Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I've worked 80 hour weeks. I've worked 2 jobs at once. I've worked for minimum wage. That really shows how entitled I am. Yep. That's one of those buzzwords everyone likes to abuse these days.
I worked in a warehouse, 80 hour weeks. There IS NO time to do things outside of work. I could not get any time off, ever.
You had to come in sick, injured and on your day off. I had another employee run an electric pallet jack into me, messed me up pretty good. I had to finish out my shift.
I've had other jobs that would let me off if I needed to go to the doctor, even on short notice. Held that job for 8 years (entitlement, I tell you)
I had a 9-5 job, in a town where ALL the doctors closed at 5. I paid for insurance the entire time and couldn't use it once. I had an abscessed tooth, I couldn't even get an extra hour off for lunch, unpaid, to have it looked at.
Abscessed teeth can kill you.
This is not entitlement, this is wanting to be treated like a human.
At least the Japanese have a word for it: karoshi - death from overwork. It's an official cause of death in Japan. Americans don't even get that dignity.
Academia is another story. In all the places I worked - I changed jobs every 3 years and I am a software engineer - I started with 2 weeks. For me - I'm European transplant too - vacation days are more precious than gold. Why companies don;t give more? Because they are greedy. We now have an anomaly in US: there are people who don't know what to do with their time if they have more than 2 weeks vacation. There are people who check their work emails when they are on vacation, thinking that the office wont survive without them.
One time I discuss this issue with a German coworker - he has returned to Germany since than - and he said that up to mid century (last century) Europeans and Americans had the same pay and the same vacation. And that at that point US companies decided ti give people more money and less vacation. I don;t know if this is true but people in US tend to be better paid than their counterpart in Europe.
Can someone explain this very real difference between Americans and Europeans. Why is time off of so little importance to Americans in general? I have yet to meet a European that does not value and love their time off to explore the world and travel. Why is it that Americans seem perfectly okay with the three day weekend camping around 100 miles from home and that is it? Why do Americans seem so disinterested in taking multiple weeks off and travelling the world? Of course I realize American employers certainly frown upon taking more than a week off at a time. What this country needs is good old fashioned worker uprisings and strikes. Shut the country down and demand a better work environment.
Can someone explain this very real difference between Americans and Europeans. Why is time off of so little importance to Americans in general? I have yet to meet a European that does not value and love their time off to explore the world and travel. Why is it that Americans seem perfectly okay with the three day weekend camping around 100 miles from home and that is it? Why do Americans seem so disinterested in taking multiple weeks off and travelling the world? Of course I realize American employers certainly frown upon taking more than a week off at a time. What this country needs is good old fashioned worker uprisings and strikes. Shut the country down and demand a better work environment.
You guys have it all too good.
In summer I lost job and did not have any real vacation, I spent time on job hunting. Eventually I found next job in October in another state, which I accepted and moved out far away from friends and family. Now I am in new job working twice as hard, get paid less (compared to a similar job in my area paid below average), pay more for everything (higher COL area). I work nightly shift 4 nights - 10 hour shifts. In my workplace there is a lot of responsibilities and work on employee but not everything is organized like in Swiss's clock. Missing tools to do required work (so I supplement my own I purchase on my own dime), shared workspaces and laptops, no locker or locked personal cabinet for jacket, lunchbag or personal items, only 2 dock stations with monitors, keyboards and mouse that work with my model laptop so when is everybody working, I have to seat tight on edge staring at small screen and do work on emails, excel spreadsheet all with touchpad :/ Some chairs are even broken and don't have support. Last year couldn't spend thansgiving or Chirstmas Eve with my family and had to take mandatory work on holidays (although I was reimbursed a little extra for working 2 holidays). Even if I could, I wouldn't probably have had enough hours to take enough days off to fly out to another state to spend time with my family. And if I got stranded due to snow or heavy freeze like it happened recently when flights got canceled, wouldn't have not been able to get back on time to my work and would have gotten fired again. Also on my work you cannot leave 15 minutes early, even if it means you are done with work and have nothing to do. During that time you can't get on facebook, you pretend to be working by reading emials, etc. But if you come 10 minutes late, you get written for that with warnings.
In corporate American companies, you are nothing, you have no leverage and you are a dog.
Wouldn't it be great if Americans got paid according to their productivity? Maybe they could afford to foot the bill for their own vacations and paid holidays.
US GDP Per Capita is 52,000 $, Italian is 30,400 $ whereas the cost of life isn't that different, especially considering Northern Italy.
Taxation in Italy is among the highest in the world, far higher than US.
Honestly between American 1790 hours and Italian 1732 hours I don't see all these differences.
From the thread it seems that Americans work like ten Europeans, evidently it isn't.
Location: The Northeast - hoping one day the Northwest!
1,107 posts, read 1,452,341 times
Reputation: 1012
Quote:
Originally Posted by makaraka66
Why is it that the average employee in the USA gets only a weeks paid leave
?
Does it boil down to some US employees being less efficient and therefore not worth taking care of them by making sure they get a decent break from the grind ?
Or is it that US employers are a touch mean with the time they are prepared to pay for a worker not to be doing his/her job.
The average in my country would be four weeks holiday pay with my own lads on six weeks leave.
Or do American employees prefer not to have paid leave ?
At my job, we get 3 weeks a year, however that also includes any sick time. Just one big bank. We don't have 3 weeks out front.. we accrue 4.62 hours biweekly. However, I was talking one of the guys at work the other day, and he is from England. He said the hardest thing to adjust to was the amount of vacation/holiday time and how in England they get so much more. He mentioned his wife had I believe like 6 months, which is just insane. (good insane!) I think if the US took more of a European approach, employees would be happier.
Wouldn't it be great if Americans got paid according to their productivity? Maybe they could afford to foot the bill for their own vacations and paid holidays.
That is called peace work and you wind up having quotas to meat or your fired.
And as time goes on they will raise the quotas that you have to meat.
That type of system does not work well for the workers but the
employer comes out with greater profits in the coffers.
Anyway, Americans work 1790 hours per year compared to 1732 of Italians.
Americans "productivity" is 60 $ per hour whereas Italian one is 45,6 $ per hour.
When Americans work 40 hrs a week, and having 2 weeks vacation,
and work 50 weeks a year that comes out to 2000 hrs a year.
I've worked 80 hour weeks. I've worked 2 jobs at once. I've worked for minimum wage. That really shows how entitled I am. Yep. That's one of those buzzwords everyone likes to abuse these days.
I worked in a warehouse, 80 hour weeks. There IS NO time to do things outside of work. I could not get any time off, ever.
You had to come in sick, injured and on your day off. I had another employee run an electric pallet jack into me, messed me up pretty good. I had to finish out my shift.
I've had other jobs that would let me off if I needed to go to the doctor, even on short notice. Held that job for 8 years (entitlement, I tell you)
I had a 9-5 job, in a town where ALL the doctors closed at 5. I paid for insurance the entire time and couldn't use it once. I had an abscessed tooth, I couldn't even get an extra hour off for lunch, unpaid, to have it looked at.
Abscessed teeth can kill you.
This is not entitlement, this is wanting to be treated like a human.
There is a simple solution ...
If you don't like the job, get a different job then quit the one you have now.
When Americans work 40 hrs a week, and having 2 weeks vacation,
and work 50 weeks a year that comes out to 2000 hrs a year.
.
Most people get at least 6 holidays, often more like 10, so that's another 48-80 hours off the tab. Then there's sick time, personal time, funeral time, etc. If you include inservice time as time not worked, that's another piece.
Quote:
Originally Posted by extremeatheist
And that attitude is why America is so ****ed up. We should work to live NOT live to work.
We have to put off our health, which is one of the worst mistakes a human can make, because companies are so poorly run that they can't get by without one person. That's not our fault, that's management's fault. Maybe they should stop being so damn greedy and demanding so much from each person.
I think you misunderstood my point. You're valuable to your employer. If you weren't, there would be no reason for you to have a job at all. Way back in time, people got no paid vacation at all, and if you asked for time off, you'd be treated like Bob Cratchitt was in "A Christmas Carol" (Scrooge). Now, people have these banks of time to use.
As far as doctor appointments, doctors used to hold evening and Saturday hours. Even when my kids were little, the ped had Saturday morning appointments. Then most docs stopped doing that, and confined their appointment hours to "normal business hours". Now, some (like my office) are going back to evenings.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
