Dear North America,
Catch up to Europe in terms of employee vacation time.
plzkthx
Love,
Caitlin
I was talking to a scientific associate of mine in Finland today, and he mentioned he was going to Barcelona for 9 days starting next week. He just got back from a 3-week vacation around other parts of Europe at the beginning of the month.
And no, he hasn’t worked for his company for millions of years and worked his way up the vacation ladder, he’s about my age. Maaaaaybe 2 or 3 years older, max.
I think it would be very nice if our culture embraced the idea that employees can still be productive with more than 2 weeks vacation time. That the economy won’t collapse if we all got to stop and smell the roses a little more often. That work is important, but not more important than actually living life.
I’ve worked for Shaw for 9 days, and I get 3 weeks/year.
Even that’s not an inordinately large amount of vacation (unless you started at Shaw at the very lowest position they have – in which case it would be). I’m talking European countries that have like 6-8 weeks vacation as standard, instead of 2 weeks as standard.