is treated with as much care as FMLA leave.

“You can’t have this benefit and not have it apply to people who are in extra-critical roles for whatever reason. Have systems in place to allow them to take it,” she shared. “When they come back, give them some space to transition back in – give them a couple weeks to reenter just like you would with any other leave.”

We love Farmer’s Fridge for a lot of reasons at aSweatLife. Their fresh, healthy food is one, but this care for the humans that make up the company gives us something else to love. If you’re looking for the next workplace to call home, peruse their current openings.