Mandatory Fun Time
August 18, 2017 6:35 AM   Subscribe

 
I like this idea, but my big question is how do you decide who gets the week that lines up with school vacation week?
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 6:51 AM on August 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


In my (USian) company, our vacation ramps up every year to a glorious six weeks paid by ten year's time. Plus, most people work 4 long days per week, so with flexing hours on your day off and um, "creative" , use of paid continuing education time, it pushes even higher. And people take it. And because there's a culture of cherishing vacation time, people cover the shit out of each other when they're gone so you don't have a mountain of work when you return. Of course, with a large number of parents in our group, school vacations become fairly cutthroat, so we decided to settle this all every year over pizza and beer whenever the school schedule gets released. I'm underpaid, but no amount of money would make me switch to some bullshit 2 weeks of vacation deal.

Civilized work environment, motherfuckers. If you can demand it, do so, life's too short and capitalism wants to kill you.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 6:54 AM on August 18, 2017 [68 favorites]


IT people must take vacation. It's not only good for them, it's good for the system they maintain. It's kind of similar to the US FDIC's recommendation of enforced vacations. Bank officers can't cook the books if they're sitting on a beach somewhere, and sysadmins have to engineer and document a system that won't fall over if they're not there to coddle it.

Personally, I'd like to see long service leave be a thing in more places.
posted by zamboni at 6:57 AM on August 18, 2017 [26 favorites]


it should be noted that I'm headed to work today with 4 of my six partners out of the office, kinda stressed about the day's workload, then coming home to rush and pack for my own vacation which starts tomorrow
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 6:57 AM on August 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


No, fuck this idea. I take long weekends and regular time out to go do the shit I want to do that conflicts with my job. I go to concerts and events and I don't want my work dictating when I take my time off. I take my time off specifically because things are going on that I want to attend, and when I get to attend those events I return to work feeling refreshed and re-energized.

If my job gets to the point where they are dictating the time I take off as opposed to me choosing when I take off, I will quit that job and find one that lets me select when I am not at work. Period. Full stop.

What's next? A workplace that determines what I should be doing with my time off? "Oh, you aren't going to that concert or campout, you should be going to Disneyland because we have an agreement with them."

Fuck this shit.
posted by hippybear at 6:58 AM on August 18, 2017 [29 favorites]


Seems like a good idea if you read it quickly but not if you start thinking about how you're supposed to co-ordinate your mandatory PTO with your spouse or kids.
posted by octothorpe at 7:02 AM on August 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


What if people want to take a longer trip? One week is not much time if you include travel. What if they have partners who cannot be on the same scheduled times off? Children? Other family commitments?

I like the concept of more vacation, and being obliged to take it (note: not an issue anywhere I have worked except tech companies -- people take every last hour), but the implementation is not scalable.
posted by jeather at 7:02 AM on August 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Speaking of school vacations...

I wonder if distributing more breaks throughout the school year would help combat teacher burnout. Perhaps a school year that looks like this:
9 weeks on then, 3 weeks off for each of the 4 Quarters, with the remaining 4 weeks in the year added on make summer break 7 weeks long.

As a former teacher, I would have loved this.
posted by Groundhog Week at 7:04 AM on August 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


I'm familiar with the German schools, and they spread their breaks out like this in a similar fashion. IIRC summer breaks are like 5-6 weeks at the most.

My local district has been shifting the calendar around and this summer we got caught in the middle of a quirk where 16-17 got out a week earlier than usual and 17-18 is starting a week later to restore the old schedule. The kids have been off for nearly 12 weeks. It's just too damn long and I know the teachers are dreading the regression that has gone on over the summer.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:08 AM on August 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


What about a combination? Everyone gets Mandatory Week twice a year plus so much Optional Time to be taken at their discretion? Or what about "the company is closed for two weeks a year, one around New Year's and one in the summer" and then people use additional vacation at their discretion through the year? That would cut into the mountain-of-work issue, since while customers might contact you, no internal projects would progress during the week.
posted by Frowner at 7:08 AM on August 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


I agree with those who are skeptical of letting your employer dictate when you take vacations. Many of the supposed advantages of mandatory vacation (such as the prohibition on contacting the office) can be done with any type of vacation. It seems the real culprit is the Protestant work ethic leading to both internal and external pressures to feel guilty if you're not working.

While we're at it, can we also complain about policies that require people to use all their leave (especially sick leave) by the end of the year or lose it? In many organizations that causes more problems than bein burned out after a vacation.
posted by TedW at 7:10 AM on August 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Civilized work environment, motherfuckers. If you can demand it, do so, life's too short and capitalism wants to kill you.

Seconded. I'm an American person working in an IT-ish position in the UK, and I get thirty days off. To start. In fact, I just started this job last Tuesday, and I already have almost four leave days on my record that I need to use before the next year begins in October. On top of that, I get several bank holidays a year and closing days. (We're a university.)

It's such a sane way of doing things that I never, ever want to go back.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 7:11 AM on August 18, 2017 [16 favorites]


I am the only employee of a sole practitioner attorney (though there are other attorneys and paralegals in our office space). This is how time off works:

ME: So is it okay if I take XYZ date off?
MY BOSS: Sure, I don't see a problem.

(a few days before XYZ date)

ME: Don't forget I'm taking XYZ date off.
MY BOSS: Shit.
---------------
Mandatory week-long vacations wouldn't work for our family. My hobby involves long weekend trips to relatively far-flung locations, so I usually take a Monday off here, or a Friday off there. Right now my husband is renovating our garage, so he looks at the weather forecast for the week and takes off the nice weather days.
posted by Lucinda at 7:12 AM on August 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


I've worked in jobs where I had mandatory 2 weeks time off (to make sure I wouldn't cook the books; so you weren't allowed to access email or remote work) but it was self directed when you took it; if you hadn't taken it by September 1st, HR and your manager met with you to schedule it. You could also link it with other time off for up to 3 weeks off at a time (but not longer). However, as mentioned above, the battle around Chinese New Year and December school vacations was cutthroat; and people would submit their vacations 6-8months in advance...

I've also seen a different system, where friends who work in a different (creative) industry have basically the last 2 weeks of December off as no one works (but the rest of the year they are effectively on call).

I think it actually was a pretty humane way of dealing with things, and I definitely miss mandatory vacation; without the forced planning months in advance, I find I actually struggle to use up my vacation time.
posted by larthegreat at 7:12 AM on August 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


In my (USian) company, our vacation ramps up every year to a glorious six weeks paid by ten year's time.

In Australia... the company I work with is not atypical, it's pretty much standard among the multinationals or banks, they give 32 days paid leave per year (6.4 weeks) for fresh graduates... but once you get promoted to management it reduces to 26 days (5.2 weeks)... with the reasoning that you are more critical to the business so you need to be at work more =P

I do find it helps weed out people who are in it for the money or the glory and creates an overall more level culture where management exists to support the rank and file (rather than the other way around).

Oh yes and also the long service leave, 12 weeks fully paid leave per 10 years of service, so you basically take a 3 month holiday at that point.

... and the +15% leave loading, you get a 15% higher than normal paycheck during the time you're on leave, as a way of the company encouraging employees to take leave to reduce the book value of entitlements on their balance sheet.
posted by xdvesper at 7:14 AM on August 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Remember kids, there's a big difference between "vacation days" and "PTO days." Plan accordingly. (which, if you have kids, and a miserly two weeks alloted, generally means you rarely take your PTO days for actual vacations)

And sweet jebus, can HBR make the type any tinier on that web page?
posted by Thorzdad at 7:16 AM on August 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


I think what we've learned is that a strategy that works for a hip 10 person firm (that from the sounds of it may mostly employ people young enough that they don't have to worry that much about kids school vacation schedules) doesn't scale to most places.
Would it help if we got more paid vacation? Not necessarily. According to a study from the U.S. Travel Association and GfK, a market research firm, just over 40% of Americans plan not to use all their paid time off anyway.
Companies can partially reduce this by not allowing employees to roll over leave year to year - part of what causes leave hording is people saving it up for a payout when they eventually quit. Or because we kind of instinctively like to horde stuff.

But the biggest thing (in white collar work) is reducing the amount of expected work. I've been in the situation where I'd have six or seven weeks of leave each year but the crushing volume of stuff that I was assigned to get done didn't allow me to really use it or enjoy it, because it just meant that I'd have long weeks of catching up once I got back.

The forced week off every n weeks concept addresses this to an extent but it's not the only solution.
posted by Candleman at 7:17 AM on August 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


I work for a company that has unlimited time off with the stipulation that if you’re taking more than 3 weeks in one go you need to get your manager’s manager’s approval for it. No idea how it is for other teams but I work with a bunch of grownups who have kids or families in other countries so the social pressure against taking it is pretty much nil.

It’s a great system if the organization is mature enough to handle it.

I think it also works better for HR since they don’t have to worry about keeping track of time off for 1000 employees and the company doesn’t have to keep unpaid vacation time on the books for when employees leave.
posted by mikesch at 7:21 AM on August 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


'By the time we finally turn on our out-of-office messages, we’re beyond stressed, and we know that we’ll have an even bigger pile of work waiting for us when we return. What a nightmare.'

This reads like one of those fake infomerical problems.
posted by StephenF at 7:25 AM on August 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Old fashioned factories over here often used to shut down completely for couple of weeks, so everybody got a mandatory holiday at the same time. I think it was more efficient to stop the machines for a while (and do annual maintenance, I suppose) than run at less than capacity some of the time. Don't think that's a thing any more.

In France I believe it's still pretty much the case that everybody just takes time off in late July or August and lots of organisations shut down for a while. This isn't so good; you can't get stuff done and everybody pays peak rates for their holidays.
posted by Segundus at 7:28 AM on August 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


StephenF: "'By the time we finally turn on our out-of-office messages, we’re beyond stressed, and we know that we’ll have an even bigger pile of work waiting for us when we return. What a nightmare.'

This reads like one of those fake infomerical problems.
"

Sounds totally real to me and it doesn't even mention the hundreds of emails that you have to plow through on your first day back.
posted by octothorpe at 7:32 AM on August 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


My husband's previous company had a heroism issue where people weren't taking vacation and burning out. They made a change so that people were paid extra on PTO days, such that if you didn't take vacation you didn't quite get paid your salary on paper. I liked that this sent a message to these workaholic employees: taking time out to recharge is part of your job and if you don't do it you don't get paid as much.
posted by potrzebie at 7:35 AM on August 18, 2017 [15 favorites]


Most orgs are not mature enough to handle unlimited time off, and many of them still judge the shit out of you for taking time off whether it's unlimited or not.

The problem is that the ENTIRE work culture either subscribes to "vacation = actually seriously good" or they don't. It has to be unanimous or the chain of clients and vendors and firms and agencies and contractors gets ruined.

For example: Your company might be totally cool and chill and lax with you taking time off, right up until a client demands an ad hoc project right before you leave. And frankly the client doesn't give a shit if you're now short one person because they are assuming your company has the resources to do whatever they need done. Now you're worried that your coworkers are judging you for not even responding to a couple of emails on vacation, because you've witnessed some of their frustrations with others.

I've said this before but it all comes down to every organization being just mysteriously, miraculously understaffed at all times. Can't have *TOO* many employees, god forbid anyone has some breathing room to take an hour lunch let alone an actual vacation; no we gotta optimize every single workers waking fucking hour to maximize profit and who cares if literally every single thing is always a fire drill.

No internal policy no matter how progressive it seems is ever going to solve anything until US work culture can reduce it's toxic relationship with capitalism, which will probably never happen.
posted by windbox at 7:38 AM on August 18, 2017 [28 favorites]


> Have you ever felt burned out at work after a vacation? I’m not talking about being exhausted from fighting with your family at Walt Disney World all week. I’m talking about how you knew, the whole time walking around Epcot, that a world of work was waiting for you upon your return.

After a week at Walt Disney World you'll be pining to return to your relatively tranquil job as a NYC taxi driver or one of those firefighters who parachute into flaming infernos.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:38 AM on August 18, 2017 [16 favorites]


Every time I've seen a company with "unlimited time off" it actually meant "we don't give you a set number of days off so we can judge the hell out of you if you ever take a single one".
posted by haileris23 at 7:40 AM on August 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


This was quite the amusing article for those of us working at large corporations.
posted by tommasz at 7:41 AM on August 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Trying to come up with the one perfect leave plan feels like it's fiddling around at the edges of a much bigger problem: jobs are slowly taking over every other aspect of our lives. People aren't skipping vacations because they just can't figure out a system that works for them, they're doing it because they're scared they'll be fired if they do. People aren't fielding midnight emails because they just love their job too much to put it away, they're worried that not being available 24/7 will be seen as a career-ruining problem. Any actual solution to the vacation problem would first have to reset the entire organization's expectations about how much of an employee's time an employer is entitled to and what is and is not seen as a performance-impairing lack of commitment.
posted by Copronymus at 7:46 AM on August 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


Unlimited time off mostly means they don't have to pay you for unused vacation when you leave. No number = no value.
posted by asperity at 7:51 AM on August 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


I've said this before but it all comes down to every organization being just mysteriously, miraculously understaffed at all times. Can't have *TOO* many employees, god forbid anyone has some breathing room to take an hour lunch let alone an actual vacation; no we gotta optimize every single workers waking fucking hour to maximize profit and who cares if literally every single thing is always a fire drill.

This, exactly. In my previous job, we literally had trouble paying our bills, because we lost the person who was responsible for scanning invoices and approving them for payment and the org would not approve even a part time person who would pick up just the scanning part as a replacement. The finance assistant to the CFO was doing this - someone with a pretty significant title and a lot of responsibilities had to scan and approve paying, eg, the copy machine service contract because there was no one else to do it. And that was typical - things that should have been doable very fast and very reliably, such as paying very routine bills, were always extremely behind-hand and done in a rushed manner, because it was policy that we should reduce staff as much as possible, and that everyone should be operating at 100% every single day. No one took vacation, of course - like, literally, I would take four or five days a year, and it would all be based on "I am taking two hours of vacation today so I can be at home when the plumber comes", not actual vacation.
posted by Frowner at 7:54 AM on August 18, 2017 [15 favorites]


Sounds better than anything I've ever had. I nominally have a decent (not great) amount of vacation time which in practice I am never able to take because of constant deadline pressure. (My job scheduled a critical go-live on the day of my fucking wedding for which I had already scheduled one day off and then I got a ton of shit for it when things went sideways in my absence.) They also like to postpone responding to my time-off requests until, like, the day before, just to keep me on my toes I guess.
posted by enn at 7:57 AM on August 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


asperity: "Unlimited time off mostly means they don't have to pay you for unused vacation when you leave. No number = no value."

Yeah, it's totally about dodging the liability from having people accrue a bunch of time off and then having to pay that whey that get laid-off or quit.
posted by octothorpe at 8:10 AM on August 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


I work for a very small bank in the US. We are federally regulated, which means that everyone is required to take two consecutive weeks of vacation each year. In order to accommodate this, so that the rest of the bank can continue to run smoothly, everyone has to have their function backed up by someone else. It also just makes good business sense.

Everyone starts with 4 weeks of PTO, and after 10 years it goes to 5 weeks. This is just a civilized way to operate. People are happy and the average tenure is about 8 years.
posted by Midnight Skulker at 8:17 AM on August 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


If you don't have enough people to cover the work of people taking vacations (or being sick, or picking up kids), you are by definition understaffed. Just hire more people then let people take their time off.

But no one wants to do that, so we get cutesy fixes like this.
posted by emjaybee at 8:32 AM on August 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


I've said this before but it all comes down to every organization being just mysteriously, miraculously understaffed at all times. Can't have *TOO* many employees, god forbid anyone has some breathing room to take an hour lunch let alone an actual vacation; no we gotta optimize every single workers waking fucking hour to maximize profit and who cares if literally every single thing is always a fire drill.

I think this is more or less the root of it. Most organizations' staffing decisions are made assuming zero vacation or sick days and any time off is seen as a disruption of business.
posted by FakeFreyja at 8:42 AM on August 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


I work for a fairly cool company. I get a pretty good amount of time off (four weeks per year that can roll over, plus seven sick days that can't.) The only problem I have with my vacation time is that we're required to use 4-5 days of it every year between xmas and new year's.

I don't mind it in principle: I'm a consultant and we find our clients basically don't work that week, so it makes sense to just require us to not work as well, but damn I would prefer if they would just call a spade a spade: don't call it four weeks of vacation and tell me when I have to spend it. Just call it three weeks, and then remind me that I also get the last week of the year.
posted by nushustu at 9:03 AM on August 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


I worked at an "unlimited time off" company and when you have a manager who doesn't take time off and even works through the everybody have fun company ski retreat (in a ski suit but on their laptop at the bar the entire time), unlimited vacation really means "don't take vacation."
posted by zippy at 9:03 AM on August 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Having worked in the private sector, the public sector (state government), and the non-profit sector (where I am now), it's interesting to see the differences in attitude about work time and vacation time in all three.

I can summarize my experience each sector as the following:

Private: WORK AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. Your work hours are a suggestion. Your vacation time is a problem for everyone else. WORK. Even if you're off, consider working from home while you're on vacation. WORK.
Public: It's 5:00. Why are you still here? Go home. The office is closing. And don't forget to take your vacation time.
Non-Profit: (Similar to Public, minus the not working late part.)

YMMV on all of those, especially non-profits.

I'm still entirely on board with making people take vacation. Not necessarily prescribing _when_, but definitely making sure people take vacation. (And for what it's worth, my partner works for the city, in a department where vacation has to be scheduled in advance and coordinated to make sure there's always someone covering a shift, but taking it is still mandatory. No complaints unless the week you want is taken.)

There was a brief discussion on a podcast I listen to---though I can't recall which---where a host spoke about how when the small company she worked for had unlimited vacation, nobody ever took it, so they switched to two weeks mandatory (with no requirement as to when), and the morale in the office boomed and so did the quality of work, since people weren't stressing themselves out as much. This host is even a bit of a workaholic and practically lives at work, and she even admitted that it's better for her mental health to be forced to spend some days at home playing video games in her pajamas once in a while.

Work is not life. Life is not work. Take your vacations. If there's one thing I learned about work from my civil servant parents, it's that. (That said, I'm trying to be stingy with my vacation days this year so I can go to Finland next August.)
posted by SansPoint at 9:09 AM on August 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Old fashioned factories over here often used to shut down completely for couple of weeks, so everybody got a mandatory holiday at the same time. I think it was more efficient to stop the machines for a while (and do annual maintenance, I suppose) than run at less than capacity some of the time. Don't think that's a thing any more.


Still a thing. Auto plants (in the US) usually shut down for 1-2 weeks in July and December and that is when big maintenance and model year change updates get done. Many of the auto company's workers get off except for engineering and maintenance staff that are required for equipment installation, etc. When you work for a vendor that does this kind of work, the holiday season takes on an entirely new meaning (FML).
posted by dudemanlives at 9:11 AM on August 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Frowner: Or what about "the company is closed for two weeks a year, one around New Year's and one in the summer" and then people use additional vacation at their discretion through the year?

I work at a university, and we close for two weeks arounf Christmas through New Years.
IT IS THE BEST THING EVARRRRRRRRRRR!
Plus I get four more weeks off during the year, so I am truly blessed for time off. Yesterday I took off a random late-summer Thursday, and my wife & our kids went to New Hampshire and climbed Mt. Monadnock. Wheee!
posted by wenestvedt at 9:15 AM on August 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


I wonder if distributing more breaks throughout the school year would help combat teacher burnout.

These are called "year-round schools." The main benefit is that kids, especially in poorer families, lose a lot of progress over summer break. The main drawback economically is that it's way harder to find childcare in three-week chunks vs. a three-month chunk of summer vacation.
posted by muddgirl at 9:33 AM on August 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


Yeah, it's totally about dodging the liability from having people accrue a bunch of time off and then having to pay that whey that get laid-off or quit.

I think there's only one state that explicitly requires employers to pay out vacation time when you leave the job. Surprise surprise, it's California.
posted by Automocar at 9:40 AM on August 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


SansPoint: Public: It's 5:00. Why are you still here? Go home. The office is closing. And don't forget to take your vacation time.

That's slowly coming to a halt in a lot of state agencies, what with the disastrous state of state finances. I work for a state agency in Texas, and ground-level positions are being eliminated left and right. The duties still have to be done so they fall on the rest of us, making vacation time a slap in the face to everyone else trying to take up the slack.

Of course my job is in higher ed, so we have to deal with twelve redundant vertical levels of director+ positions in every office soaking up the vast majority of personnel funds. Other state agencies might be faring better.
posted by FakeFreyja at 9:42 AM on August 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


The other thing about year-round schools would (I hope) be much more flexibility in terms of when parents (who are able) take their family vacation, and less price-gouging because everyone isn't trying to take vacation at the same time.
posted by idb at 9:55 AM on August 18, 2017


The main drawback economically is that it's way harder to find childcare in three-week chunks vs. a three-month chunk of summer vacation.

Well and some families like a larger chunk of time off, regardless of progress lost. There are a ton of families with ties to Mexico in my area and going back for a month is preferable to trying to squeeze a visit into a week. These are the students who, on average, probably need to catch up the most but there's more to life than school.
posted by GuyZero at 10:12 AM on August 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


I work in for a city government and currently earn a little under 4 hours of vacation for every two weeks I work (80 hrs). It'll go up to 6 hrs when I've been here 4 years. If I'm here something like IIRC 15-20 years, I start earning 10 hrs of vac/2 weeks worked. I also earn sick days at the same rate, and they both roll over from year to year.

As someone else mentioned above, no one expects you to work late, or come in early and no one will give you shit if you take vacation.
posted by drezdn at 10:24 AM on August 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


I teach at a college and get 8 weeks vacation. It's fantastic. I find it helps me cope with burnout after the school year is done (we are not a research institution so my schedule is more like a high school teacher's). I have to take it during non-teaching time, but we teach 2 semesters on, 1 off according to our collective agreement, and we have non-teaching time in December and at spring break, so that is not hard to do.

The managers where I work often express envy and/or resentment at how much vacation time faculty members get. The nicer ones just mildly tease faculty about it and admit they are envious; the more bitter ones mutter "Must be nice" and strongly imply (or outright state) that faculty are a bunch of entitled lazy asses who couldn't make it in the Real World of management.

Well, I was seconded to a management position for one year to cover a leave, and imagine my astonishment when I discovered that MANAGERS GET 8 WEEKS VACATION TIME TOO. From the way all the managers talked, I had assumed they all only had two weeks paid vacation or something. I enjoyed my time as a manager, but it was hard work and people definitely need time to recuperate from it.

I asked my boss about this, and he said, oh yeah, we all get 8 weeks. All the managers do! It's just that we are all under so much pressure that people feel they can't actually TAKE the vacation they're entitled to. At one point HR told him he had to start using up his vacation days but when he sent in several proposed vacation schedules, a member of the executive vetoed each one because "Those are crucial times for you to be here!" As a result, people accrue stupid amounts of vacation time and feel like they are burning out.

Do they think to complain to the executive about the culture that has been created around vacation for managers? Around the understaffing problems that have led to the panic when one of them is off sick or on vacation? Nah, just easier to play the martyr and snipe at faculty for taking the vacation time they're entitled to.

Myself, I'm back to being faculty now and have had the last 6 weeks off. I'm actually enjoying my prep work for the upcoming academic year and looking forward to teaching--which I know will be long hours and hard work. I'm definitely a better instructor for being able to have so much uninterrupted time off.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:26 AM on August 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


I have coworkers in Poland and their vacation time is federally required that they get at least 4 weeks of vacation and they MUST take two of them concurrently. As in, they must take a two week long vacation every year. That and their parental leave (and seemingly every minor Catholic holiday off) just make US seem so backwards.
posted by jillithd at 10:44 AM on August 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


Yes, the US lack of support for time off (recreational AND sick AND parental) is astonishingly backwards! In one of the UK's largest employers, the NHS, new, full-time staff (that's 37.5 hours per week, by the way--not the standard 40 in the US) are entitled to 25 days of paid annual leave (vacation time), 28 days of paid sick time, and 56 days of half-paid sick time, plus bank holidays. There's also one year of statutory maternity leave and many trusts have policies to support paternity leave, families adopting, and families going through IVF. There are also policies to support taking lesser/unpaid leave in the event of family emergencies, bereavements, burnouts, etc. Much of British bureaucracy is an Orwellian nightmare to manage, but the humanity of the leave policies is so refreshing.
posted by stillmoving at 11:03 AM on August 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


I worked for a largish startup (>100 people) with an unlimited vacation policy. They also had the habit of firing my high-quality co-workers all the time for no discernable reason. You can imagine how safe an option it seemed to actually take any vacation at all. From what I hear, the atmosphere at Netflix is similar. Yes, unlimited vacation is a con.
posted by w0mbat at 11:15 AM on August 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


FakeFreyja: Higher-Ed is its own thing, I guess. I worked for the Welfare Office. Overworked, understaffed, but we closed when we closed, so at least there was that.
posted by SansPoint at 11:25 AM on August 18, 2017


We have unlimited vacation policy, but one of my coworkers says she's already over the limit because of the family issues she's had to deal with.

You know, over the limit on the unlimited vacation. There's a policy, it's just not documented.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 11:28 AM on August 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


My wife has worked for the same company for more than 25 years and has accumulated the maximum amount of carriable PTO under her company rules, and now accumulates more than 30 days a year. The time "expires" at the end of the year if the total she has in greater than the maximum she is allowed to carry. Years ago, unused time was coverted to an additional year-end paycheck. The system in place today is described and understood as a mandatory PTO system.

under the PTO-selection system they use, she has three work days every six months in which to file her vacation and scheduled PTO requests, which are first bid against by her coworkers (due to her seniority it is rare for her to lose a bid), and it must be approved by two levels of management, as I understand it.

She must file a separate request, requiring multiple webpage click throughs, on the company's intranet, a national system that is unavailable from home, presumably due to security concerns and concerns about uncompensated labor, people entering the requests outside of work time. It's clearly not something that can't technically be exposed via a login-authentication system online.

In discussing this with her, she has told me she estimates that it takes about five minutes to file each request. So assuming that she only files for her annual over-accumulation of 30 days, it will take her more than two hours to file her annual PTO requests.

She works in a hyperscheduled environment in which she has a daylong schedule broken into fifteen-minute task start blocks. It is literally impossible for her to obtain scheduling authority to peform this administrative task, and as a result, she loses PTO every year, effectively reducing her annual wage.

Mandatory PTO is wage theft.
posted by mwhybark at 11:32 AM on August 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


I've been in my current administrative position at an academic institution for twelve years. For the first ten years, I was a 12 month employ with three vacation weeks a year. During that time, I took maybe one week of vacation a year and lost the rest.

Two years ago, they made me a ten month employee (long story, but basically I requested this). I have June and July off. Last year, I was in the office every day in June because I couldn't quite wrap my head around not being at work. I was in pretty regularly last July too.

But this past summer, my wife forced me to stay away from the office and I spent almost every day hiking.

My physical health is better, my depression - while ever present - seemed more manageable, and I look ten years younger. I returned to work refreshed and ready to take on the world. Of course, I forgot almost everything I was working on as of last May and have been scrambling to understand my notes, but this forced vacation was the first time I've ever just not worked for any serious stretch of time in 30 years.

Your mileage will vary and not every person or every company has the same needs. This works for my job and my life and it was a nice glimmer of light in a dark time.
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:43 AM on August 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


When I went and visited my cousins in Sweden they told me about their mandatory 4 weeks vacation, along with how maternity/paternity leave works. That alone convinced me to begin saving money to move there.
posted by gucci mane at 12:15 PM on August 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


The other day I found myself being irrationally angry that we're structuring a schedule around my boss's annual 2 week vacay, and I had to take a step back and try to shake the capitalist stink off me.

On the other hand, I was mad because I haven't had a day off, much less two weeks, in over a year. And the way our schedule is built, while it accommodates the boss's time off...I can't so much as get a 24-hour stomach bug between now and July or we're fucked.

This is because, of course, we are wildly understaffed. We were promised 3 full-time additions to a 3-member team. (6 total workers.) And instead we were given 1 quarter-time addition, and they're laying off an existing member. So, we'll have 2.25 workers. For a project that, in real terms, needs 11.

But hey at least some executive somewhere could coat his fucking yacht in solid gold for no reason.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:31 PM on August 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


The duties still have to be done so they fall on the rest of us, making vacation time a slap in the face to everyone else trying to take up the slack

Why blame the other employees for the failure of the agency and the great state of Texas? This is exactly what management wants-- for coworkers to resent each other for management's screw ups.
posted by paulcole at 1:47 PM on August 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


I think this is one of those US-centric things like maternity leave, single payer healthcare and the metric system: i.e. most of the rest of the developed world has figured out a workable method of delivering it and we can't understand why you guys can't. I imagine decades of systemic union-smashing has something to do with it, but there seems to be more to it than that, and I can't quite put my finger on what. American exceptionalism? The American dream? Just plain old habit?
posted by Jakey at 1:52 PM on August 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Just plain old habit?

This. The American work ethic is A Thing for better or worse.

On one hand it's problematic for employers to dictate when employees can take vacation days because everyone has got their own stuff going on. But I do see a lot of people leave vacation days unused and it's just crazy that it happens.

My workplace has a cap on vacation accrual - you accrue vacation days on a monthly basis and you can only accrue 30 days off. After that your vacation days just evaporate. Which is a hell of a motivation for people to take them. People might get annoyed about arranging vacation coverage, but they sure as hell won't lose a day off to some stupid rule.

We also allow people to donate vacation days to a pool where people who need additional leave for long-term emergencies can draw from, but that's always struck me as extremely stupid. Relative to the cost of recruitment and retraining, if an employee needs extra time off to take their kid for cancer treatments, cripes, give them the time off. The company I work for makes a ton of profit, a handful of extra paid days off isn't even going to register. And no one is going to fake a kid with leukemia to get a few more days off.

The French model is kind of weird in its own way and for a bunch of reasons would probably never work in the US. My once experience was that I looked up a restaurant in Paris when we were on vacation there and when we got to the restaurant, it was closed for the month. Now, from a worker's perspective getting a fixed month off may not be the best idea, but it's a lot more vacation than the average US food service worker gets. But what US restaurant owner (and this was not a high-end restaurant, it was a moderately fancy burger place that served veggie burgers as well) is going to close for a month during tourist season? That's not going to happen.
posted by GuyZero at 2:14 PM on August 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


That's interesting, GuyZero. I noticed your comment
"People might get annoyed about arranging vacation coverage"
in conjunction with mwhybark's
"it will take [my SO] more than two hours to file her annual PTO requests...It is literally impossible for her to obtain scheduling authority to peform this administrative task, and as a result, she loses PTO every year, effectively reducing her annual wage."
as indicating a structural difference in US holiday practices. In the UK at least, it is normal that you can take 1-2 weeks holiday with 4 weeks notice and it is your boss's problem to schedule cover. (There are obvious exceptions for Xmas & school holidays, but these are usually spelled out in advance and handled in a different manner by negotiation/lottery/seniority etc). It seems like US employers have somehow managed to shift some of the burden of holidays from the employer to the employee and that this is contributing to the problem
posted by Jakey at 2:37 PM on August 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


a structural difference in US holiday practices.

So first off I work in heaven by US standards. mwhybar's SO works at someplace on the opposite end of the spectrum - there's no rule that you need to make it easy for people to take time off and in some workplaces people have to jump through serious hoops to get time off. And clearly it's done to deter people from taking their time off. It is definite bullshit, but per the comments about labour protection, in many state there sin't much labour protection and complaining that you can't take your vacation isn't going to get you very far.

it is your boss's problem

practically everything is the employee's problem in the US, including performance reviews. It's farcical.
posted by GuyZero at 2:56 PM on August 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


Metafilter: where life's too short and capitalism wants to kill you.
posted by eviemath at 3:17 PM on August 18, 2017


hurry gurdy girl, prepping for upcoming classes is work, not vacation!
posted by eviemath at 3:19 PM on August 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


'By the time we finally turn on our out-of-office messages, we’re beyond stressed, and we know that we’ll have an even bigger pile of work waiting for us when we return. What a nightmare.'

This reads like one of those fake infomerical problems.
posted by StephenF at 7:25 AM on August 18

This is familiar to me. I work in a small office with a maintenance person, a building manager, a music director, the boss and me, the administrative assistant. If I want to take a week's vacation they are happy for me to take it, but there is no one who can do my work but me, so I have do my work during the week before. Most of it can't be done more than a week in advance and anything that can't be done in the week before has to be done the week after, along with phone calls apologizing for "not getting back to you last week but I was on vacation." Work can only be off-loaded onto your co-workers if you work in an environment where you are part of a team doing sufficiently similar work to each other that you are familiar with each other's work. I can assure you, the guy who cuts our grass cannot do my computer work. (Although when he can't get in to work in a snowstorm I have excavated our way into the building.) Similarly, I can always leave a message asking people to call back next week when I am no longer on vacation, but the people I serve are families who will call not go elsewhere if I am not there. The work will be waiting for me.
posted by Jane the Brown at 3:56 PM on August 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


eviemath: hurry gurdy girl, prepping for upcoming classes is work, not vacation!

For sure! I've already taken my vacation time and am now back at work. (I'm saving my final 2 weeks vacation for December.) Oh believe me, I'm with you on the prep being work...
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 5:18 PM on August 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Yeah, it's totally about dodging the liability from having people accrue a bunch of time off and then having to pay that whey that get laid-off or quit.

Eh, I don't think that's true where I work. I mean, that's why I'm capped at 30 days annual leave (no limit sick leave). I can earn more than that, but at year end, in theory I voluntarily forfeit the excess back to 30 days.

In practice, THAT IS NOT OK. Nobody forfeits leave. Even now, I'm over 30 days on the books and I'm being hassled to schedule and use it even though I'm super-busy. An employee who forfeits leave is seen as bad at time management, collaboration, and if a supervisor or manager, also bad at delegating work and subordinate development. A manager whose employee forfeits leave is seen as dangerously bad at cross-training and succession planning. The only exception is if some emergency happens that specifically requires an employee who had leave scheduled, no one else will do, and there is no time for them to reschedule it before year end. In that case it still must be requested, officially denied, and then that time will be waived from the forfeit rule and carried into the next year. Getting that approved requires the whole chain of command above to justify it in excruciatingly painful WHY ARE YOU SUCH A BAD MANAGER meetings. YOU WILL SCHEDULE AND TAKE YOUR LEAVE.

So I got away with accumulating time for a few years, but now I'm riding above the cap and have to force myself to take one year's worth of leave per year. Even though by the actual rules, I could just let it go at no cost to the company.
posted by ctmf at 6:20 PM on August 18, 2017


jeather: "I like the concept of more vacation, and being obliged to take it (note: not an issue anywhere I have worked except tech companies -- people take every last hour), but the implementation is not scalable."

I'd disagree on the scalabilty. Many manufacturing companies have mandatory, scheduled by the company, vacation (and a lot less than 1 out of 8 weeks) and even work places with thousands of people manage.

And on a similar note many large construction projects (tens of thousands of employees) or resources extraction in remote or god forsaken areas will have employees working schedules like 3 weeks on/1 off or 42 days on and 10 off plus all sundays off. These workers will get voluntary scheduled vacation on top but it demonstrates that a scheduled cycle of people being off can work.
posted by Mitheral at 7:47 PM on August 18, 2017


Re: rolling over and hoarding leave: I did that when I started my job because I knew we were going to try to get pregnant. It was the only way I could get a sufficiently paid maternity leave. My first leave was 11 weeks. My second leave, four years later, was 14 weeks, some of those unpaid. Now, more than 2 years after my last leave was completed, my current available leave balance is 4 days vacation and six days sick. And not one real vacation in that time to show for it, but I still feel fortunate that I had paid time off to cover childcare during school breaks.
posted by vignettist at 7:52 PM on August 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


I get plenty of vacation, but I have no backup and something always goes wrong when I am out, and it's double the work for every day out almost all of the time. Is it worth taking a long vacation if you only end up more stressed out? Any benefits wear off after my first few hours back.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:00 PM on August 18, 2017


At the job interview when asked, "Do you have any questions?": How does this company view vacations? (take note of whole reaction of interviewer: body language, actual answer, etc.)
posted by filtergik at 3:30 AM on August 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


A friend of mine once worked for a particularly how does one say corrupt startup. Let's say CEO was named Skip. Skip's assistant once tried to guilt my friend over not coming in when he had pneumonia.

Meanwhile Skip took a vacation where no one knew where Skip was or when he was coming back. Skip was vital to signing off on contracts that would make or break the company.

Turns out Skip had entered his boat in a race, and took three weeks to race and drink and screw, allegedly, according to my friend.

Skip's boat's name: "Has anyone seen Skip?"

(Names changed to protect my friend)
posted by zippy at 12:57 PM on August 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'd disagree on the scalabilty. Many manufacturing companies have mandatory, scheduled by the company, vacation (and a lot less than 1 out of 8 weeks) and even work places with thousands of people manage.

Many of those companies have longer blocks of shutdown, and those are generally in sync with a school schedule (in my experience, they shut around Christmas or summer or both). And people working remotely are in a totally different situation than people at a tech startup.

Obviously we'd need to hear more, but I see a lot of problems with your life needs not matching up to an every 8 week vacation, especially when you have caregiving demands. (Manufacturing and remote work are, not coincidentally, heavily male-dominated.)
posted by jeather at 9:44 AM on August 20, 2017


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