While on my Pacific Princess cruise, I had the opportunity to speak to people from Australia and New Zealand about Vacation Time in their country. This is what I was told:
In both Australia and New Zealand, EVERYONE gets 1 month of vacation time. You also have the option to 'buy' up to another month off and the cost is taken out of your pay for the next year.
Also, you are EXPECTED to take at least 1 month of vacation each year. If you don't voluntarily do this, the company you work for will TELL you that you are on holiday for the next XX days. If you chose to come into work, you are working your holiday.
This completely blew my mind. A person, I used to work for, tried to make me feel guilty for using all of my vacation time. There are even those people that lose days or must take days off from time to time so they don't lose them.
I say, what the hell is wrong with that picture? The company says to you: We are giving you these days off and we will pay you for them and some people say "No thanks, I'd rather work"
Who is the crazy person here? I'm thinking it's not me.
The people I talked to were just incredulous of the atmosphere in the US regarding vacation time.
Staying 'connected' while on your vacation, taking your work laptop or checking Email when you were on holiday...Their eyes got big and said Ummm.. No, we don't do that. Our time off is so we can come back refreshed and ready to work.
According to Miriam Webster, here is the definition of "vacation":
- a period of time that a person spends away from home, school, or business usually in order to relax or travel
- the number of days or hours per year for which an employer agrees to pay workers while they are not working
I believe the US has somehow lost the concept of a vacation. How have we let the companies we work for make us believe that vacation is wrong or something you are not supposed to do very often or for very long? And by God, the 'you better stay in touch or else' mentality has spread from upper and middle management to the peons that work for them.
This is an excerpt from an article:
U.S. workers are using only 77 percent of their paid time off, according to the research group's report released Tuesday. And the decline is not just tied to recent economic worries; use of vacation days are at their lowest point in the past four decades. In 2013, U.S. workers took an average of 16 days of vacation compared with 20.3 days in 2000, according to the report.
The link to the full article is here:
169,000,000 days forfeited to the tune of $54 billion in benefits . Look at all those zeroes...That's MILLIONS my friends.
I think we need to take a long look at where we work and why we are doing this. Is this a choice we are making for ourselves? Or is the company or management trying to discourage vacation time? Perhaps it's time to reevaluate our priorities and move the company from the #1 position in our lives.
Just my opinion of course.
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