True for some people, no doubt. But I for one (and I know there are plenty like me) only care about the hypocrisy. I have no problem with him taking a 17-day vacation, per se. It’s hard to imagine any job is more stressful than the US presidency, and of course it’s going to follow along whenever and wherever he goes. The first real vacation any president gets is after they are out of office.
I just have a problem with how he constantly jabbed at Obama for golfing and taking vacation. And didn’t Trump say he’d be “too busy to play golf”?
(Anyhow, he’s just “tired of winning.” After his break he’ll be refreshed and we can all win some more. Oh boy.)
I found some stats. A recent poll found 28% of Americans took less than 10 days of vacation. 41% took between 10 and 19 days. The average is 16.2 days per year. So I was off there, I think. But I would say that it is very rare to take one vacation during any year of that length.
Partisan sniping would be if the Democrats had raised the issue of Presidential vacations being a sign of a bad President. But it was Trump who did that. This is a self-sniping.
Hypocrisy is the big issue here. Obama took vacations. But Obama never said that taking a vacation was a sign of being a bad President.
Trump did. So if Trump feels good Presidents shouldn’t take vacations and he’s not taking a vacation, he’s conceding he’s not a good President. He failing to meet the standards that he set for the job.
When I was in the Corporate world, we started off with 10 vacation days per year (two weeks). After five years, you got 15 days (three weeks). Where I work now, no vacation the first year, 10 days after that, and 15 days after 10 years.
I used to take less than 10 days per year, and let it accrue. They changed to a ‘use or lose’ policy, so I take my 10 days. I can’t take vacation during the first half of the month, and my boss cringes if I ask for two weeks in a row. On January 1st, I’ll get 15 days per year. I have little enough time to use the days I have.
I have to say that I find the idea of no days off in a year utterly alien and something like five not much better. This thread made me check our local law here in Finland and it mandates 2.5 paid days off per month of working, so 30 per year is the bare minimum. I get 42 days. Sick leave doesn’t reduce your vacation days, either.
In the US, employers don’t have to offer any leave. There’s zero legal requirement. But they do offer it, because they would not be able to retain staff otherwise.
Same with sick leave. In Thailand, employers must by law offer 30 days of sick leave per year. But employers can ask for a doctor’s certificate after three days in a row. But doctor’s certificates are easy to obtain for just a few dollars.
As noted, Trump can never be truly off work. It follows him wherever he goes.
For a more common explanation, I get 5 weeks off work a year pooled between vacation, sick and personal days. I tend to use it all for vacation but that can cause problems. I got double pneumonia earlier this summer and had to spend my birthday in the emergency room. The doctors wanted to admit me but I don’t have backup coverage and I would have had to burn through lots of money and vacation days. It worked out with outpatient treatment but it wasn’t ideal. I am fine now.
Still, 5 weeks of maximized vacation is a lot. I go on vacation roughly every two months and I am a master of getting free travel to all sorts of places. The hardest thing is to transition from one to another because as soon as you get back from one, you have to plan for the next one. First world problems.
Why would you say it’s “very rare”, and what is your definition of “very rare”? Remember that the infamous “17 days” includes weekends, which you don’t get to count as “vacation time”. So, please flesh out that argument for us.
Japanese law dictates ten days for the first year, then one more day per year up until 20 days. Japan also has more holidays per year than the US. A typical company will have 20 to 23 holidays per year, plus the time off.
I haven’t read anything negative concerning Trump’s vacation which wasn’t centered around his attacks on Obama for taking time off and for golfing.
I work in a white-collar job; I’ve had at least 3 weeks of vacation (i.e., 15 vacation days) since I reached 5 years of service in my first job; in every job I’ve had since then, if 3 weeks of vacation (at least) weren’t part of the initial job offer, I’ve negotiated to get them.
I currently work at a job where we don’t have a formal vacation / PTO policy (which is a new development); before that new policy started last year, I was at 4 weeks of vacation (but, then, I’m also at a Director level, with 28 years of work experience).
That said, in 28 years, I’ve only taken 2 straight weeks of vacation (which would add up to 17-ish days, including weekends) four times: once for my honeymoon, and two of the other three times were when we took vacations to Europe. It’s more common for me to take a week or so at a time, several times over the course of the year.
I strongly suspect that he’ll spend a lot of the “vacation” in meetings on business deals, schmoozing up political allies (just because you’re playing golf doesn’t mean you aren’t working), and reviewing and approving military operations.
I doubt it’s going to be much more restful than sitting in the White House.
No TVs on the golf course. One could almost wish that he simply decided to lead the country while staying on the course.
Some is also about whether he’s using the presidency to promote his private businesses. Quite a lot of Mar-a-Lago members seemed to have access to him earlier this year, and the membership fee doubled in January. And just this weekend he dropped in on a wedding at the golf club in New Jersey. That’s not inherently problematic, but brochures for weddings at this club have explicitly advertised the possibility that he would stop by if he was in residence.
I think I have been clear that it is my opinion that an American taking two and a half weeks off of work at one time is very rare. I can’t find any statistics on it. How common do you think it is?
I don’t know about “very rare”, but it’s my impression that a couple weeks off at a time is the maximum for the majority of people (I think I’ve taken more vacation time than that just once).
The “chatter” about Trump’s vacation stems largely from 1) generalized anti-Trump sentiment, 2) the time-honored practice of slamming Presidents one doesn’t like for sloughing off on vacation, and 3) Trump’s record thus far for regular leisure excursions that exceed what past Presidents have done, and for which taxpayers foot a sizable bill.