Douglas Adams on the English–American cultural divide over "heroes"

Re:Douglas Adams on the English–American cultural divide ove... by Netcob on Thursday January 22, 2026 @10:32AM (#46720581)

As divided as the US is right now, there's a bunch of things like this that every American seems to agree on without even realizing that it's not the same in most of the world.

For example, "work ethic". Correct me if I'm wrong, but you could write "worked very hard every day" on someone's tombstone, and almost every American seeing it, regardless of politics, will think "That was a good person". Someone to look up to.

Not "did good work", not "their work helped many people", definitely not "lived well". Even "was very productive" sounds too suspicious - being productive is great and all, but a productive person might be doing 10h worth of work in 5h and then call it a day, and that's just unacceptable, so that's not going on your tombstone either.

Just... work hard. The protestant ideal. Going on vacation and being too sick to work is literally the same thing, because it stops you from working hard.

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Re:Douglas Adams on the English–American cultural divide ove... by sanderjd on Thursday January 22, 2026 @10:38AM (#46720664)

There's a pretty big generational divide on this point, I think. I don't think many people under the age of 45 or so still see the "never took a sick day" thing as a laudatory statement.

(Also probably a regional divide too. I worry that I'm wrong about this when it comes to some places on the coasts, but I think it's accurate for most places in the country.)

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Re:Douglas Adams on the English–American cultural divide ove... by Netcob on Thursday January 22, 2026 @04:27PM (#46725325)

That's good news. Hope the kids fight for some basic worker's rights.

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Re:Douglas Adams on the English–American cultural divide ove... by sanderjd on Thursday January 22, 2026 @07:31PM (#46726926)

I mean, in my career (coming up on 20 years), I've never had an employer that gave me a hard time for taking time off. YMMV I guess!

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Re:Douglas Adams on the English–American cultural divide ove... by denkmoon on Thursday January 22, 2026 @11:31PM (#46728441)

How many days off do you take per year? For context we get ~43 legally protected paid days of leave per year in Australia, sounds like the UK is about the same.

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Re:Douglas Adams on the English–American cultural divide ove... by dlivingston on Thursday January 22, 2026 @07:37PM (#46726965)

Anecdotally (under 45; American), I agree that "never took a sick day" is indeed not a laudatory statement, but I also strongly believe that working hard is a prime virtue.

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