Holidays American Style
June 16, 2006 at 11:16 At a recent dinner party, the conversation turned to summer holidays, and the French, Dutch, Irish, and Belgian folks around the table discussed their plans to vacation for 3-4 weeks in Turkey, Southern France, and Spain. Heads turned expectantly towards us, the token Americans, to see where we’d be going this summer.
We noted that my husband’s job would take him to Germany early in the summer and we’d all travel with him and tack some family sightseeing days onto the beginning and end of the trip, but other than that, we didn’t have a holiday planned, though we expected to make some weekend or day trips.
A stunned silence accompanied the diners’ blank expressions, so we offered a bit more information. We explained that we tried to avoid the summer tourist crowds, and so we’d spent a week in Paris last fall and a week in the U.K. in April.
Americans, we said, don’t normally take long vacations.
As an afterthought I added, “The typical American summer vacation is one week long.”
Somewhere at the table, there was a small gasp of disbelief. Only a WEEK?! I tried to clarify the issue further:
“People normally only get about two weeks of vacation a year, and they don’t take it all at once. Even if you have a lot of vacation days, taking more than a week off is generally frowned upon.”
Our French companion snorted. “Why not?”
“Well,” my husband explained, “The general thinking is that if the office or business can function without you for two or more weeks, then maybe your job isn’t necessary.”
This observation was greeted with pitiful looks and snippets of indignation. No one vocalizes what they’re all clearly thinking: Americans are crazy and take the whole capitalism thing too far!
Just this week that whole scene at the dinner party came rushing back to me as I read a report comparing European and American work habits.
According to Expedia, the average American works 45 hours a week and gets 12 vacation days. The French get 30, Germans get 27, the Dutch get 25, and U.K. workers get 23.
Out of his 12 vacation days, the average American uses nine and “sells” the remainder back to his employer. Are they pressured not to take their days or would they rather work than be at home?
In many U.S. businesses, you must book your vacation time for the entire year on the company calendar in January. Senior employees get first dibs on the dates and junior employees get to pick from what’s left over.
Even when you have vacation days to burn, you can’t necessarily take them when you want to. The company must always be staffed and serving customers; people have to rotate their vacation days to make sure that happens. The idea of the needs of the business or its customers coming before the needs of the workers’ holidays is an alien concept here.
My first summer here in Belgium, I was shocked to discover many businesses completely closed down for the entire month of August or big chunks of July. Pharmacies, restaurants, and shops stick a notice on the front door, lock things up, and leave all thoughts of work or business behind as they join traffic queues on the highways or at the airport, all heading out of Belgium.
God help you if you need a plumber or mechanic in the summer or need assistance from a government agency. For better or worse, life is on hold in Belgium until September. Even if the workers aren’t ON holiday, they’re either anticipating it or recovering from it. No one seems very concerned about work.
Maybe next year we’ll have absorbed enough of European culture to join our friends and neighbors for a month at the beach. We’ll refuse to check e-mails or answer calls from the office. We’ll leave our cell phones in the suitcase and sit under a big umbrella at the shore. For one month we’ll try to forget the deeply ingrained American work ethic and business protocols and have a “proper” holiday, European style.
© 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved.
June 16, 2006
Reader Comments (13)
The absurd part is that I once suggested that it was a crime that we don't get more and my manager asked "what would you do with more that 4 weeks?" This from a guy who takes his laptop camping (idiot!)
Damn - now I want to move to Germany...
Maternity leave in Belgium? Six months--PAID.
There is (or should be) more to life than work. How about family and friends? How about having the time to really get to know your neighbors? I don't know about you, but I am a much calmer, happier person when I am on vacation. I know some people can't let work "go", but I suspect the majority of us would be much happier with a 35 hour work week and 6 weeks of vacation...
In Italy.
In August.
I've basically given the punchline away, haven't I?
What's interesting to me, living in Europe, is that EVERYONE appears to take a real vacation. They GO AWAY, they just don't take time off. They may live in small houses, drive small cars, not be into shopping or commercialism, but they're into vacations. Different priorities.
Mega Mom is right about the taxes in Belgium--about 50 percent income tax, 20 percent sales tax.. But everyone gets healthcare (and my experiences so far have shown it to be REALLY good healthcare), they get the six month maternity leave (with home visits from a nurse after the mother is discharged from the hospital), and they get other social services. Is it worth it? Food for thought.
Well, I really can't complain because I work VERY part time from home but have a husband with a very good job. I just know he loves what he does and wouldn't want to be gone too much even though we use every day of his 3 weeks off a year.
And, seriously, all the people from Europe who work over here all end up staying and never going back. Two friends of ours even renounced their citizenship and became U.S. citizens. I just took that as a sign that we had it mighty good here. Plus, I have been to several European countries and did notice how cramped everything is and how expensive things are. Now I'm rambling....sorry.
August - particularly for the Mediterranean countries - is a hot month. The hottest. And workers and workplaces didn't function well in heat anyway, hence the mid-day closing of shops for lunch and siesta. I got accustomed to this life-style rather quickly however and always preferred to go on vacation in June or July (before the August crowds hit the beaches and hotel & room prices skyrocketed). Things have changed in the 23 years I've been living here and the shops and cafes do not ALL close in August any longer, public transportation and other public services (hospitals included) are functioning nicely. However, the past decade more Athenians are either forced (because of lack of funds) not to go on vacation or can't afford more than a week's vacation (steep hotel and transportation prices vs. low income).
Besides the climatic explanation for a lenghty vacation, Europeans generally have demanded and claimed their labour rights (throughout modern history) and most European governments apply pro-social and pro-labour policies. Greece has a strong labour movement history with many victories and strong political awareness.
Maternity leave is 5 months paid in Greece with the clause that the mother can neither be fired during her pregnancy NOR two years after delivering her baby, plus she has 1-2 hours a day maternity leave (to breast feed) her baby ranging from 6 months to a year. (She can either come in later for work or leave work earlier).
Parents are granted additional 8-12 hours absences from work (per school year) to visit with schools and teachers. Public schools in Greece pass out grades and counseling with parents only until 2 p.m. weekdays (they do not open in the afternoons).
Newcomers to a new place of work do not get vacation time (minimum 20 calendric days) until they've been there for 12 months. Then slowly the days tally up as the years go by. I've been working for the same workplace for 17 years and I get 38 calendric days of vacation (fully paid by the way). There's no docking of wages on vacation days and your job cannot be made redundant or be fired while you're away (according to the law).
I've been lucky to be working in a good environment where no formal explanations are necessary. If your kid is sick, "go home" is the director's answer. I feel lucky that I live in a country where people have their priorities on right. Work is to sustain your life, it is not your life.
p.s. V-grrrl I just saw how lenghty my comment/essay is. Sorry for hogging comment space, just wanted to share some experiences from south-eastern Europe.
:-)
There's nothing like getting the story from someone who's living it firsthand! I appreciate your comment.
There's a lot of tension in American workplaces over work-life balance issues. A hot topic now is how parents and non-parents are treated differently. When a parent has to stay home to tend a sick child, normally a co-worker has to cover the other person's responsibilities and pick up the slack. This can cause resentment and stress, especially when an office is under the gun to meet a deadline or objective and an overworked person is suddenly saddled with even more to do. Another source of tension is that if a parent leaves to see a child in an event or go to a conference at school, that's perceived as acceptable, but if a non-parent wants to step out of the office for a few hours for some reason, that's frowned upon and considered frivolous.
I guess the heart of the issue is that people with children are considered the prime beneficiaries of work-life balance benefits where those who are single or childless often feel they're expected to work MORE because they don't have kids to tend to.
We're not vacationing this year though, see above about DIY - we're spending our vacation and our vacation money doing up our apartment.
So V-grrrl, you won't be alone in having a short vacation in Europe. Maybe you can have a mini-break to Amsterdam :)
An Amsterdam mini-break sounds good!