We’re off this week, our usual winter break spent with a combination of adventuring, relaxing, working when we should be relaxing, all of it over much too fast. Please enjoy this little dip into the archives as we recharge for 2023. – Ed.
Hi. Yes, you. Did you run out of vacation days last year? No? What’s wrong?
As Americans, we’re doing a piss-poor job of vacationing. Are you an American? You might be part of the problem. Americans left 169 million paid vacation days on the table in 2014. The average American gets about 10 paid days off per year, plus six federal holidays, which is 16 days per year. Four out of 10 of us used zero of those days last year. This is bullshit.
Allow me, for a quick second, to explain the concept of paid vacation, if for some reason your employer has done a poor job of it: This is time you get paid to not work. Like your employer actually pays you money-the same amount you would be paid to come into the office for 8 hours-to stay out of the office for a day. Or several consecutive days.
The President of the United States takes vacations. So do air traffic controllers, and emergency room doctors, who arguably have really, really important jobs. I’m not saying your job isn’t as important as their jobs, but I think you could afford to take advantage of those paid vacation days.
Bah, you say, I can’t leave my job. There’s too much going on right now. Hold on there. Are you calling all of your co-workers incompetent meatheads? That’s what it sounds like. You’re saying they can’t handle it without you, that things would fall apart in your absence. Stop being a jerk. They obviously haven’t sunk the ship yet. You can put it on cruise control for a few days and let them steer a little bit. Especially if you were the one who hired them-if you think they can’t handle it for a few days, you obviously did a terrible job of hiring solid team members.
According to surveys, if you are in management, you very likely part of the problem because you make your employees feel like they can’t take a day off. Ask yourself: Why am I doing this? You know that Bob, in a typical day at his desk, is only working about 60 percent of the day anyway, when he’s not looking at Facebook, eating lunch, or sitting in meetings listening to all your amazing ideas. You might as well encourage him to take a week or two off, so on that Monday he comes back into the office, he’ll actually be productive because so much stuff backed up while he was gone.
My dad works his ass off: 65 hours a week for going on 41 years. He works six days a week, and usually a couple hours on Sundays, managing a team of 15 people. He is a model of a hardworking American. And he took 42 days of vacation last year. 42 days! That’s 100 percent of his paid vacation. He understands math, and if he has a vacation day, he takes it, whether it’s going to ride his bike for a week in Vermont or just hitting a little white ball around the golf course near his house. He is batting 1.000 on vacation, practicing for retirement next year, which is the Ultimate Vacation.
Vacations are expensive, you say. You can’t afford to take all that time, travel all that distance, hotel rooms, rental cars, meals at restaurants, blah blah blah.
Here’s a revelation: You can use vacation days on something other than “a vacation.” You can take a day off, get a sandwich, and go sit on a park bench and read a paperback and watch people jog by. And GET PAID TO DO IT. Total cost: $0, unless you include the sandwich, but you shouldn’t, because you would eat lunch whether you were working or not. You could also take five days off in a row, drive your car to a campsite somewhere with a few hours of your house, and spend a week walking around in nature and staring at campfires instead of your e-mail. And that doesn’t cost much-especially when you consider your company is paying you to sit there and not read e-mails.
So do your part, this year, to keep this country from becoming The United States of Sucking at Taking Vacations.
Photo by Shutterstock
This would make a good poll – Did you take all your vacation days last year?
Put me down as a yes – 20+ days
I think the reason is that some places will pay you for those days whether you use then or not, like at my moms job. She uses them but some people just like the extra money in the bank so they can buy that new car or whatever the new fad in electronics is.
You can take it a day at a time. I took Fridays off for 4 months one year. Three-day weekends were great.
What’s paid vacation? Who are all you people? If I take a day off work, my employer takes a day off from paying me.
HUGE downside to hourly work… at least (I’m assuming) when you go over 40 hours a week, you’re compensated for it. No paid vacation is utterly brutal though.. it must double or even triple the cost of a trip.
At Authentic Jobs they actually have a MINIMUM vacation policy. Pretty great article here: https://medium.com/@cameronmoll/the-minimum-vacation-policy-15f6c3b922f
Just got back from a two week trip. I flat out told my company the only reason I’m still there is because I get 5 weeks (plus 1 day) of PTO a year.
where do you work, I want a job there
I really hope that this starts to change a bit as the millennial generation begins to get their feet on the ground. I’m 28 years old and use every single one of my 23 days.
I know that personally, I’ve JUST started to make what I consider to be a living wage, and I’ve had to fight tooth and nail to get here (graduated during the recession, first job out of college paid 25K year).
However now that I’ve gotten here, I fully intend to taylor my salary/benefit negotiations towards getting as much time off as possible, instead of trying to MAXIMIZE my income. Work to live, don’t live to work.
I’m afraid that many of those 169 million days from last year were mine too. I think a lot of the problem is people get too wrapped up in what they do and with the economy being as bad as it was, everyone is working hard to just to feel like they can keep their.
I thought to hell with it, not this year. I was able to take off an easy +20 and have a deal worked out with my work where I can take off a morning once a week to do whatever the hell I want. So that means more ski mornings and trail running/mtn bike mornings. I am sure a lot of employers would do the same for the majority of their employees. I know I am more productive and happy. Work-life balance can happen.
We have the option to purchase an additional 10 days of PTO per year and I’m still always running low.
My life goal has been to average 30 hours a week in my working life.
With vacation, holidays, and some other time we get from Admin, I got it down to 32.5.
Hopefully one day to the goal!
When I have “use it or lose it” leave, I use 100% of it.
I can bank one or two weeks in my current role, so I’m slowly building up to the maximum carryover allowance. Once there though, I’ll use 20 days/year (100% of allowance) and have the one or two weeks in reserve incase something comes up and I need 30 days in one year.
Because I’m self employed and have no vacation days given to me to “use”. Only the ones I take, at the expense of giving up income.
Unfortunately this article is a necessary reminder (thank you Brendan and Adventure Journal) that Americans are failures at (OK better to say they are not winners) using all their earned paid vacation days each year. Most full-time employees don’t get much to begin! Let’s turn that around in 2023!
I agree it costs almost nothing to take a “vacation” from your everyday life and work to just read, relax, hike, get together, pursue a hobby, enjoy the outdoors (or even indoors), and simply make the most of our valuable free time NOW. I’ll keep writing about this subject until we all stop taking vacation days for granted and truly embrace a healthy work-life-vacation balance.
Let’s make it a New Year’s resolution to take every paid day off in 2023 🙂