America's national vacation problem
September 7, 2015 4:51 PM   Subscribe

 
I was once fired for trying to use accrued vacation time. I don't see why chaining yourself to your desk such that you cannot enjoy the money you earn is "success." I'm glad I chose failure, in that case.
posted by 1adam12 at 5:04 PM on September 7, 2015 [24 favorites]


My wife and I haven't taken a vacation since our 25th anniversary trip...back in 2005. Lord knows we need one.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:12 PM on September 7, 2015


This is a totally legit article, but I had to giggle at their video description:
The BBC asked people in Washington DC how many days they took off last year and watched them write that number down on a board.
posted by ChuraChura at 5:14 PM on September 7, 2015 [6 favorites]


For all the talk of "disruption" and "new economy" note how hirers won't even consider vacation beyond the legally required amount here in this doomed tech-bubble town. It's not even a negotiation point.

Like, you can ask for 10k more a year or maybe 15k but an extra week of paid vacation is a non-starter. It's insane.
posted by clvrmnky at 5:17 PM on September 7, 2015 [17 favorites]


Having spent many years in corporate America, it is common to see people struggle to decide whether to risk spending "use it or lose it" vacation time. In my experience most of them lose it.
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 5:17 PM on September 7, 2015 [4 favorites]


I work shift work at the front desk of a hotel. Whenever someone in our office goes on vacation, there is a kind of quiet behind the scenes snide commentary.

"Oooh, look who won the lottery. Must be nice to go to New York."

Some variation of this kind of passive-aggressive commentary on the person who is only behaving as a human should behave. It most likely stems from a jealousy. The ability to take leisure time for yourself is viewed as selfish when so many other people in the office are working pay check to pay check. It is sad that this kind of animosity exists in the office place. But it is not surprising. You want to prove to your managers and to the people higher up that you are worth keeping, that you are necessary. Kill or be killed.
posted by Fizz at 5:24 PM on September 7, 2015 [4 favorites]


I was already very grateful, and am even more so now, that not only does my company give pretty decent (for nowadays) vacation time but we're also not discouraged from using it - not even through the behavior/comments of our coworkers.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:32 PM on September 7, 2015 [18 favorites]


I am suddenly very grateful that my entire work history has been with Libraries in the public sector, because I've never encountered this kind of insanity. Jesus wept.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 5:35 PM on September 7, 2015 [18 favorites]


Americans taking fewest vacation days in four decades

I used to work for a company where I'd become senior enough (and worked there long enough) that I had ~25 to 30 vacation days each year (including the max five days that would roll over from the previous year), but due to a punishing fixed schedule, I rarely used more than half of them in a given year.

Now I work for a company with unlimited vacation days, and so far I'm doing a little better in terms of taking time off—in part because management actively encourages us to take time to recharge as needed. I'm still not taking as much time off as I should, but I'm getting better about it.
posted by limeonaire at 5:40 PM on September 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


Why are people smiling when they write down '0'. Also, why aren't they at work?

I don't think I ever took what I would actually call a vacation during my entire work career in the US. I took vacation days, but I used them to visit family or to go to conferences. It wasn't until after I was thirty did the realization hit me that these weren't actually vacations.

It's worth noting that the people who write a number on that board are talking about how many vacation days they took, they aren't talking about how many days they spent actually vacationing. I'm willing to bet a large percentage of them were to deal with family emergencies, to visit family, or to engage in professional development.
posted by el io at 5:43 PM on September 7, 2015 [7 favorites]


I feel like there's an article every other week about how utterly fucked American work culture is.

I fear taking vacation time from my office for the same reasons most people do - because my coworkers feel the direct impact of my absence by having to cover for me. When I came back from a few days off a few weeks ago, some of the 400 emails that had piled up in my inbox were my team, god bless 'em, shooting shit off at 9pm because they just didn't have time to do their own stuff during the workday and cover mine.

I mean...it really all comes down to every organization being mysteriously perpetually understaffed, right? Of course the CEO and executive board has to pay themselves $3 million a year and not, like, $1 million a year - then they would only make 30 times as much as their lowest paid staff. God forbid we take the rest of that money and hire a few more support people in each department, then people would actually be able to take a week off here and there, and even leave at 5pm and - gasp - breathe a little during the workday instead of everything being an emergency pile-up situation.

Nope. Just have faith that personal salvation comes from hard work, my friends. Sometimes it's almost offensive to me that we actually have the balls to celebrate "labor day" in this country and still allow all this shit.
posted by windbox at 5:45 PM on September 7, 2015 [139 favorites]


I've sometimes stayed in youth hostels when I travel, and whenever I did, I'd often share rooms with people from other countries. I'd always ask them about how many vacation days they got. And when they asked me what the American policy was, I'd always smile wryly and say that there wasn't any law requiring us to have ANY vacation time, that it was up to our employers. And usually, we only got two weeks. Invariably, their eyes would go wide, then they'd think a minute and say, "that actually explains SO MUCH about why it seems like Americans never travel."

--

In May I started working at an NGO that has a 20-day paid vacation-days policy, minimum (if you are a director or a VP or something, it's even higher). Also, I work in Human Resources, so I actually get pressure to use the vacation time; I hadn't used all my days yet by the time Labor Day weekend was coming, and my boss basically ordered me to use some of the six days I had saved up or else. So tomorrow is the last day of my six-day Labor Day weekend. They don't even want me to check work emails while I'm out - I was stuck inside a couple of the past few days screening for a new roommate, and checked work emails just in case while I was between appointments and answered one. I got four co-workers write me in response saying "stop checking your email and enjoy your vacation!"

I realize I am extraordinarily lucky and you have no idea the depth of my gratitude.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:01 PM on September 7, 2015 [48 favorites]


Like, you can ask for 10k more a year or maybe 15k but an extra week of paid vacation is a non-starter. It's insane.

Being lean means creating an unsustainable chain of dependencies where if one person isn't at their desk, a whole product can start crumbling in a week. I've been on site with customers the last two weeks, and forced to be intimately involved with what's going on back at home because everybody who used to cover my expertise has quit, and there was nobody in the pipeline to replace them except me.

I did take vacations because the alternative was immanent burnout. What would I even do now?
posted by wotsac at 6:01 PM on September 7, 2015 [16 favorites]


Hey I took Friday off. That, combined with the holiday today means that I got a whole four days in a row off.
posted by octothorpe at 6:06 PM on September 7, 2015 [4 favorites]


For all the talk of "disruption" and "new economy" note how hirers won't even consider vacation beyond the legally required amount here in this doomed tech-bubble town. It's not even a negotiation point.

Yea. I work in tech and i had a big, 8-10 day trip planned at the end of the summer... and i was looking for a job. I realized after a little while that unless i can squeeze it into my "two weeks notice" while using time off at my old gig, then i might as well just not even bother trying to land an interview anywhere until after the trip.

Why is it so crazy to say "hey i already have this immovable plan i had cleared with my old job that's pretty soon, can i just take that off as part of the negotiations?"

I was getting coached by recruiters on how much more i could ask for and how much i could get expect to get paid and other compensation and stuff, but time off was completely absent from the conversation and i was honestly even afraid to bring it up.

Why the hell aren't any of these companies that offer like, on site free lavish meals and massages and pet care and meditation centers and shit just saying "hey you get a whole month off?"

I'd rather have 30 days vacation time a year than ANY of that shit. Fuck, i'd rather have that than most benefits. I'm still relatively young, i just want to get the hell out of town and do shit... and it sucks that i've either had to take unpaid time off(which is STILL an unusual thing to get) or do it between jobs like every single time.
posted by emptythought at 6:11 PM on September 7, 2015 [11 favorites]


We have unlimited PTO, but our quarterly bonus is tied to our billable hours (we're a custom software shop). So while I'm paid a very liveable salary I'm also in control about my time off. If I want to make some extra scratch this quarter I might not take as much time off, but if I don't care so much, it's not a big deal to go on vacation either.

It's not a perfect setup but it's definitely better than previous gigs I've had here in the U.S. So far I've taken about 2 weeks off this summer. Admittedly only one of those weekends was a legit vacation...hmmmmmmmm
posted by Doleful Creature at 6:16 PM on September 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


Obama announced today that federal contractors are only just now being forced to provide sick days - and that won't take effect until 2017, and then only for new contracts. Jeepers. Talk about picking only the lowest of the low-hanging fruit.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:17 PM on September 7, 2015 [10 favorites]


Every time I read one of these articles I thank every god ever created that I freelance and avoid this nonsense. It is totally ridiculous that most Americans aren't allowed to take any actual vacation time. Not that freelancing isn't a giant hassle in a million ways, but at least I can go on an actual, multi-week travel adventure and no one can bitch and moan about it. If I get sick of the world I can go camp in the woods for a week whenever I want and come back to work without an ever growing rage in my heart at the bullshit I have to do for money.

I was just in France for a cycling event I had been planning for over a year. Someone commented "all the Americans who do this event are rich, they have the fanciest bikes". I thought it was a strange observation, riding a bike is a fairly cheap vacation (insert calories, keep pedaling) but they were right. Who in America can afford to take a week plus off work to pedal around the French country side? Mostly the rich.
posted by bradbane at 6:30 PM on September 7, 2015 [15 favorites]


Most US companies have a really inflexible vacation policy. You can haggle on salary, and maybe even bonus, but a hiring manager can't do much to give you an extra week, even if they wanted to. The work culture in the US seems to make it a moot point anyway, though.

I've been working in the tech industry for almost two decades, and became a manager at a decent-sized company a little over a year ago. We get 21 days of vacation annually, and senior leadership actually wants to get people to take their vacation (It's really just an accounting thing, because vacation time is a credit on the books, I guess? I'm not about to complain). I have to remind people every week that they have vacation that they aren't using, and that they have people who can back them up. We've been regularly hiring with no layoffs since before I joined, and yet, nobody wants to take their time off. It's not tied to their performance reviews, either.

In my old job, this behavior would have made sense, because it was absolutely a toxic workplace where people would joke about you being an "8-and-skate" if you weren't dedicated enough to work 50+ hours a week, but at this place, I legit can't figure it out. I sure as hell have all my vacation either taken or scheduled for this year, and make sure everybody knows it. The only logical conclusion I can come to is that our work culture in the US is just well and truly fucked.
posted by KGMoney at 6:32 PM on September 7, 2015 [9 favorites]


Why the hell aren't any of these companies that offer like, on site free lavish meals and massages and pet care and meditation centers and shit just saying "hey you get a whole month off?"

The BBC piece touches on this. All those lavish perks are intended to keep you at the office working. Letting you out of the workcamp for a month would mean an empty chair being unproductive all that time. Unless they replace you while you're gone, of course.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:33 PM on September 7, 2015 [4 favorites]


I've heard enough stories in this vein to accept that US work culture is a fucking disaster.

Yet, here are the OECD stats of hours worked per year per worker. The USA is far from the top, it's fairly stable at about 1800. The OECD average is 1770. It's not a record setter, by far. SO I'm not sure how that gels with the reported experience.

In Australia, we all get four weeks leave a year and we pretty much all take it (as a manager, I did have to occasionally insist that some of my staff took theirs, as it was a liability on my books), our work hours average is currently ~1680, which is in fact 3.2 weeks (at 38 hrs a week) less, which I guess is quite a bit.

Here's more interesting data about GDP per hour worked. Accepting the flaws in GDP calculation, and the lack of an equity measure, the USA remains highly productive, 4th best in the world, only beaten by small countries, Norway, Luxembourg and Ireland.Australia is only 83% as productive.
posted by wilful at 6:34 PM on September 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


I had the opposite experience at my current job: they couldn't afford the salary I asked for, so I took $10k less, and they gave me an extra week of vacation (for 3 weeks total).

Small software company.
posted by gsh at 6:36 PM on September 7, 2015


I'd love to see stats on how freelancers compare, in general. On one hand, like breadbane says, we can take any days off we want, right - a big part of the freelance fantasy that is true.

On the other hand, every day off is unpaid, ever. It can really be the best or the worst of both worlds, depending.
posted by gottabefunky at 6:36 PM on September 7, 2015 [5 favorites]


Wilful, do they control for part time workers vs. full time there? And do they control for individuals? I'm wondering if the data might be skewed by the frequency of, say, workers working two part-time jobs vs. workers working a single full-time job in the study. If you're counting by jobs rather than by workers, you might wind up with a data set that artificially inflates the number of workers in your study--with many people doing multiple jobs at the "fewer jobs" end of the scale.
posted by sciatrix at 6:37 PM on September 7, 2015


here are the OECD stats of hours worked per year per worker

How are these stats even gathered? I couldn't find it.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 6:38 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


Your job is your life. Sit down, get back to work, and shut up. Harsh? Maybe, but why do I get this feeling as I read through job ads these days. Just this morning I saw an ad for a video producer job for a startup. One of the requirements for the job was knowing "a creative environment is not 9 to 5." The free lunch, the dry cleaning pickup, the endless snacks and drinks are just their way of keeping you at your desk doing their work. It's not your work no matter how much you enjoy doing it. It's for them. They assigned it to you and they expect you to do it no matter how it might impact you as a person. I passed through the high tech satanic mills awhile ago but the exploitation of enthusiastic twenty year olds who would be at work night and day because they loved the work and all their friends were there, still ended in the not infrequent stories of burn out and the occasional suicide. Coupled with the recurring layoffs where people were cast aside like useless trash, my cynicism about our glorious free market capitalistic system knows no reasonable bounds.
posted by njohnson23 at 6:46 PM on September 7, 2015 [21 favorites]


We really need a white collar labor movement. Occupy ended up centering around unsustainable loans (understandably), first mortgages and then private student loans, but I really think a white collar labor movement would be a gamechanger.
posted by Deoridhe at 6:48 PM on September 7, 2015 [29 favorites]


sciatrix, Steely-eyed Missile Man, my understanding (not an expert) is that OECD stats are gathered in country by the relevant bureaucracy (your Bureau of Labour?). They try very hard to make them comparable and work with the gathering agencies to achieve like-with-like consistency. I'm pretty sure methodologies are publicly available if you look hard enough.

While the two jobs per worker thing does seem to be particularly USAmerican, it's not unique to your country.
posted by wilful at 6:50 PM on September 7, 2015


Every time I read one of these articles I thank every god ever created that I freelance and avoid this nonsense. It is totally ridiculous that most Americans aren't allowed to take any actual vacation time. Not that freelancing isn't a giant hassle in a million ways, but at least I can go on an actual, multi-week travel adventure and no one can bitch and moan about it. If I get sick of the world I can go camp in the woods for a week whenever I want and come back to work without an ever growing rage in my heart at the bullshit I have to do for money.

Hell yes. I freelanced for 6 years before taking a staff job at a design company. During those 6 years my pattern was like yours. Work a while, hike or backpack a while. Get burned out working...just take a few weeks off. The hassles of freelance eventually made me go staff but when HR began complaining about the time I wanted to take off (a whole 6 weeks in an entire year) I just had enough and I quit.

I just hate having the only hours I have on this planet micro-managed. Those hours are mine and they matter. Two weeks of vacation a year when I'm supposed to work past age 65? That's not even 2 years of time off in 40 years of work. That's a pretty fucked up ratio if you ask me.

I'm on a nine month sabbatical now and am going back to freelance when it's over. I may not own a house until I'm 50 but I've learned it's more than worth it to be the master of your own time.
posted by jnnla at 6:52 PM on September 7, 2015 [11 favorites]


No, I know it's not unique to the US. I was primarily wondering about relative rates of part-time to full-time workers rather than trying to suggest that's an entirely US phenomenon.

It looks like they used data from the American Time Use Survey for the US. Hrm, still looking further for methodologies...
posted by sciatrix at 6:58 PM on September 7, 2015


Went to Universal Orlando a few years ago and had myself lunch at the Mythos restaurant and I was doing phone things on my phone while waiting for my food. The waiter came up and saw me on the phone and said "Oh man, they chained you to the office, didn't they?" and I said no, I was just putting up some pictures of the park for my friends. After he left I realized that was probably a question he asked a lot and got more affirmative, comiserating answers than not. That made me sad.
posted by Spatch at 6:59 PM on September 7, 2015 [3 favorites]


At an old job, my supervisor not only took sick days as needed, but also had a solid two week vacation every year + personal days. Everything got done, everything was covered, and they set a fantastic example by encouraging everyone to use their leave. I still had to handle a lot while on vacation to put out fires, but it was something I was doing to make my return more manageable, not something required by my office. It was a good model.
posted by jetlagaddict at 7:05 PM on September 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


Why the hell aren't any of these companies that offer like, on site free lavish meals and massages and pet care and meditation centers and shit just saying "hey you get a whole month off?"

I work at one such company. New hires get three weeks of vacation. Employees of long tenure get up to five. I have never felt pressured not to use my vacation days and they are widely regarded as a part of one's compensation, not some special treat you only get to use if you've been reeeeeally good this year. The lavish-perks companies don't actually have a terrible track record on vacation time as far as I've ever heard (except for the ones with "unlimited" vacation, which is a whole different matter). But I'll allow that people tend to come back complaining that the food was terrible and expensive compared to what they're used to at work.
posted by town of cats at 7:07 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


Going back to work tomorrow with a renewed sense of gratefulness for my employer. There is no limit of the amount of unpaid time off, and we get a little over a week and a half worth of PTO that we can use at our discretion. Not the best but far from the worst set up. And no higher ups slack shame; just "welcome backs" all around.
posted by tippy at 7:10 PM on September 7, 2015


Like, you can ask for 10k more a year or maybe 15k but an extra week of paid vacation is a non-starter. It's insane.

The midwest, and not a 'tech company' despite really being a tech company, is different. When I was hired at my current job, they actually talked me down 10k from my first number and offered an extra week of vacation instead. (Normally they have a two week maximum and I got 3 to start. I was at 4 weeks with my previous employer.) I realize that's pretty unusual though.
posted by Foosnark at 7:14 PM on September 7, 2015


My coworkers were commenting on some European counterparts who were on vacation (sorry, "holiday") for 3 weeks in a row this summer. My boss said that if the company can get by without you for 3 weeks, they don't really need you. She's never taken more than one week off.
posted by desjardins at 7:21 PM on September 7, 2015 [6 favorites]


My first task at my current job was to rewrite a vacation request workflow (originally in SharePoint) to be easier to use and to deal with additional types of vacation leave. When you remove friction in the tools, and in the culture, the behaviour follows.

It doesn't matter how many days vacation you get. It matters if you feel like you can take them.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:26 PM on September 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


My experience of the bigger tech companies in Silicon Valley (Apple, IBM, Google) is different. My bosses always encouraged me to take time off, and aside from some special crunch times, when and how long was never a problem. Some of the "never take vacation" stuff in those places came from people being hyper-competitive.

Of course, in the US, you're typically only getting 2-3 weeks to start, and the number doesn't go up until you get several years of seniority, which you then lose if you change jobs. I've always been jealous of the policies in Europe where they treat vacation seriously.

(Startups were a whole different kettle of fish, though.)
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:30 PM on September 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


As Americans, we mostly don't seem to have a clue how out of whack we've let the balance of power get (and with it our priorities). We just internalize the POV of the powerful and make it our own.
posted by saulgoodman at 7:31 PM on September 7, 2015 [29 favorites]


"This is how America is: you are expected to give everything you have, and if you don't you're unsuccessful."

Oh right—the thing the quote in this post made me think of was Elon Musk. I just read his biography in the last day, and it was quite good, but Musk and his companies definitely embody this mind-set. Inasmuch as I greatly appreciate what he and his companies are doing, the work environment depicted in the book seemed harsh—though I couldn't tell whether it's more or less harsh than the environment at Amazon. They definitely seem in the same realm in some ways.

That said, I think Musk is doing things that will ultimately greatly benefit the world, and perhaps that calls for more skin in the game from everyone involved—Musk certainly has put himself on the line in ways most CEOs don't. I'm not sure whether one could say the same about Amazon in any respect.
posted by limeonaire at 7:35 PM on September 7, 2015


My PDF of the union contract is bookmarked at the maximum hours retained policy. Looks like I'm about to hit the cap on that, despite cashing in 40 hours for money every year. Whoops.

Maybe the boss will go for a 36 hour work week, and I'll come in at noon on Mondays or something. /shrug
posted by pwnguin at 7:38 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


I work for myself. I can take vacation days whenever I like, but I often choose to work because I like the pay.
posted by Ideefixe at 7:58 PM on September 7, 2015


here are the OECD stats of hours worked per year per worker

It's pretty apparent (to me, anyway) that those numbers are probably simply the "official" hours worked, and does not include the hours spent at home working, the late hours at the office, etc.

Then the number is brought down by the proliferation of sub-30-hours-per-week minimum wage jobs.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:01 PM on September 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


Sorry, I'm late to the thread. Was today a holiday? I just got home from work.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 8:01 PM on September 7, 2015 [9 favorites]


A good thing about academia is that you can make your own hours. but if you don't put together a stellar CV you're going to be in adjunct hell, and if you don't put together a stellar tenure packet you're going to be out on your ass, and if you don't keep publishing and pulling grants then you're never going to be senior professors But otherwise, yeah, manage your time as you like!
posted by codacorolla at 8:11 PM on September 7, 2015 [9 favorites]


I tell all my direct reports (and have them tell their direct reports) to take every single day of their paid time off. I expect them to do it because there's actual research that shows it makes them better at their jobs, get sick less, and quit less.

I also model this behavior by doing the same. I tell my manager I do this and explain why, and if s/he ever has an issue with it...well, I don't really care that much. I am not going to find myself on my death bed wishing I had worked an extra few days.
posted by yellowcandy at 8:12 PM on September 7, 2015 [7 favorites]


I find it somewhat telling that per that OECD list, Mexico and Greece are both right up at the top there in terms of hours worked, with far more than Americans. I guess that's why those countries are both paragons of economic success and where the stereotype of the tireless Mexican or Greek worker comes from.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 8:15 PM on September 7, 2015 [4 favorites]


I can't imagine not taking all of my four weeks of vacation a year. They never seem like enough. Theoretically, we can cash out unused vacation days, but that is strongly discouraged. We are expected to use up all our days. This year I took an additional eight weeks of unpaid leave. But then, I'm not an American. Work just goes on whether I am there or not.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:15 PM on September 7, 2015


We really need a white collar labor movement.

I'm in a (largely) white collar union, a wall-to-wall legal services union that includes attorneys, paralegals, social workers, and support staff. We get 28 days of vacation a year and 18 sick days. The vacation days cap out at 60 to accrue, and 40 to be paid out if you leave. Sick leave accrues indefinitely but isn't paid out at all when you leave. It's suprisingly easy if you stay several years to accrue a lot of days, just by taking a luxurious 3 weeks of vacation instead of the allotted five. I got up to 60 accrued vacation days at one point and realized those were potentially wasted days when I left and whittled it down to 40. I've hovered around 40 for years by taking my annual leave and nothing more. I have over 120 sick days. I guess my point is, goddamn, I love being in a union.
posted by Mavri at 8:18 PM on September 7, 2015 [43 favorites]


It's pretty apparent (to me, anyway) that those numbers are probably simply the "official" hours worked, and does not include the hours spent at home working, the late hours at the office, etc.

There certainly seems to be enough anecdata to call into question the official stats, yes. But again, hardly unique to the US, overtime isn't exactly unheard of in the rest of the world.

I find it somewhat telling that per that OECD list, Mexico and Greece are both right up at the top there in terms of hours worked, with far more than Americans. I guess that's why those countries are both paragons of economic success and where the stereotype of the tireless Mexican or Greek worker comes from.

I get what you're saying, but check my second link which says Mexican workers are less than 1/3 as productive as USAmericans, Greeks a little over half, so that's perhaps a better base for the stereotype.
posted by wilful at 8:26 PM on September 7, 2015


And here I was just overhearing that labor unions had succeeded so much they weren't needed anymore.

(Seriously, this is the dominant attitude among middle to upper management, or at least what they will say publicly.)
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:28 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


At my previous (office) job during some year-end award gathering a gentleman received one for general achievement as voted on by his peers. The main thing the speaker focused on as he was introduced was that this particular gentleman had not taken 1 sick day in his 20 years with the company.

Aside from personally being horrified at the prospect of how many days he trudged into work when he most likely really could have used one in those twenty years, I was also pretty horrified at just how exceptional and praiseworthy everyone thought he was for this.
posted by dreamlanding at 8:32 PM on September 7, 2015 [3 favorites]


I work at a professional services firm with over 60,000 U.S. based employees. Non-unionized. Everyone in the firm (from graduate level new hires up) gets 25 days a year PTO or more. I get 32. I've seen a few people run into use it or lose it situations - but rarely. I'm from a different country (pretty sure you can guess based on username)...but I am constantly amazed how my experience doesn't gel in anyway with what I hear about being the norm here in the U.S. I can't even imagine some of the stuff I've read in this thread.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 8:35 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


Having vacation hours are nice and all, but how am I supposed to be able to afford an actual vacation?
posted by The Bishop of Turkey at 8:38 PM on September 7, 2015 [5 favorites]


This is what I think of every time I consider moving back to the USA from New Zealand. I took three weeks off in May and I'm taking five weeks off to visit family over Thanksgiving and Christmas. My annual leave is not 'use it or lose it' thats fucking crazy. Subsequently I can roll my time over from year to year. I will hopefully take six weeks off next year. This isn't possible at every job in NZ but it's certainly not possible at any job in America as far as I can tell. Who in the states gets a six week vacation? Pretty much CEOs right? I'd rather put up with the (comparitively) low wages and high cost of living.
posted by supercrayon at 8:54 PM on September 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


Between the thread about people selling their blood plasma to survive, and the one about prisoners, and this one, it's hard to deny America has become a really depressing, dysfunctional place. And a large swathe of citizens defend this dysfunction, and/or attack the people as "lazy" or "worthless" or "commie libtards". What the hell is happening here? I don't see this ending very well.
posted by gehenna_lion at 8:56 PM on September 7, 2015 [32 favorites]


but if you don't put together a stellar CV you're going to be in adjunct hell, and if you don't put together a stellar tenure packet you're going to be out on your ass, and if you don't keep publishing and pulling grants then you're never going to be senior professors

I literally just felt a rush of cortisol dumping into my bloodstream reading this
posted by en forme de poire at 8:58 PM on September 7, 2015 [12 favorites]


en forme de poire: "I literally just felt a rush of cortisol dumping into my bloodstream reading this"

hey

hey that would be a good research topic, probably a great paper, unlike you sitting here in my office grabassing about vacations

i didnt become dean by farting around and moaning about how much vacation i should have
posted by boo_radley at 9:08 PM on September 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


My boss said that if the company can get by without you for 3 weeks, they don't really need you.

Which, from the company's perspective should be a good thing. It would mean that they weren't dependant on your unique abilities; that they could carry on if you left the company or fell under a bus. I've read that some financial companies require people to take vacations, because it makes it that much harder for their employees to conceal anything illegal. The same thing really applies everywhere: if you can't get by without a specific employee, that employee has way too much power over the company.
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:17 PM on September 7, 2015 [34 favorites]


Honestly though, I have a lot of trouble reconciling what I've read about "knowledge work," namely that shorter weeks with more plentiful vacation are actually more optimal in terms of productivity, with the fact that I know very well that my competition (i.e. every other postdoc in the biological sciences) works wayyyy more than 40 hours a week and takes wayyyyy fewer than 20 (!) vacation days. (I get 14 plus holidays and I use them all.) The optimistic interpretation is that these people are not actually working optimally and are paying for it now in some way or will pay eventually, similar to the illusion caused by seeing other people's lavish new purchases but not their credit card bills. (OK, that's not optimistic for them, but I mean, for me.)

My fear, though, is that maybe that kind of law of diminishing returns is actually a population-level statement, and while it might be true for the majority of people, it just doesn't apply to some small subset of the population in the same way, maybe because they just naturally have a surfeit of focus, energy, and work ethic that immunizes them against burnout -- and that those, specifically, are the people who can make it in the current system. After all, the selection process for being a faculty member these days is so selective, who cares if most people can't hack it. So maybe if I'm not one of those superhumans, and I'm not willing to feel proportionally overworked or miserable, I am kidding myself that I actually have a shot at "making it" as a scientist. idk.
posted by en forme de poire at 9:19 PM on September 7, 2015 [6 favorites]


(Vacations are also particularly tough in my field and fields like it, because if you're not doing a particular piece of work, it just doesn't get done, period. Cultural issues aside, the practical issues with changing that would be completely overwhelming -- having to bring someone else up to speed on what you were doing, enough for them to continue it in your absence, would be a project in and of itself.)
posted by en forme de poire at 9:26 PM on September 7, 2015


From the article:

At HubSpot, a Boston-based marketing software company, unlimited vacation days have been in place since 2010 with great success,

I think this underscores the point that this isn't really a policy problem, but a culture problem. All of my American professional friends who are oppressed by their lack of vacation do have the ability to take more than they ask for, but the attitude among "progressive companies" is like, "Take as much as you want, as long as the job gets done." And that's the problem. The job. The workload and the personal ownership we feel we have over it.

"I couldn't possibly take vacation now, not with the big release/inspection/report/lawsuit/whatever emergency-du-jour going on." We are constantly in survival mode at work and we've just internalized that as normal. Sure in some cases, it's because jobs are tight and people are really feeling the pressure to perform and look good, but I also think there's something hard to describe deeper in our psyche, the way we place our self worth in our job performance in this brutally capitalist society. A part of us really wants to be at work because that's what we identify as: lawyer doctor banker engineer working professional cogs in the machine. If we go bike touring in Europe for six weeks, we feel incomplete because we aren't getting our TPS reports done. And over time we lose even the imagination to contemplate what we'd do if we took a humane amount of time away from work. Most of us don't notice or even miss the vacation, as long as we're being recognized for our effort and competence at work.

And I would suggest it has made us really deeply spiritually sick. We are unhappy, self-destructive little consumers, our families and friendships are eroding away, and we're destroying the planet with our lack of balance.

Fuck that 2 weeks of vacation policy noise. I can't believe people put up with that and don't just say "no thank you, I'll keep looking." Then again, I've never been starving, so I can accept that some people gotta do what they gotta do. Still, someone made that 2 week vacation policy and that person decided "hell, 2 weeks seems like plenty for me, I don't even take that much" and I believe we're not just victims but we're also willingly complicit. Those of us who are professionals with advanced degrees who set the tone in our work places need to take some responsibility for changing things.

I am very much a worker-cog of a (non-profit, granted) organization. I am "allowed" 4 weeks of paid leave, plus 2 weeks of paid educational time which I typically take as "independent study" or attend a conference with my family in a vacationy-type place. I also have no problem calling in sick on a nice day a couple times a year. I am fortunate enough to be sort of difficult to replace, so I don't even keep track of the number of days I take. I've never been told "no" when I schedule my time away but I have my speech all planned out if someone does raise an issue and it's basically: "What are you going to do, fire me?" Because ultimately, if my job conflicts too much with my personal life, I'd rather walk.

I do hear the argument that when people are out of the office, it's the rest of the team that has to pick up the slack, and certainly it's a problem if one person take more than everyone else, but we all try to take care of each other. I see it as a necessary part of working together and having a humane work-life balance. I gladly work a little harder so my partners get enough time away, and on some of those weeks, when the non-emergency work starts to pile up, sometimes I just have to say "You know, I'd really like to take this on immediately, but we're a bit short staffed right now, we're giving So-and-So a much needed vacation, and it's gonna take a little longer to get to this." And 99 times out of 100, it's fine.

tl;dr: Only a rat can win the rat race.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 9:30 PM on September 7, 2015 [26 favorites]


Most of my life I was fairly poor, working minimum wage bullshit jobs, and vacation wasn't a thing, you worked, or you didn't get paid.
Finally in my late 30's after years of horseshit, I went to college for an art degree, because I was going to do one damn thing for me, then if the rest of my life was horseshit, I had that time to look back on. It was glorious, and I don't regret a moment. I also wangled vacations. Oh, they were called Geology of the Colorado Plateau, but it was vacation to me.
My last year in school, I started working in the campus library, and ended up getting hired on the staff. It's a state job and I get vacation time. I'm using some right now. In January, I usually visit Mom. My friend Alex, lives in Mexico, I'm going to visit her there.
This country is fucked and they're trying to kill the public sector, I'm hoping instead that we can wake up the rest of the country and make people realize, we all deserve at least this much.
posted by evilDoug at 9:36 PM on September 7, 2015 [14 favorites]


Who in the states gets a six week vacation? Pretty much CEOs right?

Members of Congress get a shitton of vacation and often work 3 day weeks. They give themselves raises. Good schtick if you can get it.
posted by Deoridhe at 9:53 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


But that's the wedge issue, isn't it. "Damn, lazy-ass, government workers..."

The private sector is an efficient machine, and just doesn't give a damn about "life balance".
posted by Windopaene at 10:00 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


This isn't possible at every job in NZ but it's certainly not possible at any job in America as far as I can tell. Who in the states gets a six week vacation?

I have known several people who cashed out literal years of vacation at retirement.
They were generally in healthcare (nurses) or some sort of civil servant.
Granted, they had all put in many years at a single employer, but it isn't impossible to accumulate multiple weeks of employment.

My spouse's work allows you to accumulate up to 5ish weeks.
It used to be unlimited, but a few years ago, they changed it because people were just storing it without ever using it.

Now, if you get over 4 weeks, you start to get strongly worded memos from your boss about taking some time off.

This is good for most people, but it kinda sucks for the people from India, China, etc, who would much prefer to skip vacations one year, so they can take the entire summer (2 months or more) and visit family the next.
posted by madajb at 10:18 PM on September 7, 2015


Members of Congress get a shitton of vacation and often work 3 day weeks. They give themselves raises. Good schtick if you can get it.

My experience of political life (in Canada) is that, what looks to constituents like a "vacation" is actually spent on 18-hour days in the constituency or abroad, mostly at meetings or listening to people whine about stuff they know nothing about. Few people put in more hours at work than politicians, even shitty ones. A quick perusal of Google tells me that Congresscritters average 70-hour weeks.

/derail
posted by klanawa at 10:24 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


I don't even get holidays off. I work on Thanksgiving and Christmas, unless they happen to fall on my one day off per week.

I recently interviewed for a better job, and thought I had it in the bag -- but the interview were suddenly turned sour when I told her that I wasn't willing to start right away, because I wanted to put in my two weeks notice where I am. I've been there seven years, I told her, it's a decent company and I don't want to burn that bridge.

The interview pretty much ended there and they haven't called me back.
posted by ELF Radio at 10:28 PM on September 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


I work for a non-profit in the US and accrue 6 weeks a year of paid time off, which is sick leave and vacation time combined. It is possible.

Yeah, my experience of Members of Congress is that they are never NOT working, and don't really get much time off. Three days of floor votes/committee meetings in DC, sure, plus 4 days of constituent and other meetings in the district. Plus the travel time back and forth, which really adds up for our Cali reps.
posted by gingerbeer at 10:28 PM on September 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


I've worked for a couple companies where, in addition to the two annual weeks of vacation, the office shut down for the week between Christmas and New Year. If the weekends are in the right place you could end up with ~ two weeks off. As an American, that's the best vacation deal I've ever had.
posted by bendy at 10:33 PM on September 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


Another in the litany of indicators that #theUSissofucked. The degree to which people defend vigorously this sort of Fordist nightmare when it is crystal fucking clear it is not in their interests... I just can't even.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 10:46 PM on September 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


I love the US ... to visit. 26 days a year here, I'll have 2 weeks to take over Christmas. They're even more hardcore at taking holidays in Germany, and it doesn't seem to hurt their productivity.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 11:06 PM on September 7, 2015


We really need a white collar labor movement. Occupy ended up centering around unsustainable loans (understandably), first mortgages and then private student loans, but I really think a white collar labor movement would be a gamechanger.

I post this in every damn thread about this, but this will never happen as long as a huge swath of the brogrammer-types and just tech workers in general are total libertarian freer the market better the market types who if they had their way, everyone would be independent contractors or something.

A lot of them seem to not even get unions and think they're outdated/bad/etc. They've also been thoroughly sold on the idea of "crunch" and working macho numbers of hours as something positive and even macho or to brag about.

The only other place i've seen that same weird attitude is in food service, where people would brag about working bar for 14 days straight or something.

However they were sold on this swindle, it worked fucking perfectly. If you tried to get most of the nerdbros i've talked to moving towards organizing, they'd just go "why? we have plenty of money because we all got the only worthwhile degrees, STEM ones lol!" and keep circlejacking.
posted by emptythought at 11:07 PM on September 7, 2015 [17 favorites]


I am incredibly lucky that my company gives 3 weeks paid vacation, and you can carry 2 weeks over to the next year if you don't use it. Mr. Kitty and I spent the month of April exploring France because of my accrued vacation time, and while it was a trip of a lifetime - I wish I hadn't. I'm 4 months pregnant now and won't take off a single day between now and when the baby is due so that I'll be covered during my maternity leave (other than my short teen disability which doesn't kick in until a week after the baby is born).

Yet another reason vacation and benefit culture in the U.S. Is completely screwy.
posted by Suffocating Kitty at 12:36 AM on September 8, 2015


This also explains to me why American tourists are so anxious to see everything when they come over here on holidays. (It might be the only chance they've got...)
posted by Harald74 at 12:52 AM on September 8, 2015 [4 favorites]


Norways's about 1/30th the size of the USA; I suppose what you could see in the USA in a fortnight should be doable in Norway in an afternoon.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:30 AM on September 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


I read about a company (The MOtley Fool, A finance Company) a few years ago which had (in addition to an unlimited vacation time policy) a lottery in which every employee was entered. One Friday every month one employee got two weeks leave but the caveat was it had to be taken within 30 days and there would be no contact with the office allowed, at all.
The idea was, that if any project could fall apart if one person had an unexpected problem (or was hit by a bus or something) then you were not doing your jobs properly. This was a trial by fire to make sure they worked those principles.
It also encouraged people to actually take time off normally.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 2:06 AM on September 8, 2015 [23 favorites]


You cannot rationally allow corporations to decide how long their employees will work without a break. The government has to step in and set a decent minimum.

A reasonable amount of paid vacation per year is at least four weeks (20 working days) per year, with at least 10 of those days (two calendar weeks) taken consecutively so you have time to decompress and forget about work. That has to be nonnegotiable, so the employee cannot feel pressure to take less, and in fact feels legal pressure to take at least the minimum. Guilt-free vacations because otherwise the law automatically (not at the employee's request) steps in and fines the company.

And these days you need to stipulate something about electronic leashes. Vacation means vacation. If someone is on call, that's not vacation. No checking in. No monitoring web sites. No remote shit. No "just responding to email" tripe. If you check your work mail or have a work phone call or whatever, you are working that day and it doesn't count as a mandated vacation day. If you do that in the middle of the mandated two consecutive weeks, the clock has to be reset on those two consecutive weeks and the employer has to swallow the extra days. Employees should feel encouraged (and actually legally obligated) to go completely off the grid as far as work is concerned when they are on vacation.
posted by pracowity at 2:16 AM on September 8, 2015 [25 favorites]


When I moved to Europe last year I was a bit stunned by the five weeks of official vacation I'm supposed to get. Of course I knew about Europeans getting significant amounts of vacation, but I didn't think it would apply to me.

And, because I'm an academic, as en forme de poire says, who the heck knows how much I take. It's a rare day when I don't do some form of work, even if it's technically a day off.

There's also the flip side of large blocs of vacation- it's fine if they're spread out among the employees, but they aren't. Everyone wants to go somewhere in the summer or during their kids' school breaks, which are roughly the same time. So, here, nothing gets done in July. (Of course everyone is fine with that). And then there's late spring with the surprising (to an American) number of state holidays packed close together- I really felt my Americanness when I'd show up to work yet *again* and be like "where is everybody? There's another holiday?"
posted by nat at 3:13 AM on September 8, 2015 [3 favorites]


My vacation time is also my sick leave time so if you use everything you have accrued and then you get sick before accruing any more time, you're screwed. Plus you never know if there's some sort of family emergency or maybe funeral that you have to attend so you always have to keep a week or so in reserve. So that means that the three weeks of PTO that you get each year is really only two.
posted by octothorpe at 4:34 AM on September 8, 2015


I really felt my Americanness when I'd show up to work yet *again* and be like "where is everybody? There's another holiday?

Yes! Himmelfahrt was the holiday in Germany that always used to catch me off guard, because I'm not at all Catholic and I'm used to thinking that there are two Christian holiday: Christmas and Easter. And then I went to Germany and there's this one random day in May (to me) when all of a sudden it's a holiday and all of the grocery stores are closed. I ended up eating gummy bears and boiled potatoes with salt but no butter for dinner on my first Himmelfahrt because I was almost completely out of groceries, since I'd been planning on shopping that day.

And recently I moved to another northern European country that doesn't have the Protestant/Catholic split that Germany has: they're just all Catholic. And May came around and I thought to myself, "Right, I've got this. They can't surprise me anymore with random Catholic holidays, because I know about this one now." And I really shouldn't have jinxed myself, I think, because the exact same thing happened to me in the middle of August, because apparently there's another Catholic holiday that even the German don't celebrate! The only difference was this time I think I ate spaghetti with a teaspoon of tomato sauce, which was all that was left, and half a carrot for dinner.
posted by colfax at 4:49 AM on September 8, 2015 [5 favorites]


I get ~4 weeks of vacation time in my current US-based Fortune 100 company and will get another week once I get a promotion or am here another year (>3 yrs tenure), whichever comes sooner. The company also encourages vacation time use. My new boss did make a sort of joke about how I should put the days I was away up on the team calendar as I was going to be away for soooo long (two weeks in India followed soon after my a professional course for a few days), but she quickly said that she was joking and started laughing. People leaving for two-three weeks at a time is completely normal and many people have negotiated longer time off with unpaid leave. You can also carry over up to 5 weeks of vacation and if you stand to lose any time you generally get a talking to from your manager about how you should use the time. I'm not sure that I'm precisely grateful -- I'm not American and grew up in India with both parents getting abundant vacation time from their government jobs, so that's sort of what I judge this vacation time against -- even as I know I'm luckier than the vast majority of American workers.
posted by peacheater at 4:55 AM on September 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Two consecutive weeks off? What would I even do? I'd go nuts if I couldn't go into the office and get work done. I mean, sure, a three-day weekend once or twice a year is nice, but taking off for that long I can't even comprehend.

It's too late for me, isn't it. Save yourselves.
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:13 AM on September 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


I've mentioned before that I didn't have vacation days or sick leave when I was a barista in my 20s. At my current job here in Canada, I can accrue hours of vacation/sick leave but there is no policy itself about how many days you get. We are a small office so from what I have observed is that you can take the vacation time you like just as long as you let everyone know how long you will be gone.

My husband now works in the admin side of academia and gets about four or five weeks of vacation a year, but tends to be one of those "Let me just check my work email once first thing in the morning and I won't think about it again, I swear" people, so getting him to take actual vacations longer than a week is a hard job. I turn 40 next year and have a three week vacation planned so I might just take his phone away the entire time.
posted by Kitteh at 5:17 AM on September 8, 2015


Obama announced today that federal contractors are only just now being forced to provide sick days - and that won't take effect until 2017, and then only for new contracts. Jeepers. Talk about picking only the lowest of the low-hanging fruit.

There was a tweet in my twitter stream saying that it was crazy that Obama was rewarding workers for staying home on a day that celebrated labor. I assumed it was arch sarcasm but I just couldn't be sure.
posted by srboisvert at 6:09 AM on September 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


I have a federal government job, so I get comparatively generous leave. I do take around 3 to 4 weeks off per year, but have been trying to keep it built up to the max I can carry over. That way I can use it if I need it for maternity leave. I have plenty of sick leave built up, but can only take 6 weeks of that for actually being incapacitated, not for "bonding with a healthy newborn". And yes, I realize I am very lucky for having the option for any paid maternity leave at all in this country.

At my job if I or my coworkers are not there, someone else has to cover the shift, and we all work a rotation. I used to work with a guy who would schedule his vacation time for his round of night shifts. Which meant someone else got stuck with them. He was not well liked.
posted by weathergal at 6:22 AM on September 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Do people really get sacked though for taking all their vacation time in the USA?

It really seems to come down to expectations. Working in corporate jobs in Australia and the UK, everyone would think you are a bit a weird if you didn't take all your 4-5 weeks of vacation every year. disappearing from the office for 3+ weeks is standard.

Thats not even counting the Australian tradition of taking 1-2 "sickies" a year.
I.e. using some of your Sick Day Allowance (which is entirely separate from Annual Leave Allowance) when you are not really sick....maybe you are hungover, or something unexpected has come up, (good beach weather for instance) and you put on your best croaky morning voice and call the office...
"aaarreeghh, feeelin' real crook this morning..... I don't think I"ll make it in i'm afraid. Hopefully i'll be alright tomorrow. "
posted by mary8nne at 6:30 AM on September 8, 2015 [4 favorites]


The only other place i've seen that same weird attitude is in food service, where people would brag about working bar for 14 days straight or something.

Medicine has it too, which is even more upsetting when you consider people on their second 12-hour shift are administering powerful medications and monitoring vital signs on patients. But whenever I say that to people in medicine, I'm told:

1. Pfft, it's not that hard! You adjust to it.
2. Something about how the structure of medical care just requires people to work 24 hours at a stretch.

But honestly I think it's a macho thing. People get weirdly invested in proving themselves through suffering. It makes you feel noble.
posted by emjaybee at 6:37 AM on September 8, 2015 [11 favorites]


Do people really get sacked though for taking all their vacation time in the USA?

Not in so many words, but yes. Instead, the reason for being fired would be

-you are not a team player
-we need someone with a more specific skillset
-you haven't been meeting goals (none of which are codified or meetable in the first place)
-it isn't a good fit

Or, you know, whatever made up reason they want. At-will employment means that managers who want to keep on toxic people will make excuses for all their screwups indefinitely, while people who do good work but ask to be treated as independent adults will be escorted out the door.

(For the record, I happily work in an office where weekly staff meetings always end with a discussion of any time off people are taking in the upcoming month, "oh where are you going?" talk, and if people aren't using their time off the bosses get worried and ask if they are okay. This culture isn't everywhere. But it is incredibly, horrifyingly common.)
posted by a fiendish thingy at 6:38 AM on September 8, 2015 [12 favorites]


Do people really get sacked though for taking all their vacation time in the USA?


Maybe not explicitly but when the next round of layoffs come around and they're deciding which team members that they can do without, they're going to keep the people who put in 50+ hours a week and never take their vacation time.
posted by octothorpe at 6:38 AM on September 8, 2015 [3 favorites]


I work in academia as a support person. I earn a ton of vacation days each year plus sick days plus we get the week between Christmas and New Years off as paid holiday time. That's at our president's discretion and we have a new one, so for all I know this year we'll be open that week or expected to furlough those days.

We lost two holidays this year, but whatever. They're minor ones I don't usually do anything for and my spouse being a teacher means we're good on childcare.

I take two solid weeks off every summer and a couple of days and here and there throughout the year. I am also hourly paid so if I'm working, I get paid. Sometimes I work extra hours the rest of the week to take a day off without using vacation time

'Cause I am hoarding some of it in the event of an unexpected need for FMLA or unexpected job loss. It sucks that my emergency planning includes vacation days despite the fact that I get and use far more than other Americans as it is.

(I also make a pitifully low salary and have no money for fancy vacations.)
posted by zizzle at 6:40 AM on September 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


zizzle, same here - but the sad thing is, when I see the other stories about never getting a vacation and/or being expected to stay chained to your phone or email during your "vacation" , it makes me think the pitiful pay and "low status" position might be worth it in exchange for two weeks uninterrupted vacation - if I wish - plus as you say, the days off around holidays that many don't get. If you stay here for six years, you move up to 3 weeks vacation. It works for us, but we are DINKs right now - my coworker has a 3rd kid on the way and I don't know how they do it.
posted by nakedmolerats at 6:47 AM on September 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


I don't even get holidays off. I work on Thanksgiving and Christmas, unless they happen to fall on my one day off per week...it's a decent company and I don't want to burn that bridge.

Doesn't add up. That "decent company" would drop you like a hot potato if it was in their interest to do so.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 6:49 AM on September 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


They're even more hardcore at taking holidays in Germany, and it doesn't seem to hurt their productivity.

Reading this stung a bit, for me. I work at the U.S. headquarters for a German company. At our new hire training, the president of our division (who is German) mentioned that the employees in Germany get a month of vacation time but we can't do that here in the U.S. because haha people wouldn't come to work.

While smiling and nodding, my brain was screaming WHY THE FUCK CAN'T WE HAVE THE SAME BENEFITS AS THE GERMAN PART OF THE COMPANY?!

So I get three weeks of paid time off, which is for sick or vacation. So like someone mentioned above, it's really more like two weeks, because you need to save some in case you get sick.

They haven't hassled me about taking time off, so I guess I've got that going for me.
posted by Fleebnork at 6:58 AM on September 8, 2015 [3 favorites]


Reading this stung a bit, for me. I work at the U.S. headquarters for a German company. At our new hire training, the president of our division (who is German) mentioned that the employees in Germany get a month of vacation time but we can't do that here in the U.S. because haha people wouldn't come to work.

More like ha ha, they don't have to offer that much so why bother?

I'm not sure if it's a logistics thing or a being-owned-by-a-company-based-in-Germany-thing but at my workplace we are strongly encouraged to take our vacation. They don't want a rollover of more than x-days from one year to the next because they do not want to pay you for those vacation days. So right around June all the managers are pushed to start honding their employees about when they'll take vacation.
posted by bgal81 at 7:08 AM on September 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


More like ha ha, they don't have to offer that much so why bother?

Yes. But the president literally chuckled and said, "People wouldn't come to work." His words exactly.
posted by Fleebnork at 7:25 AM on September 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


When I left my previous job (in academia), I had a ridiculous amount of vacation built up. My salary at that time was split among a few different projects and I'm told that there was a lot of really nasty fighting over who was going to have to pay out my vacation time. I felt a little sorry for causing discord but mostly sorry that I hadn't taken the vacation time instead of working my last two weeks.

Currently I work for someone who is all about work-life balance and having her staff take vacation. We have to take reasonable caution to ensure that we time vacations so our subject-matter experts in specific areas aren't out all at once, since we're understaffed so there isn't enough redundancy. But otherwise she takes her vacation time and expects us to do the same. It's a big change from anyone I've worked for in the past, and one of the many reasons I really like it here and intend to stay a long time.
posted by Stacey at 7:27 AM on September 8, 2015


I get a lot of paid vacation (3.5 weeks since I got a bump at the 10 year mark), but I don't have the money to go anywhere for weeks on end unless I go with my mother and she pays for most of it. Plus I need to take it at a time where it doesn't totally interfere with other people going on on vacation and we are always short staffed even on a day where nobody is sick or on vacation. Plus I just end up with more work to do even if someone's covering for me. Plus you never come back "refreshed and rejuvenated" since vacation is the time where you cram everything in rather than relax by a pool because otherwise you don't have the opportunity to see things.

"Fuck that 2 weeks of vacation policy noise. I can't believe people put up with that and don't just say "no thank you, I'll keep looking."

Are you kidding? Two weeks of vacation here is like being offered six months of vacation anywhere else. Two weeks is a LOT. Two weeks is miraculous at most place. If you're lucky, you find two weeks. Most places offer ONE.

Meanwhile, my mom has been working at a company for 20+ years and the owners just sold it so that they can eventually retire. The new company starts everyone off with ONE WEEK of vacation. No day after Thanksgiving off, no December 24 off, no December 31 off. Six free days all year and one week. Which my mom will probably have to use for getting her car fixed and for eye surgery.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:31 AM on September 8, 2015


en forme de poire: Honestly though, I have a lot of trouble reconciling what I've read about "knowledge work," namely that shorter weeks with more plentiful vacation are actually more optimal in terms of productivity.

I'm in the last decade (or less) of a programming/tech career, which I hope qualifies as knowledge work. I now know that when I plan for and take a longish vacation, I come back with my batteries recharged and a fresh perspective. Yes I sometimes include some technical reading on my break, but it's often on something that interests me and not necessarily applicable to my current position.

This pattern can fit really well when your work is based on completing specific goals. Finish that project, take a serious break, on to the next.

Most definitely, this pattern makes me more productive, and helps me keep my technical 'edge' sharper. I can't imagine how nonstop engagement and pressure makes for a high quality of knowledge work. I think this is demonstrated clearly by the amount of turnover in programming; if there isn't an upward trajectory within one company, it's my experience that most programmers will change jobs every 2 to 4 years.

In order to have the vacation pattern I want, I've been freelance for the last few years. Less security, sometimes less income, but alot more control. Not for everybody, of course.
posted by Artful Codger at 7:49 AM on September 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


The whole "coming back to work refreshed and recharged after a vacation" sounds great in theory but in reality you come back to work with a thousand unread emails and have to spend half of your first week desperately attempting to catch up with all of the changes that happened while you were gone. I took a week off this summer and came back to find that not only was I on a new team but I was both QA lead and process lead since the last guy quit while I was gone.
posted by octothorpe at 7:57 AM on September 8, 2015 [6 favorites]


The only other place i've seen that same weird attitude is in food service, where people would brag about working bar for 14 days straight or something.

My wife had this going on in law enforcement (prison guard, then jail guard). The prison wasn't so bad, but at the jail, she'd work 21 days straight (minimum 12 hour shifts) without a day off (and heaven help them if someone called out and the on-call person wasn't answering their phone). Because we want exhausted, resentful people handling people's civil rights and handling people who are too drunk to function/hadn't taken their medication and couldn't function/etc.
posted by joycehealy at 8:05 AM on September 8, 2015 [3 favorites]


But I don't understand--wouldn't they not come to work only during the designated vacation days? Or is he theorizing that the extra vacation time offered would encourage absenteeism willy-nilly all over the calendar?

He was being a sociopathic C-level douchebag. They don't just have them in the US; they're everywhere!
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:10 AM on September 8, 2015


I hear you octothorpe (been there), but those aren't attributes of a healthy company culture. How's their turnover rate? Can they keep exceptional people for longer than a couple of years?
posted by Artful Codger at 8:10 AM on September 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


This article in today's Toronto Star. I marched in Kingston's Labour Day parade yesterday as well. It was great watching our Conservative mayor squirm while local NPD candidate and MPs made speeches.
posted by Kitteh at 8:48 AM on September 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Americans do derive our sense of self from work. Idle hands are the devil's playground. Unless you're rich in which case you earned the idle time and it's "downtime" and you're gelling new ideas because you're "always on."

I was just reading an article about sensory processing disorders and how emphasis on "pre-Kindergarten" prep in preschool is replacing open free socialization and playtime with supervised structured time. We are increasingly learning that if nobody knows what you're doing and nobody is waiting for you to show up at X times and Y places today then you are a sad sack of apathy
posted by aydeejones at 9:38 AM on September 8, 2015 [7 favorites]


If nobody is going to be mad at you for not doing or appearing somewhere, then you are nobody. Also Americans often can't afford a real vacation so we feel depressed taking time off only to spend it puttering around our city and state even if it's an amazing city and state. So then we make "vacations" out of redoing a kitchen or bathroom to increase the resale value of our house if we can afford one. We take two weeks off to learn how to set tile and install fixtures because we're too broke to pay someone else to do it while we have actual fun on vacation. Granted a lot of people benefit from learning these things but the real gratification is about money saved. I could've paid 5k for that new bathroom but instead I took off a week and saved 5k. Same ol' work ethic eating away at leisure
posted by aydeejones at 9:42 AM on September 8, 2015 [9 favorites]


I go on two vacations per year. 2 weeks in Charlotte for the All-Star and Coke 600, and the weekend after Labor Day to Richmond for the fall race.

We accrue vacation and sick hours based upon the hours that we work, and you can roll over a lot in a government job. However, taking time off is weird because there are only so many people in a fire department, and ours is so small that two full-time staff have to be present at any given time, which means I usually have to barter and shift-trade in May because one of my partners also takes time that month.
We used to get comp time for holidays, but the town stopped that and now we just make time and a half, which sucks because I'd rather burn holiday time and roll over my vacation so I can retire early.
We have a lot of time off because we work a Kelly schedule, but I live alone and have no roommates, which means most of my days off are dedicated to yardwork, cleaning, running errands, and housework. Or getting ready to work my part-time job because I make $13.15 at my full-time job, which is pretty good for a firefighter in NC. I make $10 per hour part-time, and that extra $800 or so per month makes my life a lot easier.

The only other thing I'll mention is that working in retail, food service, or even for local government, if you take a sick day, you'd BETTER have a note from a doctor or risk disciplinary action. I've taken less than 10 sick days since I began working at age 17, and I hate taking them, even if my body is wrecked, because it doesn't feel like a day of rest; it's just stressful.
posted by sara is disenchanted at 9:58 AM on September 8, 2015


Execs would say that they want their middle managers to feel less replaceable and interchangeable, more "engaged and in control" and certainly if they let their middle managers have more time off then there will be dissent in the ranks. We certainly can't have the average worker taking all that vacation or we will need more full time employees with benefits to cover the slack. Sure the employees are performing poorly but we've externalized that somehow and are only looking at the cost of having an insured workforce
posted by aydeejones at 10:01 AM on September 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm just making that up but I'm sure it's part of the equation. We've accepted lower quality of everything in the US, including life and durable goods and food and shelter etc
posted by aydeejones at 10:03 AM on September 8, 2015 [4 favorites]


I am in full on "lumper-mode" today but I can't help but draw a parallel with the Georgia Tann FPP. This person basically believed that people begin as fundamentally disposable, interchangeable assets, especially if their parents were disposable, interchangeable "poor people." But there's the implication that nurture is what makes a life worth preserving, not nature -- so, steal a baby from a poor family, let them be sad and feel stupid that you told them their kid is dead and you went ahead and had it buried without them present, and then let a more well-off family enrich this child and grow them into someone who doesn't deserve to have their children stolen.

There's a fundamental problem with disposability and humanity. Biologically it is "natural" for life to be tossed to the side, but usually there's a specific purpose (food!) or a calamitous event (fire!) and hence some actual legitimate reason for it that makes it acceptable. Predators don't tend to wantonly waste prey and do not scorch the earth. We have a unique capacity to transcend our worst traits but more ominously we can amplify them beyond any grotesquerie encountered in nature.

Many of us, particularly the most successful, have been conditioned to think that in the pursuit of a satisfied, fulfilled, actualized life, we have to see some people simply as disposable marks who are spending their time cultivating a fat pool of potential resources for us to harvest. Not necessarily consciously, but in that same sense that people will say "everyone has to go to Octoberfest once" or "everyone should see Paris" excluding "invisible enormous majority of people I'm not including" from that statement.
posted by aydeejones at 10:12 AM on September 8, 2015 [3 favorites]


I wonder if it's a wash--the US worker has a lot of hours and refuses to take the pitiful amount of vacation that they are offered, but they also have ridiculous insurance requirements and no safety net, so the company has to pay extra for health benefits.

But the gap between labor and management has reached proportions not seen since the Gilded Age (or even serfdom—I think we're really breaking new ground here), so I am sure the poor, beleaguered CEOs sleep well on their giant piles of money.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 10:15 AM on September 8, 2015


And finally, I believe I read it in another FPP, but there's that stereotype of the tireless CEO who "doesn't even know what vacation is" and works round-the-clock constantly traveling, etc. What those CEOs won't say is that they are thriving on this, they don't need to "vacate" their job because their job is highly dynamic and involves tons of "downtime" interspersed with work -- reading and sipping Bourbon at the airport bar, eating a fabulous meal with potential partners, etc.

And what doesn't come up a lot if that many of the hyper-motivated people who reach that echelon are narcissists. Not necessarily sociopaths, but narcissists. The sociopath does whatever they want without regard for how individuals feel. The narcissist does whatever they can get away with to guarantee a constant "supply" of admiration from anyone they deem worthy of granting that admiration. Narcissist CEOs don't really need vacation so long as they have a constant line of hands to shake, a well-stocked bar in the office, etc. It's really frustrating to hear top-end managers try to draw an equivalence between the type of work they do (highly varied, lots of socialization, going to conferences, etc) and the drudgery of being at the lowest rung. It's not a party-all-of-the-time to be a CEO by any means, but a lot of people around you are trying to make sure it's a pretty good experience for you.
posted by aydeejones at 10:18 AM on September 8, 2015 [6 favorites]


We've accepted lower quality of everything in the US

While simultaneously (most of us, anyway) telling ourselves and each other and anyone else unfortunate enough to be in earshot that we live in the Greatest Country in the World. Stockholm Syndrome, plain and simple.

Many of us, particularly the most successful, have been conditioned to think that in the pursuit of a satisfied, fulfilled, actualized life, we have to see some people simply as disposable marks who are spending their time cultivating a fat pool of potential resources for us to harvest. Not necessarily consciously, but in that same sense that people will say "everyone has to go to Octoberfest once" or "everyone should see Paris" excluding "invisible enormous majority of people I'm not including" from that statement.

Observation and contemplation has brought me to the belief that civilization (yes, the basic concept of settled, larger-than-tribal-scale societies) requires, indeed almost runs on, suffering. Civilization is a mechanism for certain individuals to extract wealth from the natural world, refine it through many layers of people and pour as much as possible into their mouths, leaving behind only what is absolutely necessary to keep the structure from collapsing (and no elite class has ever been successful at this indefinitely). Those of us on MetaFilter are not at the top, but we are sure as hell not on the bottom, so our own quotidian existence is facilitated by the suffering of those below us, just as our own suffering feeds those higher up the pyramid. Being a modern, non-radical liberal these days basically seems to consist in being occasionally aware of and self-conscious about this but generally ignoring it in favor of easier-to-digest, just-because-others-win-doesn't-mean-I-have-to-lose identity politics.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 10:52 AM on September 8, 2015 [3 favorites]


My right-wing neighbor posted his annual anti-union screed on Facebook. He ended it with the picture of some luxury performance vehicle and captioned it along the lines of no one who takes a month off every year will drive this car. I didn't have the heart to point out that he doesn't take a month of vacation every year and is still no closer to driving that car than if he did.

As for myself--I'm fortunate to work in a company that does not allow one to accrue time off year over year so there is a culture of using it. Getting long, uninterrupted blocks is difficult only because we're perpetually understaffed but securing four day weekends in that legal holiday no-man's land between New Year's and Memorial Day is still kind of nice. I did manage whole week this year for a bike ride but the aftermath of that reinforces how crappy it is to do that.
posted by Fezboy! at 12:16 PM on September 8, 2015


I didn't have the heart to point out that he doesn't take a month of vacation every year and is still no closer to driving that car than if he did.

That's too bad. Point me at his page and I'LL go do it.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 12:23 PM on September 8, 2015 [12 favorites]


> Six free days all year and one week.
> My right-wing neighbor posted his annual anti-union screed on Facebook. He ended it with the picture of some luxury performance vehicle and captioned it along the lines of no one who takes a month off every year will drive this car.


The Land Of The Free.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:36 PM on September 8, 2015


This country isn't designed for the average working person. That's why the average working person is discouraged from taking the paltry time off allotted each year.

Working in staffing made me really jaundiced towards the attitude of "work till I die" - it's depressing, enraging and all-too-common
posted by glaucon at 1:32 PM on September 8, 2015


This is what 365 days without a vacation does to your health.

The easiest way to get more done? Work fewer hours.

U.S. productivity: Putting in all those hours doesn’t matter

Those of us who are professionals with advanced degrees who set the tone in our work places need to take some responsibility for changing things.

Yes. Because there are a lot of people who don't have the choice of pushing back against this toxic culture and are dragged along whether they like it or not, often to the detriment of their family life, health or whatever. For any kind of a change to gain any sort of cultural momentum, it really does require a collective effort from everyone who can, to do something about it. If one person refuses to buy into a shitty system, they just look like someone who isn't a team player and get fired. If everyone does it companies will have to actually do something about it and hire more people to get shit done.

That's why I am vocal in my life and my job about work/life balance and not engaging in back-patting or any other sort of praise or approval towards people who voluntarily work long hours. We could all probably work longer hours and it wouldn't matter, the work still wouldn't get done. And the more we work away our lives, the less incentive companies actually have to hire a reasonable number of people to do what needs to get done and it becomes kind of a vicious circle of more and more work with fewer resources. I never, ever make snide "must be nice" remarks about taking time off, not even as a joke. Because that kind of a business culture is bullshit and I tell them so. I tell them about the seemingly healthy , early 40's guy at one of my jobs who dropped dead of a heart attack in front of everyone at work one morning a few years ago. Leaving a young wife and kids behind. Or about my years working in the UK, where people would take three week vacations regularly and everyone just made do. It wasn't an issue. Because it makes for healthier people and a healthier workplace and because I know they'll do it for me in return.

I am beyond sick of our society's grossly distorted viewpoints of work ethics and culture. Every time I see people push back by taking actual fucking vacation time, it makes my spirit soar. Because if there was ever a movement that really needs a majority of people to act collectively, it's this one. Take your vacation. Take your lunches. Refuse to work more than 40 hours a week on a regular basis. Vocally and enthusiastically encourage others to do the same. A lot of people can't do this without putting their livelihoods in danger. Some people can.
posted by triggerfinger at 6:28 PM on September 8, 2015 [10 favorites]


In my old job, this behavior would have made sense, because it was absolutely a toxic workplace where people would joke about you being an "8-and-skate" if you weren't dedicated enough to work 50+ hours a week, but at this place, I legit can't figure it out. I sure as hell have all my vacation either taken or scheduled for this year, and make sure everybody knows it. The only logical conclusion I can come to is that our work culture in the US is just well and truly fucked.

Contact a few of the local travel agents and see if you can find one willing to set up a table in the cafeteria or wherever a couple of lunchtimes per month. Your interests are basically aligned so it shouldn't be difficult.
posted by um at 7:47 PM on September 8, 2015


I never, ever make snide "must be nice" remarks about taking time off, not even as a joke.

I've definitely done more than my share of this. It's different when you're the only person in the office who doesn't get any paid time off.

someday the blue fairy will turn me into a real employee
posted by asperity at 8:51 PM on September 8, 2015


As Americans, we mostly don't seem to have a clue how out of whack we've let the balance of power get (and with it our priorities). We just internalize the POV of the powerful and make it our own.
See also: Donald Trump, Presidential Candidacy of
posted by gern at 8:54 PM on September 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


I had a hunch, and checked out Wikipedia's list of workplace killings, and sure enough, the US is responsible for almost half of them.

(I'm not saying lack of time off is the only cause, but it can't help, I'm sure...)
posted by Harald74 at 6:17 AM on September 9, 2015


That's too bad. Point me at his page and I'LL go do it.

I wanna come too!
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:58 AM on September 9, 2015


stereotype of the tireless CEO who "doesn't even know what a vacation is"

They're also probably the only group of people compensated anywhere near well enough to justify that expection to be on call 24-7. The problem is, they then expect the people below them to also be as responsive, and those expectations get passed all the way down the chain, but without the pay.

And not only is their job more dynamic with interspersed downtime, but many times they actually have a safety net: so if they aren't performing to expectations they get a severance package. Even if they don't, the pay is so much higher in many cases, they should be able to handle a period of unemployment without their finances being devastated. How much is that peace of mind worth?
posted by ghost phoneme at 1:08 PM on September 9, 2015


It really, really, really is about culture. In the U.S. we are pinned to the 40-hour workweek. You are maybe part time or quarter time but that time notion relates specifically to the 40-hour week. You are getting overtime? Only if you work over 40 hours per week and are eligible.

I've been doing so much reading about productivity and US culture in the last several years coinciding with an time-analysis-heavy job as well as trying to balance work and family. And I only have 1 kid! That's practically nothing.

I've been looking at profitability metrics for my current company and it's hard to know when to stop. Do you stop when you are profitable? We are a fee-for-services company so we bill by the hour. If we are profitable halfway through the week, can we just knock off? Can we knock off at 35 hours of seat time? 30 hours of seat time?

At my last job, we did take weekends and time off. I was always amused at how much productivity we were trying to cram in right up until Friday at 5 and then it was all..."Weekend's here! Bye!!"

Which is how it should be. You must have a break to do good work. But where does the break come in? How do you coordinate with your co-workers? What about those folks that are learning and simply aren't as productive as someone with many years of experience?
posted by amanda at 3:22 PM on September 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


This thread has scared me. The UK is trending in the direction of the US regarding perceived productivity, and I really don't want to be in that position.
posted by trif at 6:50 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


But that's the wedge issue, isn't it. "Damn, lazy-ass, government workers..."

I'm a government worker. Congressmembers are not government workers as such, they're elected officials, and they are such a tiny weird group that their scheduling and behavior is not representative (pun not intended) of our reality. But you're right in the sense that (Federal) government workers are encouraged to have a healthy work-life balance; I've worked for two different departments and both have considered time off sacrosanct. I just got back from a two-week vacation and multiple people were like, "Oh, you're back already?"

Why are people smiling when they write down '0'. Also, why aren't they at work?

Which is why this video is kind of weird... it says they went to DC and was clearly recorded on the National Mall, which is mostly populated by tourists on vacation or locals enjoying some time off, unless they happened to snag some USDA or DOE workers on their lunch break, in which case... see above.
posted by psoas at 12:29 PM on September 11, 2015


I'm willing to bet a large percentage of them were to deal with family emergencies, to visit family, or to engage in professional development.

Wait, that doesn't count as vacation? If that's the case, I haven't taken a vacation that was more than a long weekend since... 2009 maybe?
posted by en forme de poire at 5:19 PM on September 11, 2015


Ugh that came out kind of humblebraggy, sry, not my intent. Just validating to know that other ppl don't necessarily view parent time as super rejuvenating.
posted by en forme de poire at 8:39 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


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