The American dream is working every day of your life. Literally every day. No sick days. No vacations. Nothing. From the time you are 15 until you are 75. You can even brag about it like it’s some badge of honor. It’s amazing.
Boomers love playing the work martyr. They’ve wrapped their entire sense of identity in working, their role at work, and some strange dogged determination that such a way of life has greater value than time spent with their family, children, friends, or pursuing any non-work interests.
And now huge swathes of them have nothing but their grinding mentality, as their family has splintered, their children have gone no-contact, and they have nothing of their Self to fall back on. It’s why they still perch on the upper rungs of our political and corporate ladders, punching down at anything they don’t understand.
As a highly skilled salaried tech worker I have yet to see any company offer less than 2 weeks of paid time off, plus the 6 recognized US federal holidays. In fact, as I grew in my career jr->sr and now manager, I’ve only seen more PTO granted at every new job. Though this last decade I’ve noticed “unlimited PTO” pick up in popularity, which is a scam when you’re worrying for the wrong company. The only time I ever failed to get PTO was my youth, in services industry. But I recall getting a small pay increase for working on a holiday.
I really wonder about the people posting claiming zero PTO. What field do you work?! Are you hourly? ^WHY ARE YOU NOT CHASING DOWN THE BILLIONAIRES WITH PITCHFORKS?^ Do you just take off July 4th, unpaid?
I used to work in the financial industry where it was mandated for compliance reasons that we take 2 (TWO) solid weeks of vacation. Reason being that if you were doing anything funny like cooking the systems, either people would catch it when they took over your duties or your absence would cause a discrepancy when you were unable to keep up your shenanigans.
I only had 2 (TWO) weeks of vacation. So in an act of mercy the company decided to bend compliance so that I only needed to take one solid week off and the other week was mine to take at another time or split up as needed. You know, rather than give me any more vacation time.
Well I am in France and have 5 weeks mandatory; but its unpaid because i have a freelance (=daily) contract
There is zero reason to give out such little holiday time in the US. Its literally just mean
It took me way too long to get the joke.
Yeah I’m American.I mean I cannot remember the last time I took 36 hours off…
If I work over night (like literally to the morning), I will some time take the next day off, and then have a slow day after :( Most of the time, I only take the morning off.
Hopefully, life will get better, but I don’t honestly see an obvious way off…
3 DAY WEEKEND WOOOO WE’RE DRINKIN 14 BEERS AT CHILIS TONIGHT 🎆 🎆 🎆
I got two weeks off paid, and five days personal time, paid. I hardly ever used it, because when I left for a week or more, and came back I was so unhappy to return, it sort of ruined the short time off. I decided it was better to just stay at a baseline misery, than taste the freedom, only to have it snatched away again. But, also, I didn’t have enough money to do anything fun or interesting, in spite of the time being paid.
Join a union if that’s a realistic option for you. Your boss hates that idea, so you know it’s a good one. The boss’ ideas always suck.
In my line of work, anything more than 24 hours feels like a vacation.
What’s a typical yearly package like for Canadians?
Lol. Its not a package. Its protected by law. Most provinces require employers to allow two weeks minimum. Which isnt a lot tbh.
I work for a shitty big ass company. I get the legal minimum of time off. In new York that’s seven days a year. One of my coworkers is in Texas, so she gets zero.
The us is an embarrassment
Edit: and technically that’s sick leave, not vacation time. I don’t think you need to prove you were sick, and mental health without a diagnosis seems like it’s covered, but if you said you wanted to go on a trip they might say that’s not allowed.
Highlights for the curious: https://ag.ny.gov/resources/individuals/workers-rights/benefits-and-leave
I get 10 bank holiday a year.
That’s wild. I get 35 days plus bank holidays plus 42 hours a year for when you need to take a few hours off at the end of the day or start a few hours late if you have other commitments.
I have 6 weeks per year of vacation, with pay 🇩🇰
Pay or feriepenger?
I just get paid my normal salary plus 12.5%
Yes, i get more when i take my vacation
If i worked 9 months in a company and quit, i would get it as “feriepenge” where i can request the money online when i note which days i am taking off.
Not the same user, but it’s pay for me, not feriepenge
People in Norway say they have paid vacation, but it’s really a forced savings scheme coming out of your paycheck every month. That’s why I’m suspicious. Anyway, that’s great for you. Denmark is probably the superior Scandinavian nation
What’s the difference, in the end? Are wages after accounting for this worse for Norwegians than Danes? At the end of the day any mandatory paid holiday system means the employee does less work so is less valuable to the employer (benefits of returning refreshed notwithstanding - in any case all these effects should be the same regardless of what financial rules govern it) so the employer might want to pay them less in total.
But this should reach an equilibrium where the cost to the employer is similar for similar amounts of labour, resulting in similar pay.
It’s legal to have ZERO days off a year?! This feels like a human rights violation somehow
I doubt they have a 7 day work week. That would be unusual. But they probably do have zero PTO. Sick? Come to work or don’t get paid. No vacations.
I personally have been at the same company for almost 20 years and have a bunch of banked sick time because I never got sick much. But last year I had to use 8 days because I have a toddler in daycare and I got sick a lot, for the first time in almost 20 years. I got written up. For using my banked sick time for sicknesses.
Double check and see if your state protects the use of your sick time.
In the state I live, there are special protections for using sick time. If they so much as make a comment about it that’s a violation. A write up would probably get the business sued by the state.
That’s my Americans never leave the US. They don’t have time. ,
This whole country is a human rights violation.
According to this CBS article https://www.cbsnews.com/news/one-in-four-workers-in-us-dont-get-any-paid-vacation-time-or-holidays/
1 in 4 workers get any paid vacation time. It’s from 2019 but it’s not like things have gotten better over there since then.
And how many (paid) public holidays do you have? Or are they part of those 7?
Zero. I can use some of the 7 for holidays.
Well, sort of. The state gives you 56 hours of sick leave, which isn’t technically the same as vacation. Mental health, even without diagnosis, is a permitted use. My job didn’t give me any grief when I used some of my time to cover the holidays, but I didn’t have enough so some days I just didn’t get paid. (You acrue time off by working, and I started late in the year)
Oh, and this company also really dragged their feet on answering my questions about it, and told me one rule that’s just illegal here. I ended up looking it up myself, and thankfully they didn’t push back.
https://www.ny.gov/programs/new-york-paid-sick-leave if you’re morbidly curious.
Edit: they also had the nerve to send out “happy holidays!” Emails wishing me happy and healthy times. No pay, just thoughts and prayers.
About a decade ago I worked a few weeks at ShopKo. Their hours were terrible; they’d make you work 5-9pm to unload the trucks, then make you work 5am-1:30pm the following morning to restock the shelves.
You get exactly 8 hours between shifts making it physically impossible to get 8 hours of sleep. And since the hours were spread so wide throughout the day it was impossible to have a regular sleep schedule. It’s legal for companies to do this to their workers in the US. I was also only paid around $8.50/hr, but that’s beside the point.
In a similar vein, my next job was at another retail store. One time I requested a weekend off to help a friend move, but they denied it and instead made me work 7 days in a row, Wednesday through Tuesday. They got away with it because the company’s shift tracking app ends the work week on Saturday, so it didn’t realize I worked a week straight.
I was paid around $10.50/hr on average there.In my country most Collective Bargaining Agreements negotiated by unions include a “coming off” day. After a night shift, you are legally required to have a rest period that usually covers the rest of that day and often the next, depending on the rotation cycle
Wait, a retail place let you get that many hours per week?
Both jobs were only part time, so it wasn’t every day, but it was still around 3 times a week, so recovering from it was difficult. It was dependent on when the trucks arrived.
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I’ve never had a two weeks vacation. I’m 52… If I have 36 hrs off in one block I go camping.
This is insane. Why would you put up with this?
What the fuck am I going to do about it? Get arrested bringing the people responsible a lake city quiet pill?
Well what do you have to lose?
The trick is that so much is tied to our employment, including health care. Wanna start a ruckus and get fired? Cool, you’ll lose your health insurance and the cancer will kill you. It’s not like the company down the street is any better.
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Because some people need to have multiple hyper-yachts and who are we to stand in their way?
There are millionaires and billionaires in Europe though, so clearly it is possible to have decent work-life balance and still support the excesses of a rich upper class, assuming that’s a requirement.
The amount of productivity lost because of paid leave is almost negligible, study after study has shown that people are less productive the more overworked they are. So staff with no time off work longer hours but are less productive for those hours, the end result is it pretty much equals out. If it didn’t, the US economy would be doing better then it is, €1 is $1.16.
The exchange rate isn’t really the best indicator of the economy because either side can print more or take excess money out of circulation.
Not that your other points are wrong or anything. Just wanted to point that little thing out.
You don’t have weekends?
In New Zealand if you have an office job there’s a decent chance you’re not even allowed to work for at least a week, often two, sometimes three over the Christmas/New Year period.
The days between Christmas and 2 January are not even considered working days when calculating working days in contracts.
I’m an American and luckily I work for a company that does the same thing. We “shut down” during that time. They even give 4 weeks of PTO a year starting off. This is no where near the norm.
Haha here the legal minimum is 4 weeks plus 12 more paid public holidays on top.
Yeah. I know nearly every where else has it so much better. If I felt like I had the ability to immigrate, I probably would.
Cries in working in health care
You might not get the public holidays at the same as others but you’re still entitled to them taken in lieu!
Oh for sure. It was more the 2-3 weeks off at summer that I was envious of. Although I know lots of people still have to work as well, so I can’t complain too much.
Come work on IT projects in government. There’s a contractor stand-down period for like 3 weeks over Christmas so even if you work there’s almost no one around (yes the government said they would cut down on use of contractors, they said a lot of things).
That is sweet.
There’s a two week period you basically have to take off, because everyone else is also on holiday, so you couldn’t work if you wanted to.
Just had a baby. Had the privilege of using 5 days of PTO for my parental leave. Partner gets like 4 months, thankfully.
So this is one of those “even things that end up benefitting men is Feminism” things.
Men having no paternity leave, but women having it, might sound like it’s better for women. But instead it just makes them more likely to leave the workforce when their maternity leave runs out. Giving men an equivalent (minus medical recovery) amount of leave to be used over the first year makes it so both parents can take turns, get the child to a reasonable point of being able to be put in childcare, and allows both to return to work (if desired). And studies have shown the vast, vast majority of the pay difference between men and women is due to separating from the workforce for years after pregnancy (and subsequent pregnancies).
Paternity Leave is part of Feminism.
It’s sad there’s such a disparity between leave amounts at different employers in the USA. It really should be standardized.
I’m from Australia, where it’s mandated to get four weeks (20 days) of PTO per year, 20 weeks of paid parental leave, at least a year of unpaid parental leave, and an extra 8 weeks of PTO every 7 years (“long service leave”).
I’m living in the USA now, and am fortunate that my employer offers 21 days PTO per year. I also have unlimited sick leave, which is a strange phrase to hear as an Aussie (why would sick days be limited??)
Is the extra 8 weeks of long service PTO independent of the position you hold at a company?
unpaid
To get a surgery done.
which wasn’t covered by insurance.
