I have 24 days of vacation a year, plus holidays. I worked for hours every day on my vacation in April. This “connected” world we now live in s**ks. Too much expected by all concerned. I rolled over 19 days on July 1 … so now I have even more days I can’t really get away to use. I like my job, but we need more staff.
I don’t work in corporate America. I work in non-profit higher ed America. But I can’t paint it with a broad stroke, because some of my peers at other schools have jobs as stressful as mine, and others have much less stressful jobs. None of them pay all that much, which adds to the stress … 6 figures might make it easier to deal with.
But, hey … I get to retire in less than 9 and a half years.
^That’s too bad. I like to think that the lack of profit motive also means a saner view of worklife. For many people I know it does, but of course not for all.
Adding up vacation days, public holidays, and an allotment of “travel days” to cover the duration of the flight to the US for “home leave”, I get 9 weeks/yr. It used to be 10 weeks w my previous employer.
I don’t think I’ve ever done a vacation longer than 2 weeks. Because of work piling up in the office while I am away, I try to restrict my work & leisure trips to 4-night long weekends, including for int’l trips. As a result, I spend a lot of time living inside of airports…
“I like to think that the lack of profit motive also means a saner view of worklife.”
Not necessarily. It can also mean a true passion for the area at hand which means less work life balance."
Or the boss declaring that there will be no emails during time at home, could mean that the boss has absolutely no passion for the non profit. Most people who actually have a passion, don’t only think about work, or accomplish work during work hours. I’m not saying it is a healthy thing to work all the time, at all. But to have a clear delineation between, “During work hours, we do work, and on your off time, you shall not work”—appears to me to be a complete lack of passion. In my family, we are always talking about work, doing something work related, during our off hours. Our work/time off lines are blurred, and it’s not that we even work that much. It’s because of interest, and desire to do a good job. Much of it is not required. If we had no interest in it, or didn’t give a crap, we would only do work during office hours.
DH took 6 workdays out of the office in a row this year. That is the longest he has agreed to in all of our married life. I am sure there was some e-mail and a couple of calls taken while we were there however. I always book accommodations with wifi and he asks what family outing plans I have made before he schedules conference calls. We have learned to go but leave some room for some work while away.
I just hope we have passed a work ethic on to our kids. I meet too many new hires that only know the play hard half of the equation.
Well, without going into specifics, the organization S works for does fine work (and well-known), and he works very hard when he is there. It’s not work that needs to be attended to at odd hours, generally. I think it’s odd that the idea of considering your life away from work to be equally important shows a lack of passion. But whatever works for you.
^^It’s not a reflection against your son’s attitude, it’s a comment about his boss. In my opinion, the boss is not saying that your home life is equally as important as your work. It sounds more to me like the boss is saying that he is not going to do a lick of work outside of office hours, and nobody else is allowed to either. Perhaps I misinterpreted that. But sometimes, to do a good job, if it’s something you care about, you really need to attend to it after hours. And if you refuse to do a single thing outside of work hours, yep, I’d call that a lack of passion.
Of course, people don’t have to be passionate about their work. But it certainly makes it more tolerable.
I just assume that @garland 's son has the sort of job responsibilities that don’t require his personal attention at all times. Either there are others on staff who have the same responsibilities and can pitch in to cover when he is gone, or else he is assigned to tasks that are not time/deadline critical - and can easily be put aside to await his return. So when he goes the agency can function fine without him-- and his boss is happy to let him take a break. It has nothing to do with passion or commitment – it simply has to do with job function and staffing.
I get six weeks of paid time off but that includes sick time if needed. We can only carry over one week of that so it’s a fine art to using it up while protecting yourself in case you get sick. We don’t have a donate your time to a sick peer program. Quite a number of people lose time at the end of the year because they didn’t take it all. I don’t go on big trips because I can’t afford it with paying for college and all but it’s nice to just give myself a break frequently.
Working for an European employer has reduced my stress levels with regards to vacation. Average employee gets about 3 week and 4 weeks after five years plus 3 personal days. My boss will soon be leaving on a 4 week vacation and no one is really worried. Everything has been planned out and we all have our responsibilities that will be carried out as adults should. This vacation is longer than the usual 2 weeks which is typical to take at one time but I am sure we will not contact him unless the apocalypse happens ; ). I have taken 2 weeks at a time with no work contact and it was all fine when I returned. There is always a backup who can do your work or the team shares the work.
This is vastly different from DH’s employer where he has needed to be available even on vacation and he has gotten calls at 2 a.m.
We have done this to ourselves with the work ethic. The rest of the world does fine with valuing time off.
Exactly, calmom–the organization is structured so different people can handle tasks, and the work gets done in a timely manner. As far as I can tell, his supervisor also works hard, but the ethic of the organization is to treat workers humanely. They don’t make a lot, but their time is treated as important. I think that’s a viewpoint that could be more emulated–many people and places are not defusing bombs all the time.
I mentioned my entry level vacation policy, but my managers all have unlimited vacation. My one manager doesn’t take as many weeks as much as a long weekend or leaving early for kid stuff like sports games, Dr’s appointments. I don’t track it at all so I don’t really know how much she’s gone.
I have my sales director take his family on business trips… he’s going to nc for a week plus so we put his family in a hotel on the beach. That way he doesn’t mind traveling and they get a pretty inexpensive vacation.
Once you hit 5 years im pretty loose on vacation time.
There will always be the ones who use all their leave and then some immediately and a few I have to force out of the office.
I on the other hand never really get to be completely away, but it can be minimal contact.
But @garland - that also depends on the size and structure of the organization-- as well as specific role- not just the policies of the employer. Sometimes, there just isn’t anyone else who can do the specific job. I found over the years that Murphy’s Law applied – it things were going to go wrong, they were sure to go wrong the day after I went on vacation. So for some work functions, it’s important that the person can be reached for urgent matters.
I don’t know why everybody says that you get paid less in Europe. It might be true for some jobs, but I made three times as much in Germany then here. Plus I had six weeks of vacation, paid holidays and pretty much unlimited sick days.
In my Opinion, a company that relies too much on one person is not organized very well. Back in Germany, we always worked as a team, so everybody could take over anybody’s job at any time. Going on vacation was never an issue.
When I am at work I always give a hundred percent, but when I am at home, I want to spend quality time with my family. i work to live, I don’t live to work.
Fact is, a lot of depts aren’t organized that well. I remember, at one interview, a fellow saying, “We used to have a three people/one job mindset, now it’s one person/several roles.” Often, the better you do, the more they rely on you alone, for whatever expertise it is.
And we’re usually ambitious (however we define it,) we play into this. We do take some satisfaction from it. Vacation isn’t the only way to achieve balance. Yes, it’s nice. But I wouldn’t judge other societies/cultures by their vacations. I remember my first trip to France, on a train, passing the RV parks. where campers were packed like sardines. That’s not QOL/quality of life.
“But I wouldn’t judge other societies/cultures by their vacations. I remember my first trip to France, on a train, passing the RV parks. where campers were packed like sardines. That’s not QOL/quality of life”
So that’s how they afford it. It made me wonder how all these Europeans can afford these lengthy vacations we always hear about. It is expensive in Europe, and the thought of renting an apartment or hotel for several weeks sounds like a major investment.
