Vacations: Am I Missing the Point?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

So this is why the neighbors’ houses always look so much better than ours!

Mr. Legend and I have always used our vacation days to take vacations, even when we really couldn’t afford them and should have put our time to better use, like fixing the thousand and one little things around the house we’re always meaning to get to. For instance, right now it’s starting to get cold, and we really need to fix the threshhold of the front door so that it won’t leak air this winter. We also need to recaulk some of the roof vents and generally weatherproof all the windows and doors.

Guess what we’re doing this weekend? That’s right, we’re taking off for a four-day vacation in San Francisco. But it’s not just for frivolous sightseeing.

We’re going to a concert, too.

22

I’ve taken my vacation days at home and traveling and love them both.

I don’t like to take my vacation in little chunks like taking off 14 Fridays. When I’m gone from my job for more than 3 days, my co-workers have to actually step up to the plate and do my work. If I’m gone for just a day, their attitude is, “Oh well, she’ll be back tomorrow and can take care of it then”. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

23

I no longer work a job that gives me vacation time, but I did for hte first half of the year. I used one week to go to Disney World with my family and four days to go to New York for my sister’s wedding. A couple of times I used sick days that were going to expire, and stayed home to clean house or bake.

24

I’ve mostly used vacation days for taking “real” vacations, or for when family/friends come to town and I want to spend a day or two with them doing touristy stuff. But so far the most enjoyable use of my vacation days has been last year when I took a week and went … nowhere. Stayed home, cleaned out the back bedroom, got caught up on a whole bunch of stuff I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. I’ve gotta do that again one of these months.

25

Come to think of it, I also have at least 6 floating holidays a year at this job, so I guess I’m really sitting pretty compared to many Americans. I’ve never used my floaters, but the unused ones are paid out at full salary early in the following year. It’ll come in handy, because I mentioned, I’m planning on a real trip for '05.

26

A Brit once told me (I didn’t know him, so I’m not sure how true this is) that when some one asks you “What do you do?” The normal response for a Brit is “Oh, I like to ski, fish, [insert whatever intrest here]”

Where as the normal Amercan response is “I’m a programer (or whatever) at so-n-so company”

The point of what I’m saying is (imo) that “What the fuck are we working for anyway? Do we just work to pay our bills? and if we’re smart enough build up our 401k’s?” To me these are all good RESPONSIBLE things to do but if that’s the total extent of our lives; why even bother?

So yeah I take two vacations a year. One to go skiing the other to spend a week being a total lush on some tropical beach somewhere.

27

Australians in full-time employment generally get at least four weeks’ paid annual leave each year. My employer has a policy of insisting that we take our holidays and not let them accrue too much. So far this year I’ve had four weeks off. In February I took three weeks and went to New York and Paris. In August I took another week and went to Melbourne.

28

Lately all jobs are contract, or temporary, and vacation time represents actual $$$ at the time I leave employment. As such, I don’t dare take any vacation time; as I know it will ultimately be paid out to me as virtual Unemployment Insurance, it’s actual money which I can’t afford to spend. I take my ''vacations" when I’m actually unemployed.

Now, if I could work my mindset around “Sick Time” – I still feel that should be reserved for when one is actually Sick; and as I rarely am, but it’s not paid out, I wind up leaving these contract jobs with oodles of Sick Time which I never took. I never mastered Calling In Sick convincingly, to my detriment.

29

I’ve used my vacation days for real vacations, visits to family, and a lot of times just to goof around the house. I’ve taken entire weeks off just to stay home. Those are a lot of fun. I don’t see any point in taken vacation and then working during the entire time, whether for the company or around the house.

I want to live in the Netherlands. 4-day work weeks and 8 weeks of vacation!? How heavenly.

30

Where I work managers are expected to monitor their staff’s leave and ensure that they are taking enough and that they take a “slab” of leave at some time every year. We are currently working out our Christmas leave - who gets what. You can save up leave for say a childbirth. a honeymoon or an overseas holiday but other than that everyone is kind of expected to have say 2 weeks off say some time. It is considered an important Occupational Health and Safety Issue.

Mind you my working conditions are - 20 recreation leave days a year, 10 days long service leave, 10 public holidays, 24 flex leave days, 2 family leave days (I think) for family responsibilities and who knows how much sick leave - last time I looked I had accumulated about 10 months unused sick leave.

31

I only get five paid vacation days and two paid sick leave days, so I use them very carefully. If I’m taking a vacation day, I’m going out of town. I do a lot of three or four-day weekends. I like splitting it up that way rather than blowing it all in the same week. Though in January of 2002 I did use my whole week at once because we went to Florida. And if I’m using a sick day, you definitely know I’m sick!
While I’d like to have more vacation and sick days, I think with the sick days it’s kind of good to only have a couple. For me, anyway, it cuts down on the temptation to stay home just because I have a headache. I’m much more likely to just buck up and go to work.

32

When we have any money, we take vacation for genuine vacations. Fun stuff. Travelling. Amusement parks. The beach.

When we’re broke, we’ll take vacation to do chores, projects, whatever. Right now, Himself has used all his time, but I had 4 weeks, so I just took two weeks by myself, and used them doing chores and projects.

33

:confused: So, these are all different kind of paid days off? In the Netherlands, family days, long service leave (I can guess what that must be) SL, Flex-leave days, and recreation days all fall under “leave”.= vacation. Public holidays are extra, but we only have six of them or so, including Christmas, New Year and Easter. So maybe the difference is even less then I thought.

We don’t have a number of sick days per year, either. If you’re sick, you call in sick. You then risk a doctor visiting you. If you don’t answer the door, dressed in pyamas, with a runny nose and a fever, you’re in trouble.
OTOH, If you’re sick, you can stay home as long as you need to get better; that doesn’t mean you use up vacation days. I nerver understood the line 'I’ll call in sick today" from movies, but I do now.

34

I’ve never technically had a full-time job, so I don’t get vacation days (although my one-day-a-week newpaper job turned into 60 hours a week when I filled in for somebody during the summers, I didn’t get benefits).

My mom, however, uses her week’s worth of vacation days every year to take a whole week off, usually around Christmas.

35

My company gives a week of vacation after six months of employment, and another week after a year. Sick time is separate (I have a ton accrued cause I’m not sick often) and I have one extra personal day. I’ve been there for about ten months now, and I used two vacation days in August to go to my cousin’s wedding in Mexico. I’m using another couple days in November to spend Thanksgiving with my family in CA. For those keeping score at home, that leaves me with two paid days off, but on January 1, I’ll get another week. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, if anything. I have all kinds of ideas about where I’d like to go, what I’d like to see, but realistically, I don’t have much money to throw around on a trip right now. I’d love to take a week long trip to…well, anywhere, but at the moment it’s not really feasible.

36

[QUOTE=MaastrichtOTOH, If you’re sick, you can stay home as long as you need to get better; that doesn’t mean you use up vacation days. I nerver understood the line 'I’ll call in sick today" from movies, but I do now.[/QUOTE]

Well, sick and vacation time are separate. At my company, you get a certain number of hours of sick time per paycheck (every two weeks). I can’t even remember how much it is because I haven’t used much of them, but right now I think I have about 30 hours of sick time accrued. I’m not really sure what would happen if you were really seriously ill and went over that allotted time.

37

Just to expand on this a bit: in Canada minimum annual vacation requirements are regulated by each province, and they can vary from province to province. I think that Sunspace is speaking to the Ontario “rules”. But in Saskatchewan, for example, after employment of one year those covered by the provincial labour standards law are entitled to three weeks vacation. After ten years they are entitled to four. Additional vacation leave and/or other types of “paid time off” may also exist.

38

Reading this thread has just confirmed something to me - I am likely to never again work in the US permanently. You guys have it rough there…

I work for the same company now as when I lived in the US, and there I got 10 paid days off per year, with unlimited sick days. When I lived in the US, I would have to take vacation days to do things like doctor’s appointments, dentist appointments, etc… basically anytime I was away from the office.

I get 25 base paid days per year in the UK, plus ‘bank holidays’ which for the non-UK folk mean basically government holidays (ie Christmas, 2 days for Easter, 1 Monday in May, etc…). I also get unlimited sick days, and can purchase extra holiday days as part of my benefits package. My work makes me travel around quite a bit, so I spend a lot of work days actually travelling to / from customers and conferences. I also can telecommute, so I am ‘working from home’ 2-3 days per week (like today).

Telecommuting does have priviledges - I don’t have to take holiday anymore for things like ‘being home to meet the plumber’ or going to the Doctor, especially since I can telecommute most days.

A guy I work with is off for 6 weeks of paid paternity leave. Another woman I work with is off for 1 YEAR of adoption leave. Hers is part paid, I believe, something like 50%. Our office effectively closes for two weeks around the holidays; people do work, but almost no-one shows up in the office - everyone telecommutes or just plain doesn’t show up. The support folks have to do shift work during that time, but they get paid time off for being on call and for working any nights / weekends. One support guy I know has like 50 days of holiday because of the number of times he’s had to work nights or weekends, and is about to piss off to South Africa for a solid month.

What I have done this year:
2 days travelling around southern England (the Dorset coast is really quite lovely, but you kinda have to hunt for pretty spots, as it’s also filled with trashy ‘holiday camps’)
1 day for a long weekend sailing cross-channel to Cherbourg (twice)
14 days backpacking around the islands in Croatia (so beautiful I almost didn’t come back - everyone should go immediately, as it’s dirt cheap except for flights and the people I met there were the best I have met in Europe! As well as the prettiest towns in Europe - Dubrovnik Old Town is ‘Oh my God!’ beautiful)
1 week skiing in the south of France with mates for a ‘lads abroad’ fest - nothing is quite so amusing as 5 drunk guys, from the US and Australia, trying to speak German to French people and wondering loudly why they don’t speak German and demanding the French to say thank you! Ok, maybe you had to be there…

Since I carried over 4.5 days from last year, I still have 9.5 days to blow between now and the end of the year, so I am going to Prague for a long weekend, and plan on going to France for a long weekend somewhere in there as well, and maybe go for some sun somewhere for a 5-day weekend.

Yes, you can be envious. No, you can’t have my life.