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More Than Half of US Workers Didn't Use Up Their Time Off Last Year (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article: Americans, famously, take far less vacation time than their European counterparts: less than 17 days, on average, compared to 30 days in France, for example. But for many Americans, that's apparently all the time they need. More than half of all US employees (54%) didn't use all their days off last year, working a combined total of 662 million more days than required. Of those days, 206 million couldn't be rolled over or cashed out, meaning they were forfeited, costing the equivalent of $66 billion, according to a report (PDF) from Project: Time Off, a group funded by the travel industry. While it's a group with a strong interest in promoting more vacations, their findings are still revealing about America's unhealthy reluctance to take time off. Almost 60% of US workers who don't take their allotted vacation say they fear the amount of work they'll have to return to, according to the survey of 7,331 working Americans. Others (47%) say they stay put because they believe no one else can do their job, or because they want to impress their bosses with their dedication (36%).
In the US, we reward hard work with promotions and higher salaries. In Europe, they just tax the wealthy while the six hour work days and bans on checking email outside of work decrease productivity. It's hard work versus socialism taxing successful people. One of these leads to a strong economy, the other to massive debt. There's no incentive to be successful in Europe, anyway, because the government will just take your money away with taxes to pay for ridiculous social programs that would be unnecessary if people just had jobs and worked 40 hour weeks.
- snruter rotsac
Just because you "have" vacation on paper doesn't mean you can actually take vacation.
No. It means you should take vacation, which is a concept that fewer and fewer Americans can grasp or understand.
Some time away from the thing in your life that creates some of the worst stress and physical abuse would probably benefit an individual greatly. It would benefit an entire society greatly if that mentality were to become infectious, and help reset US workplace expectations and respect for what the hard working employees do provide when they are there.
Even if you could not actually afford to "go away" on vacation, just relaxing for a few days can have a considerable benefit.
That's because in America Gaslighting is the status quo especially in corporate America. It takes this form: "You are weak and should fear job loss if you don't work 80 hours a week." Basically, the labor shortage that was brought on by the Great Recession which was brought on by the Foreclosure crisis scared people to death. Corporate America wasted no time using this as an opportunity to terrorize the work force into being "more productive" with complete disregard for employee health. Also, this isn't really news. The good news is we are about to hit a boom cycle hopefully. Boom/bust economics folks.
We'll make great pets
(This is a generalization, I don't want to see hundreds of posts stating that they are the exception)
In general Americans will define themselves on what they do. When meeting a new person, one of the first questions asked is what do they do for a living. We use the answer of this question to help define and place themselves in society. Before you realize how unfair this is, other cultures, will make the same judgments based on family, religion, race, political standing, their dress, their car...
Being that what we do for work is a key part of our identity, we prefer to spend a good portion in enforcing and strengthening it. While the numbers show the opposite, taking time off, we get the perception that we will be considered lazy, not a team player, and not productive if we take too much vacation. So we usually keep these vacation days, not as vacation but as emergency time off days.
Also we subconsciously control our work environment so we necessary as an individual to the institution, and poorly sharing your information with other workers. So if you take time off, you get back with a weeks worth of work that you will need to do, being an other intensive to not take time off.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
US workers are absolutely terrified of taking time off lest it gets used against them in a review and they get fired and replaced at a moment's notice. How many people really think anyone at Netflix or elsewhere takes advantage of the ludicrous notion of 'unlimited holidays'? But hey, the American dream........
Companies need to respect vacation. Otherwise, what in the FUCK is the point of issuing it out to every employee? Managers need to respect that their human employees need some time away from the high-stress workplace every now and then.
And no, I don't agree with companies having a policy of letting you cash out on unused vacation. That's just an excuse to keep you at your job. You need to take some time off every now and then. We ALL do.
In this particular aspect, the Europeans GET IT. And we Americans have completely lost that concept, to the detriment of our minds, our bodies, and the working society as a whole. FUCK simply dismissing this. American workers need to start demanding that their employers respect the concept of vacation. Taking vacation is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of sanity and common sense.
And then there are those of us who don't get sick much and end up losing our "sick" days. At least PTO gives you a choice.
In my experience combined PTO that includes sick days means people who are sick come into the office and get other people sick rather than lose vacation days.
This hurts the company (and the employees who get sick more often as a result).
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
For those unfamiliar with the employer "benefit" of "Paid Time Off", it's a system where your "sick time" and "vacation time" are pushed together. So you get to make choices like "should I stay home with this fever/cold/bronchitis/stomach flu/kidney stone OR do I get to see my family at the holidays this year?" and "I already paid for that cruise, I'll just bring in four boxes of kleenex and power through". I get that PTO is an accountant's wet dream, combining all those liabilities into one column on the balance sheet. In reality, it becomes a fantastic way for everyone to bring their germs into the office and spread their sickness and being ineffective at work when they should be at home getting better, so they can see their family at the holidays. My employer says "if you are sick, stay home", and there's no number of "counted" sick time. Some years I've not taken a sick day, other years I've been out two weeks. It's not like kidney stones or bronchitis were the same as sipping a drink out of a coconut on a tropical beach, or that I planned it.
I work for a company that offers unlimited vacation.
Is it a company that's funded solely by earnings?
not those who are so self-righteous to believe no one else can do their job (that's total and unadulterated bullshit)
Some companies are staffed to a razor-thin margin that it's a real problem when people take vacation time. An employee should absolutely not work for those companies if they can avoid it, but the costs to have an employee are now so high, it's not like the old days that most places could afford to be 20% "over"-staffed.
It's crazy, but most Americans pay more in just sales taxes every year (before we talk about income or property taxes) than the average world annual salary in nominal dollars. American employees are _very_ expensive and one of the places that costs are made up is in staffing levels.
Americans have chosen high government spending over time off. Maybe not consciously, but as a consequence of their aggregate voting patterns.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
They mention France in the summary. Employees there are guaranteed a minimum of 36 days off per year (including public holidays). They have basically free university education, free healthcare, and many other perks. There's no way you can persuade me they have "low government spending" - and their tax rates are suitably high to pay for all that.
Tell me again how "high government spending" means you can't take time off?
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
I'm a contractor, and last year I found a company that looked like a great opportunity to work with some technologies I'm really interested in. They mentioned their great benefits, including an 'unlimited' time off policy. So I asked one of my interviewers (a dev ops guy) about that - how many hours did he work a week, and how much vacation did he take. It turned out he hadn't taken any time off in the previous 6 months, and was working a lot of overtime. Meantime, the CTO had taken 6 weeks off to go on some big bike tour across the country. So I called him on it. Like, you're telling me about this unlimited vacation policy, meanwhile you have someone who took no days off in 6 months. Oh, but that was his choice to do that. Give me a break. Needless to say, I didn't get an offer, as they felt I wasn't ready to make the move from being a contractor to an FTE. And they are right, if that scam of a vacation policy is what being an FTE means. Being a contractor, I don't have anyone else defining how much time I can take off.
You don't want a company treating you as the adversary, and no company wants employees who treat the company as the adversary. Take be macho emotion bullshit out and determine what outcome you want. Do what is most likely to get you that outcome. Creating a finger-on-the-button scenario and betting on who will blink first will have an unpredictable outcome and is completely, 100% unnecessary.
I probably laughed for 15min straight when I heard he injured himself
You might be a bad person. I hope the people in your life have more compassion for you when something bad happens to you, whether or not you deserve it.
Man, you really need that seminar!
There's a problem in your employment relationship, and it is likely really holding your career back. If it's the company, you should leave and find an employer who is less dysfunctional.
If it's not the company, then it's your own attitude.
Companies certainly are never perfect, but in general they operate in their interest, which in general is keeping their strong people happy. I worry about my strong people leaving all the time -- as I'm falling asleep at night, on weekends, etc.
There's also a group of people that is just good enough that they're still here, but I don't worry at all about them leaving. I guess that also could be a potential explanation for what you're experiencing.