If your options are "Bad optics and no real benefit" or "good optics and no real benefit", you always go for the latter unless your brain is as smooth as an ice rink. Don't let optics get in the way of getting shit done, but never abstain for the small investment required to create it. Its a time-proven political currency of unimaginable worth.

If you can create good optics, you create good optics. If there is no other way, then fuck it, you have work to do. But if all you have to do is cancel an already ill-advised vacation and lift some food packets, you shouldn't be a retard and just do it. Simple as