Good morning! My last day before summer holiday!

SuZir

Well-Known Member
Have been waiting for today for sure. Last day at work before 4 weeks of summer holiday. Same with husband . Also difficult child will have, depending where he ends up, next three, four or five weeks off/independent training. easy child was little grumpy when he understood that next week he will be only one in our family who has to work. But also he is off after that. He has lots of sport camps etc. late in the summer so we encourage him to only accept summer job for half of the summer so he too will have some free time too. Enough to have something to put on CV but not so much he would drain himself.

We will move difficult child tomorrow and Sunday we have confirmation party of one of our nieces, but after that, it's total freedom. We don't even have any exact plans. We had asked boys to reserve certain times for family functions, basically sailing and that will be something w2e will do a lot. Also spend time at the cabin and stop by at home to take care of garden. One longer trip with the boat with both boys with us. And if we can spot some good deal from last minute trips I and husband are planning a couple day trip to some European city, preferably one we haven't been before or at the long time.

Hopefully we will have a relaxing holiday. Would certainly be needed.
 

SuZir

Well-Known Member
IC: You have to remember we Europeans are lazy b*****s ;) We do very different kind of hours than you in NA.

In my country, if you work more than half-time (over 20 hours a week), you will have 30 days paid holiday, four weeks for summer and one for winter (Saturdays count as paid holiday days) by law. And most of us have nicer contracts with few extra days (I have ten a year) that can be kept one by one. And we don't normally do much over 40 hour weeks either. If we do, most are paid 50 % extra from overtime and there are quite strict laws how much overtime you can do. Only upper level management is an exception to work time laws. And even then, few do over 50 hours weeks. It's kind of considered a sign of inefficiency, if you are not able to have your work done within normal hours.
 

busywend

Well-Known Member
SuZir.....Europeans are much smarter than Americans! We just can't seem to figure out how to make this happen. It just happens that I have been at my company for 24 years and get 5 weeks of vacation every year....I usually carry over 2-3 so some years I have 8 weeks built up. Do you think I could take even 2 weeks off at once? Not likely.
As it is, it is end of June - half the year is gone.....and I have taken 3 ( only 3) days off so far! Today I am off until July 8th...but only using 4 days of vacation due to July 4th holidays.
For some reason Americans feel if you can be out of the office, than you are not a necessary employee. I don't know how it happened, but that is the feeling we all get if we are to be away for more than a few days. Sad.

I LOVE that the feeling is inefficiency if you can not get your work done in normal working hours. I feel strongly about this. Problem is.....us Americans are so insecure, we do not pursue more efficiencies because we feel we will look stupid to co-workers. So, we do nothing to gain efficiency or consistency. Drives me batty!!!
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Many Americans have no vacation time at all.

Suzir, I'm going to move to your country :)))) I'm not really big on the US right now...I'm pretty jaded.
 

SuZir

Well-Known Member
For some reason Americans feel if you can be out of the office, than you are not a necessary employee. I don't know how it happened, but that is the feeling we all get if we are to be away for more than a few days. Sad.

We have a bit opposite take of that. If someone feels they can not stay that four weeks out of the office, or at least feel the need to take calls during the vacation, we tend to recommend a test of how important they are for world getting by. Test is this: Take a glass full of water. Put your finger to the water. Take a finger off. Now look closely what happened. If there is your finger shaped hole in the water, you truly are irreplaceable. If not, they will manage just fine without you.

Especially here at north we tend to be much less competitive and success driven than you are. In fact neither of my first two languages have a word loser in any other meaning than as a person or a thing that happened to lose some particular competition. Now that you have taught us your culture through movies and tv shows, we have adapt the word loser to both languages to same use you have. Still not used much, though.

We also have very strong workers unions, even more so in the past and it is very difficult to get rid of the employee without very good reason, so we are much more secure. And we have also social benefits that make us feel even more secure.

At times, when looking statistics etc. one has to wonder how we can be as prosperous as we are considering how pampered we are and how little is actually required from us. I mean, we pay social benefits even if the only reason for not working is, that you don't feel like it. Of course most want to work and have a job they find worthwhile and can be proud of and want more than bare minimum and are ready to work for that. Apparently it is efficiency that saves us. Even our school kids tend to do better than kids in most countries with much less time spent at school and even less homework and very low competitiveness in class.

Okay, we do have less money and wealth than many people in USA. And lower salaries. For example person in similar position in similar company in the USA than my husband here makes douple or triple what he does. And pays less taxes. Then again person doing my job (and I too have masters degree and job suitable to that, but I'm not business executive) makes about the same. And person doing husband's job in US wouldn't have five weeks and extra days vacation time, nor do they have less than 50 hour work weeks. And we too have a house and a cabin and a boat, reliable cars and food in our table. And we are not paying up to 200 000 dollars per child for college expenses like some of our North American acquaintances (okay, those schools do sound amazing, I would had loved liberal art college as a kid. Our kids have to do with state university type schools.)
 

Californiablonde

Well-Known Member
Hope you enjoy your little vacation. Today is my last day then I'm off for two months but unfortunately I don't get paid! I am looking for a better position in the school that gives me only a month vacation. Two months unpaid is hard. But I will surely enjoy my time off and I hope you have a great summer as well.
 

busywend

Well-Known Member
SuZir, at the risk of sounding political, but really just trying to show you just how different we are......this country is trying to take away unions and of all places are targeting teachers - yikes! Who knows what challenges will face us that we take for granted today. I am 100% certain we will NOT adopt your wonderful holiday plan....of that I am truly disappointed - LOL!!!
 
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