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Summer Vacations

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Pete Incaviglia, Apr 29, 2008.

  1. OnTheRiver

    OnTheRiver Active Member

    I have 24 vacation days this year, and I honestly have no idea how I'll use more than 15-18 of them.
     
  2. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    The 13 for US workers is a crap poll.

    Walk into a government employee workplace and conduct this poll.

    A 20-year vet administrator in my county will receive 26.5 days per year and 12 sick days not counting the smattering of federal holidays (about eight a year).
     
  3. captzulu

    captzulu Member

    Our government also makes it ok for people to be denied medical care simply because they are poor. Doesn't mean it's right.

    Both employers and employees feed into the workaholic nature of the country; they're both at fault. Americans live to work; people in many of those countries listed work to live. I know which one I would prefer.
     
  4. IGotQuestions

    IGotQuestions Member

    Use 2-3 to take consecutive days off a couple times in the summer or in the fall, just to putter around at home. What's so hard about doing that?
     
  5. IGotQuestions

    IGotQuestions Member

    [/quote]

    Which is why Congress doesn't take retirement benefits and Social Security seriously: the average Congressman can't relate to these issues, given the plush benefits they are guaranteed upon retirement from their $160,000-plus job.
     
  6. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    Understood.

    But I doubt many people in those countries have two cars, a swimming pool, satellite TV and radio, an iPod and an iPhone, and eat out every other night.

    This country demands every creature comfort (even on airplanes), gets pissed when it cannot have them and, yes, is willing to work extra to have them.
     
  7. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    I can semiagree with you on point 1, although the amount of lobbying done by big business and the prostitution of our pols has an effect on how workers are treated. Look at mining regulations. For a long period in our country, miners were on their own, until enough died to the point where politicians finally were forced into making laws for workplace safety.

    No. 2: It can very easily be employers' fault. All they have to do is say, "We need this project done. Screw your vacation. And if you don't finish it, we'll find someone who will." This adds up.

    No. 3: See No. 2.

    No. 4: Good for you. And I, too, try to take nearly all my vacation time. And I'm very lucky in that my employer doesn't complain when I put in for it. Problem is, not all of us are that lucky.
     
  8. Runaway Jim

    Runaway Jim Member

    Maybe because he/she would like to go somewhere for a vacation instead of puttering around at home? How people spend their vacation days is up to them. They shouldn't have to justify it to some manager who's only looking out for himself. If you have the vacation time coming and you want to take a full week, you should be able to take it without feeling like some kind of a jerk.
     
  9. Jesus Christ Guys?
    I'm assuming many of your worked at papers that weren't start ups. These are long-established newspapers that were putting out sports sections long before you were a itch in dad's pants. And they will be putting out sports sections - complete with swimming and track meet results! - long after you have gone.
    If the company is giving you - giving you! - so many weeks of paid vacation you are a fool not to use it.
    I get three weeks a year and use every bit of it. We have senior staffers - folks who have been here 20-plus years - who have almost three months worth of vacation and they use it. No cares.
    Don't feel guilty about it. And please (I don't mean this in offensive way) don't believe you are too valuable or important to the product to waste your vacation. If something is really important enough that it has to be covered it will get taken of - without you, cause you're on vacation.
    Remember, your job existed before you got to work and it will exist when you leave, retire, quit or die at your desk.
    Don't get me wrong, I love my job and work like a dog when I'm on the job .. long hours, six days a week and all that shit... But I don't live to work.
    With a wife and three kids - you have new one right Pete? - I work to live. I have no qualms about using all my allotted vacation.
    Vacation isn't like a sick day, which I have seldom ever used. Vacation is part of the compensation package. It's part of the crappy wages and benefits package companies use to hire us.
    They give it you. You are NOT stealing it. Don't feel guilty about it. Use it.
     
  10. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    That's a good reason for having a vacation postponed. But not canceled. A company either has a vacation policy or it doesn't.
     
  11. [​IMG]
     
  12. captzulu

    captzulu Member

    I know that when I was in the biz, both I and all of my fellow deskers tended to have a decent amount of vacation left at the end of the year. We were reluctant to take them, not because we thought the sky would fall if we weren't in the office, but b/c we knew that we were so thinly staffed that whenever one of us goes on vacation, somebody else would be screwed into having to work OT to cover. So we all felt guilty about taking more than a day or two at a time, and almost never during college football & basketball season.

    Found an interesting, and a bit old, story from the New Yorker about the differences in American and European attitudes toward work:

    http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/11/28/051128ta_talk_surowiecki
     
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