Re:Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy...
by aidenn0 on Tuesday January 03, 2017 @11:17AM
(#13310141)
First of all, most low-skill jobs just don't come with PTO (paid time off, i.e. vacation). As an example, when I was working retail, if I wanted to take time off, I could, but got no pay for the time I was gone. The same was true if I was sick.
When we are talking about "guilt" for time off, it depends largely on the company. At the very highest levels, usually they don't like having everyone store up a lot of vacation, because that's a liability on the books (if you lay someone off with vacation time stored up, you usually have to pay them for it).
Therefore most of the guilt comes from lower level management or peers. When you are in a team of 6 and everyone is overworked, you feel guilty if you leave for two weeks, knowing that everyone remaining will be working 20% harder. For the same reason you will see people checking their work e-mail hourly while on vacation.
It's a cultural problem. This is why you may have seen some US tech companies advertising "minimum required vacation days:" if you are required to take the vacation, then you can't feel guilty for it.
When we are talking about "guilt" for time off, it depends largely on the company. At the very highest levels, usually they don't like having everyone store up a lot of vacation, because that's a liability on the books (if you lay someone off with vacation time stored up, you usually have to pay them for it).
Therefore most of the guilt comes from lower level management or peers. When you are in a team of 6 and everyone is overworked, you feel guilty if you leave for two weeks, knowing that everyone remaining will be working 20% harder. For the same reason you will see people checking their work e-mail hourly while on vacation.
It's a cultural problem. This is why you may have seen some US tech companies advertising "minimum required vacation days:" if you are required to take the vacation, then you can't feel guilty for it.