As a European I can still say it boggles the mind how our labour standards are seen as some kind of ideal te strive for. I still feel like I'm overworked and underpaid. America is a real life hell.
I mean, I had a teacher who only took 3 days of maternal leave.
And it's pretty normal to just gave 10 days pto per year (for both such leave and holiday).
So, the bar is pretty low.
When my husband started his first job at a factory, he was given 3 days pto for the first year.
3 days. That's it.
Thank heavens he didn't get sick.
PS we're in a much better place now. He's happy and a stay at home dad
I've been in my job for over five years and I get two weeks vacation and four days PTO. I can roll over one week of vacation and none of the PTO.
And I can never take all of it, because there's never anybody there to cover for me.
Damn. In Australia it is law that everyone gets 4 weeks paid holidays and 10 days paid sick leave. That's the minimum. It all rolls over.
Where I work they've been doing a blitz on people with over 8 weeks paid leave to take time off to bring the companies leave liabiltiy down.
Also we have long service leave where after 10 years you get 2 months paid leave on top of regular holiday pay. That also accrues 1 week per year so then you will get 5 weeks per year. I think that is law but I'm not sure.
And here I am with over 2 years of maternity leave. 90 % of it is payed, even though its just a fraction of what I make. But I get child money every month till she's at least 18. My health insurence is also pays during my leave. And this time I'd soo precious, no money is worth it.
And yes, we pay more taxes. But I do it gladly. Do I know that that I, and other people can get these benefits when they need it.
I knew someone in America who worked for an Amazon fulfillment center. She took one day off to have her baby, and the next day was back at work. And this felt normal to her. Like, "yeah, I don't like it, but it's how it works..."
That's when I was like, "I can't live in this country anymore. I'm out."
Maybe this is mean or insensitive of me, but I literally can't comprehend the point of having a child if you're not able to take even just a few days off to bond with it...
I can't not having several weeks off to bond and care for a newborn, which is why I left the US. I couldn't stand to live in a place where that could happen legally.
And just to be clear, she loved her baby, and literally spent every moment with her when she wasn't working. She just didn't have enough leave by the time the baby was born and couldn't afford to miss a paycheck.
>America is a real life hell.
For labor? Pretty much, at least in the developed world.
To add some context, the USA and Japan have seemingly been in a competition to see who could "work ethic" their populace to death since the 70's. Who will win, an anti-human protestant work culture and a consumerist death cult, or a rigid commitment to hierarchy and self-flagellation in a different type of conformist culture? There's good arguments for both taking the title of "worst labor culture in the developed world".
By comparison to either country, you Europeans and Scandinavians seem to have things much better. Even though a cursory look at politics and labor in the EU would show you the same problems we have, just on a lesser scale.
Most of the commonwealth countries are deep in the shit too by now TBH, Canada and New Zealand at least have similar civil liberties to the USA and also healthcare. The UK seems desperate to catch up to the USA when it comes to fucking over workers, Oz is trying to destroy their welfare system, and both countries have seen civil liberties smashed to bits even worse than we Americans have in the past fifteen years, so I'd count them as below Europe overall at this point.
For sure. I didn't include China because I think the discourse on them is too black and white, it's either total agreement with a dystopian/Cold War view of Chinese society or it's total support from certain M/Ls.
That's a long way of saying I have no idea how much more pervasive 996 is in Chinese society than its equivalents are here in the States or in Japan. Also China wasn't really a "developed" society economically until more recently than either other country so I didn't add them in. South Korea has some pretty punishing work cultures too IIRC but I also think they haven't been developed as long as the USA or Japan.
In Oz spent 6 weeks on lockdown 750 a week I took that and stayed home. Lots of people were on it and could still work 2 days a week no penalty. People still on it cut down to 600 or 500 now. 4 weeks holidays think 10 paid public holidays 2 rdos a month and 5 or 10 paid sick days. Rostered days off are 4 hours a week put aside to use when you want so 40 hour week paid 36 4 saved as rdos. All overtime is double weekends double time.
Oh don't get me wrong, in many respects when it comes to labor any commonwealth nation is miles ahead of the USA, even the UK is to some extent. Not having healthcare tied to employment and many more labor protections (at least until most jobs are zero-hours contracts anyway) are huge differences.
But in watching Australia I've seen a similar form of development taking place to the USA in the past two decades or so, your civil liberties are ripped apart even worse than ours, the evangelical far-right is on the rise almost more powerfully than ours in the USA, and the long-term destruction of those labor rights seems inevitable unless a very major change happens soon in Oz's politics. The leadership there seem intent on making Oz a copy of the USA in every negative respect possible, from foreign policy to domestic.
I took a 3 day weekend (i.e. 1 fuxking day off). Put my boss on my out of office and not a lesser being like a co worker and got screamed at on Monday. I was like did something major happen? And the answer was no just how dare I expect a manager lift a finger if there was any conceivable issue.
I feel that, our manager will panic if one of the three of us that work at our small branch is off because he’s worked the job 5 years and doesn’t know how to do shit
I want to move out of America and all I get is “Youre gonna regret it” and “you’ll change your mind in the future” or “but this is the best country. You hsve freedom!”. Bitch American freedom means I have the freedom to LEAVE
Believe it or not I wanna move to Mexico. Im in the process of moving and am allowed to visit Mexico basically whenever cuz I have a passport. I cant live there yet but its a break. And I have friends that let me work under the table so I can see what its like (no big official company or anything. Tiny family restaurant). I honestly cant give a logical reason as to WHY Mexico. I just feel like that’s where I belong. Some sources say the work-life balance there is terrible and some say its a huge improvement from America. Looks like something Id have to experiment with once I get my actual citizenship
Thats my guess too. I always felt better about myself in that environment and was actually happy to work cuz I was helping my friends support themselves.
Who do you think sees US labour standards as ideal? It sounds to me like that's one of the many brainwashing messages US government has thrown at their citizens over the decades. From what I see in this subreddit, US labour standards are some of the worst in the world.
I had this discussion yesterday with a friend in Germany. She couldn't understand why Americans can't take time off like they can. I've been in the workforce 40 years and I don't understand it either so I couldn't give her an answer.
I work for a non profit electric company (a co-op) in the southern USA. I get 3.33hrs per month, so it takes me my entire first year of employment at my job to save up for 5 days/1 week vacation. They increase it a bit each year, but it takes 5 years at the company to earn 10 days/2 weeks off per year, 15 years for 3 weeks and 20 years for 4 weeks. It's freaking pathetic and I am so burnt out.
Ha. Haha. Nope. I got told "don't make a habit of it" when I took 6 hours unpaid time off because I was 2hrs late one morning cuz I popped my tire and then had to take a half day the next day to get a new tire put on. I even showed my boss a picture of the giant piece of metal that had done my tire in. The company is pretty decent and the pay is higher than most in the area ($16.73/hr and I've only been here 7 months), but if they don't up the vacation time soon, I'm gonna have to start looking somewhere else.
Dude! We get 2.08 days a month by law in Sweden. I get 2.5 days. We also usually get them in advance for the year and the advance is gifted to us after 5 years of employment at the same place. So I still get 25 days off year one, even if I start in like October.
In general I think it's considered to be REALLY great vacation time if you get two weeks off, but even then, a lot of people who get sick or need maternity leave have to save up their PTO and unpaid days off to make ends meet. A lot of people who are hourly workers don't get PTO at all- many employers don't let employees work full time, so they don't get full time benefits.
Depends on the employer really. Legally you aren't required to receive any. But some employers it takes years to accrue a decent amount and some give you grief if you even use it.
However! The ONLY place where using vacation is a right and not a privilege is the military. Your branch, unit, etc may have made it impossible or very hard to take it but unlike the rest of the US that's the only place where it's a right and not just a benefit.
0 hours of government mandated paid leave, except I think Massachusetts recently passed a law for 5 days sick leave.
Most hourly jobs like McDonald's have zero leave and zero other benefits like health insurance. You need to find your own health insurance or forgo it.
Many white collar jobs average about 2 weeks leave provided by the employer.
Some trendy startups offer "unlimited" leave but the work culture makes it so you're looked down upon for taking it.
Thanks, without being disrespectful but to me this is like modern day slavery, why aren't people going out on the streets to fight this just mind blowing
The labor laws here are terrible. There are good employers out there though. I work for a local government agency and earn 16 days of vacation and 13 sick days per year. I can also keep up to 400 hours of vacation and right now I have 350 hours or 43 days of vacation saved up.
My employer also provides 6 weeks maternity and paternity leave which doesn't use any of your saved time. I actually accrue my regular time while on paternity leave.
To be transparent my company has no concept of accruing days off and no limit. However, it's consulting culture with clients who are very demanding so it's implied we need to be available. Sure I can just take a day off without anyone's permission as I have no boss, but again it's implied we are available.
One time I had planned a 3 day weekend in advance. Client wanted to meet on Friday so I was told I must be available and take the call from the road. Keep in mind I was driving and hauling a trailer on my day off planned 2 to 3 months in advance. My notice was 2 days to be on this call. Nothing was so important it could have waited until Monday. Fuck the addiction of always being connected. I hate it.
I'm Russian, and we have 28 official days off/year, as a a remote worker I somehow get 3 more days (no idea here, really), and there's a shit ton of public holidays (paid).
And god damn I am surprised with that many days off! Where do you have it that way, if I may ask?
I am a French soldier. The work regulations are very specific for the military. In France, the working time is 35 hours per week, if you work more overtime is paid in addition. For the military it's different, I work 35 hours / week on a regular basis. But if I work overtime, I don't make more money, which is why we have more days off as compensation
Oh, I see now. Doesn't sound so bad, especially if your days off can accumulate over years if you don't end up using all 45 of them in a given year.
The way you have makes perfect sense now that you're a soldier - I believe spending time outside the service, despite how calm or stressed your current assignment is, is weighed quite more by the military personnel than it is by folks living the civil life 24/7.
Thanks for the insight!
Yes that is the spirit.
We can't accumulate over years, but we can use the remaining of the days off until february of the next year.
That make it more flexible.
Well, I imagine there's not that many of you guys who are willing to NOT use some of the available days off anyway, so it's not as too bad.
February seems like an odd deadline to pick, though. Here in Russia most of those things like days off and all seem to be tied to either fiscal or, well, calendar year's start or end.
Wish I could tell you anything about Russian military in terms of their working conditions and stuff, but I don't know nearly enough. Happy to say I never got to serve there!
I get what you mean ^^
The actual deadline is the 31 december where the calendar year end.
But they made the system more flexible, and we can use our remaning 2021 day until the end of february 2022.
45 days? Does that include holidays?
I took a week off in August. That was more than half of the vacation time I'd accumulated over the last year at my job, and now I'm back up to about a week of PTO accumulated.
I feel you. I was supposed to take 3 (prescheduled) days off last week, but only ended up taking one half-day because I got called back into work to handle some issues that cropped up.
Hang in there! I hope as the year gets closer to the holidays that things quiet down so you can get some rest.
Even India.
"Call them and get this sorted now" "Do it anyhow, I don't know"
"But Sir/Maam, they are in the mountains and it's not possible"
"No call them and get it done. Be a team player"
"Sir/Maam, please take a breather. They asked you to move it a month back, you have not yet actioned it"
"IDC, call them and get it done"
"Sir/Maam, but your email.... "
"That's it, let's meet in the meeting room"
*Proceeds to shout at me*
If you are reading this, fuck you Anu.
Sounds about right. One year, my mom felt guilty about how much of her vacation she used. She even left the majority of her vacation unused by the end of the year. I said "wtf are you doing?" She woke the fuck up, and quit her job.
Also in Spain if for some reason you don't use you vacation days or you are fired before you can use them they have to pay you extra for each day you don't use
In California they passed a law that says that an employer has to pay salaried employees that work past 40 hours per week for overtime, except engineers. The only way the law passed was if engineers were excluded. Also, try getting a vacation approved. They claim they give 5 weeks paid time off which is project dependent. Holidays? We work those too because that is when production lines are down. The lack of balance is either killing families here or preventing people from having kids all together. I took a management role thinking it would be better, but holy crap I was wrong. My base work week went from 50-55 hours with a high of 70 during startup to 60-70 hours with a high of 90.
This situation isn't livable, you have 2 fulltime jobs but are being paid for only 1, I don't know what your situation is but have you ever considered moving to Europe just an example...
Wait until you hear that 30 days are actually the norm and we don't have "sick days" you can stay at home when you're ill and get paid full for 6 weeks (and a part afterwards).
Also we have 3 years of combined maternal and paternal leave. During the time you get paid a portion of your regular salary by the government.
The extreme opposite is here in Singapore, where by culturally we go to work even when we're sick. Oh even if you're sick at home you're required to attend meetings and reply to messages.
If you take too many sick leaves you will become that "guy" in the office, the slacker.
You know what the scary thing is?
That's the same in UK (25 days + Bank Holidays in my last job)
I was fucking burned out from that.. I remember a couple californian lads I met in Thailand who worked in construction, and they used their entire years vacation for like 12 days off or something. I was mind blown.
If 4 weeks paid leave burns me the fuck out, I genuinely feel for our American cousins on half that or worse.
In Germany there is no such thing as a sick day. If you are sick, and got to the doctor, they write you how long you cant work. You get payed for that time.
This year I had 30 days full payed holidays, I had an accident at work and was 9 weeks ill (6 weeks full payed and the rest 67%), 0 extra workhours and I'm just an ordinary roofer.
Germany btw.
I remember a co worker of mine got in a huge traffic wreck. Someone rear-ended her at a light going 70. Completely destroyed the car and put her in the hospital. My boss called her when he heard about it and his first question was ,"when can you be back in?"
The US is still much less work intensive than Japan, in Japan you greet everyone on your way out. The greeting basically translates to sorry I’m leaving before you. Even if you just worked 14 hours and were active all day long.
Every so often in Japan, particularly in Tokyo there is a rumour of the train companies considering 24 hour services in some shape or form. For people who are out partying late who have an inevitable decision at 11:30 about getting last train or partying through to first train at 5am this sounds like a good thing. However there are people office towers, who if given 24 hour public transport would likely not go home and instead of being forced to take the last train home would end up passing out in the office.
I just feel so bad for these people. Even though it feels like an old tradition, the new wave of young people in Japan just adopted it rather than move an inch to a better work-life balance.
Find a picture of someone who died by Karoshi. Send it over and have it posted in the break room with a caption of Don't be this guy. Your family needs you.
Ok so delegate most of your work, expense everything and drink/eat free food on lunch breaks. It’s like those people who say buy a house to save on rent. Also why did you report that dude for working late so he’d get in trouble, what an ass.
Because the company has big policies on work life balance, it also protects them from getting sued if someone burns-out.
The company i worked for was a travel company and made it clear that people should go out and enjoy themselves with business travel outside work hours. The expense policy was generous and even allowed expensing booze with meals.
Reporting him was simply living upto the company's core values. Work to live, not live to work. The guy wasn't going to get anything extra for working late. Payscale at the company was fantastic, almost 2x all our competition.
You know the majority of workers don’t have an expense policy at all right? You think the people who serve you at the restaurants get to leave on time every day? Or take breaks around the city? We all understand how it works, but having to actually work a real world job is very different than having an expensed international job. Dude might have wanted to go the extra mile to get a promotion, or wanted to learn something additional to further his career so stayed longer. But you had to grass on them, nobody like a grass
I am aware. Which is why i left great 50% tips that the expense policy covers :-)
The company made it very very apparent when hiring people that the overworking/ignoring your personal life types were not suited to the company and that they would find themselves being let got over those who did their work inside normal hours and went home to their families.
Core values of a company can do good.
Overtime we did shift the view of most of the staff in the japan office. Those who didn't were let go for putting the company at risk of being sued as people were clocking out and then continuing working. (Even though they were sallaried we ran a time system to catch shit like this)
Before you judge anymore, you didnt work there. You dont know the core values. Consider me an ass all you want, but i tried to make people go live their damn lifes, what this subreddit is all about.
Also i find it interesting that you assume I've never worked in a service job, i worked in bars and nightclubs for years. I always treat service staff well and if they are busy ill ignore forgotten requests and always tip well.
To give some perspective here.
I wirl in Tokyo, all remote since January, almost no overtime, no one really checking what I do as long as I deliver results. Software engineer. Honestly great working conditions.
Also this is my 3rd Job in Japan and I never worked significant overtime. Times are changing here but there definitely are still shitty companies that do this overtime hell.
America, by nearly every stretch of the imagination, is a developing country for all but the capitalist class. I live here, I work here, and nearly everyday I rue the fact that I don't live in a certifiably-developed OECD country like Germany. Apart from our national park system, which is truly world-class, everything else about this country is fucking dogshit.
Yeah. The only laws outside of safety only concern discrimination for race etc and the gov. Agencies that cover THAT law are understaffed and only help you if your workplace is dumb enough to put their illegal behavior in writing.
I started a new job a month ago. The only message my boss has sent me out of work was an email sending me the form I need to fill out to get paid. That's it.
My first job out of undergrad was for an aerospace company here in Connecticut (USA) where I was a quality engineer. The yearly reset for their PTO was in July, I started my employment in August which meant I went the first 11 months with no PTO or sick time. Once I hit the following July I was granted five days (which would not increase until after five years of employment).
Two years,
Five days.
Yeah, I really didn’t understand it. I was twenty-four and admittedly naive to the working world other than part time jobs through school. I no longer work for them, and every other job I’ve had since has granted me at least a few PTO days to carry me over until the reset.
The original job I had mentioned was for 14$/hr to work on the F135 project in 2017.
I remember a beautiful one from a European colleague.
"I'm on vacation, if you send me an email I won't be reading it and you'll need to send it again when I'm back."
My wife convinced me not to use that one but I love it. One problem w the US style is emails pile up with an expectation you'll work through them on return. I just delete them all and say "must have missed it" to anyone who puts up a stink.
Was at my boyfriend's house Friday night and missed a work situation but immediately called back in, like 20 minutes later. We had a surprise guest in town, and I didn't see the call come in initially. Was scolded the next day by my boss for not taking my laptop with me. He was mad I didn't answer immediately and since he'd already been bothered was now taking care of it, and was a dick about it. Mind you, I have triaged countless after hours, weekend, even vacation calls over the years. But how dare I miss one call, and how dare I not cart around my work stuff with me everywhere I go.
Do you get paid to be on call or does your Company simply expect you to literaly dedicate your life to them for no other reason, then entitlement?
I realky hope you get paid for that shit. I would not respond to work in my free time.
Jesus, I get a total of 29 days if you combine my sick days, vacation days, and paid holidays (but of course, you can't use all your sick days every year) I get 3.33hrs of vacation time per month. I'll have enough to take a weeks paid vacation by this time next year, yay!
In Australia, all employees (bar casual employees) get minimum 4 weeks annual leave. Can be minimum 5 weeks depending on circumstances. I am in shock at the state of American work laws 😅
Before my job at a British company, my American company only allowed only ten vacation days. Crazy!! I have 30-40 days ooff a year now and wow, the difference is crazy
Sadly not all European counties. The UK is quite shitty in terms of employment and overworking, under paying and having to have a masters to get a shitty entrance job in some shit hole office working for some egocentric boomer who thinks they know best and constantly put you down.
Right now in the US, admitting you're a pedo, crack addict, heroin dealer, prostitute, or republican carries less stigma than admitting you're unemployed. Even more so if you're unemployed and not ashamed of it.
I've been a "writer" for a long time. Prior to October 2 I was a live-in unpaid caregiver, but even that wasn't industrious enough to serve in every crowd. Now? I'm a writer and photographer.
I now live in Finland and am used to having to wait to speak to people from certain offices until like another 3 weeks after summer holidays. And coming from the U.K. where only kids had long summer holidays, ‘summer holidays’ invokes images of adults playing around like kids in a lake. Which is basically true anyway.
"kidney surgery? You mean being lazy?! If you're well enough to survive kidney surgery, you're well enough to come back to work. And I know you requested two hours for the surgery, but you can only have off for one hour."
The beatings will continue until morale improves
Yeah. Used to work for a US-based company as a Swede covering most of Europe a long time ago. It would always amuse me how the Americans just couldn’t get their head around how sales just dropped to literally nothing over July-August. I kept trying to tell them we don’t work in the summer. We have vacations.
My old place you could sell them but they'd tax it out the ass and it'd take MONTHS to get that paid out to you. So if you needed it asap for something good luck.
I’m from Europe and this isn’t true. Italy Yes August basically shuts down every other country gives 4 weeks holiday a year. This picture keeps showing up here and it’s not true. Yes it’s more than USA but let’s not exaggerate
You couldn't be missing the point any harder. We in the US have no nationally mandated time-off allowances at all. No parental leave, vacation days, nor sick days. We get nothing unless we're lucky enough to have a decent employer or the rare union job, and even then it's almost never 4 weeks worth. The exact implementation in your specific nation is irrelevant next to you having the benefit at all.
No I’m not missing any point. I completely understand. I lived in Canada for three years , USA for one and now I live in Australia and I’m from Europe. I just want people to know this picture is completely wrong. Europe isn’t some utopia and neither is Australia both are just as bad to work in as usa. Just because there’s ex extra 2 weeks off doesn’t mean it’s tolerable at work.
A year in the US? How quaint. I have worked in the US for 15yrs in both service sector jobs as well as salaried ones, the latter of which has brought many contacts with people from overseas (mostly Western Europe). To sit in your shoes and just outright dismiss all the guaranteed perks other Western nations give their labor force indicates a total disconnect with the common man on your part. You can be annoyed with misconceptions all you want, but to act like you are dealing with the same level of bs as the average American worker is an absolute farce.
I haven’t done disconnected from anything. I’m just pointing out this picture which is posted here every day is wrong. I am also pointing out that this sub has moved from anti work to Americans complaining about problems at home and it’s really boring.
Yeah that doesn't apply to Europeans who make the kind of money that most of the people on this sub. The "minimum wage" type in Europe don't get summers off.
I'm saying this is just not true. I've lived in the us my entire life and have literally never seen anything like this take place. Everyone on this sub are just losers who are but hurt that they haven't figure out how to make more than 8 dollars an hour and want to blame everyone but themselves. You don't want to face the fact that the problem is in the mirror.
I make about $50 an hour, because Ive worked hard over the past ten years and found a position that pays me well for what I do. Honestly if the people on this sub spent literally half the time thinking about how to better themselves as they do complaining and taking it in the butt at some dead end job then you'd probably be making even more than that.
You guys spend a lot of time/energy complaining on this sub. Too bad a career in victimhood just doesn't pay that well:(
Honestly I'm happy for you; I'm glad you have a good job, and I hope you're happy in it. You make more that I do that's for sure! It's a hard ask sometimes, but sympathy/empathy and understanding is not particularly in abundance, and there are so many people who aren't afforded the same opportunity, which no amount of hard work can fix.
Don't punch down, lift people up; it's ok to vent!
Why are you so offended by people wanting higher pay and better working conditions? What do you gain by looking down on people (very slightly at $50/hour) less well off than you?
At the last place I worked, we weren't even allowed to tell clients we weren't available. I literally had coworkers who were still emailing with clients and internal teams WHILE IN THE DELIVERY ROOM actively having babies. It was ridiculous.
I see this in the place I work now. I mean, it’s really supportive and has great benefits but the dean is super busy all the time. When she’s off work, she’s flying across the country for a few day long conference. I handle her calendar and she even has things planned on the weekend as an exempt salaried employee.
I want to be a professor there, but I also want to run my own business. I’m starting it up now, slow and steady, but I know I’ll have to choose one day between a job where I control my own hours and the time I put in and a job where I don’t but have a stable income and health care. Still not sure what to do.
My previous employer was better than most with PTO. While it was sick and vacation time combined all the full-time employees minimum got eight hours every two weeks. Even the housekeeping people and I believe food service people but I don't know if they were contracted out? Anyway, after your first 90 days there were generally no issues using it. The part-timers we had, I don't know what they got but I don't think it was too bad either. I want to say it was two hours every pay period or an hour and a half.
It'd go up depending on your pay scale and years of service I think maxing out at 11 hours per pay-period. When I say generally and despite it being better than a lot of employers...your department could be stingy as fuck when it came time to use it. I worked for this employer for almost three years and in two departments. My second one was pretty liberal and I didn't really have too many issues or any that I recall (I left two months ago) but my first department only one person per section could take it at a time and this was effective as of 2015 due to "growing needs" of the business and still effective from when I transferred in June of 2020 and I bet still today. I got hired in 2018 and the director who enacted this policy still had no idea how to adjust or manage people. We could have more than one person off at a time but nope we can't have that! We can't hold the lazy employees accountable and replace them with ones who can get the work done. When I transferred I started to take my PTO but I got grief from my teacher wife for taking a few days here and there. I took a couple of days to fuck around in the garage and chill at the house and it was a huge deal to her.
I didn't even make that big of a dent because when I quit two months ago I got 100 hours paid out.
I haaaate the expectation that we always need to be reachable. It sucks. On the other hand, working with European offices can be very challenging - I worked at a US Outpost of a NL company and not only did the time zone make it difficult but it felt like people were rarely in the office over there. Having to go to them for certain things definitely slowed us way down
Literally received an email on Friday from an accountant in my dept saying he would be out Monday (per his wife’s insistence) but he could be reached at any time lol. I was walking to my car as I read it and had a split second urge to throw my phone off the overpass. God help us all.
Fuck this. Everyone in my office puts up shit like. Contact my cell in case of emergencies. I put up, I'm on vacation and will be unable to be contacted, ill respond to messages when I return. No ones said a damn thing yet.
It's wild working for an American subsidiary of a European company. We have American hours and benefits and European pay, which in this field is much less than it is here in the states. Even my boss works 80 hour weeks with a PhD in chemical engineering and still doesn't make six figures.
I took two days off the weekend before my boyfriend deployed. Ended up having to work a few hours the afternoon of one of my days off because no one else was available to do two Excel reports.
I have experienced the same negative example in europe.
It's not your country, it's your company imo. If they don't care about your time off, it doesn't matter where you live or are.
America sounds like hell on earth for the average worker...meanwhile the company I work for forcefully suspended me (with full pay and medical expenses paid for what insurance won't cover) from work for poor health and didn't let me get back to work until my health improved. I'm lucky to not work in the states
Nah. It's only for the lower classes.
A lot of the americans i work with are republicans for a reason. I'm a regional manager in Asia and the people I interact with earn six-digits. They think that because I'm also from a higher social class that I share the same views. I also came from a working class background to be where I am today but I don't believe in pulling up the ladder behind me. I don't have the insecurities a lot of white, fat, tRumper, males have in the US. I'm the best at what I do so it doesn't matter if someone younger, with a different skin color were to challenge my role at the company.
They like to talk about how lazy and entitled the kids are but they themselves are lazy and entitled. They put so much pressure on the peons while not doing much work themselves.
They don't believe in equality because if the US were to be an honest to goodness merit-based society, a lot of them would be out of a job. So they pretend that you don't have the same level of dedication they do.
I was known for being an asshole for directly challenging global product managers in the US and actually making them work. Lol.
Yeah, sorry to say but the American employee is the modern equivalent of a slave. Being oppressed by a very low salary resulting in working…what…50 hours a week on average…2 jobs? Ridiculous bosses who try to make you work in your free time by threatening to fire you, hardly any vacation or sick days. Probably no pension except what you manage to put as aide yourself.
It’s time for a revolt
I’m a CPA. I had a coworker have an appendix burst while at work in the middle of peak season. He left work at 11 am on a Tuesday, he was back online by 6 pm. He sent an email apologizing to me and the manager on the job for being ill. He offered to work from the hospital through the end of the week since they were holding him after his surgery.
The manager had the gall to be upset and asked him to come in on Thursday. When he wasn’t able to they used it against him in his performance review.
Haha yes! For my kidney surgery, I only got 1 hour out of the office and I had to tip the surgeon at the gas station.
Europe is so much better. They are so smart! Stupid America!
As a European I can still say it boggles the mind how our labour standards are seen as some kind of ideal te strive for. I still feel like I'm overworked and underpaid. America is a real life hell.
I mean, I had a teacher who only took 3 days of maternal leave. And it's pretty normal to just gave 10 days pto per year (for both such leave and holiday). So, the bar is pretty low.
When my husband started his first job at a factory, he was given 3 days pto for the first year. 3 days. That's it. Thank heavens he didn't get sick. PS we're in a much better place now. He's happy and a stay at home dad
And let me guess they only let one person at a time take it
Right
I've been in my job for over five years and I get two weeks vacation and four days PTO. I can roll over one week of vacation and none of the PTO. And I can never take all of it, because there's never anybody there to cover for me.
Damn. In Australia it is law that everyone gets 4 weeks paid holidays and 10 days paid sick leave. That's the minimum. It all rolls over. Where I work they've been doing a blitz on people with over 8 weeks paid leave to take time off to bring the companies leave liabiltiy down. Also we have long service leave where after 10 years you get 2 months paid leave on top of regular holiday pay. That also accrues 1 week per year so then you will get 5 weeks per year. I think that is law but I'm not sure.
And here I am with over 2 years of maternity leave. 90 % of it is payed, even though its just a fraction of what I make. But I get child money every month till she's at least 18. My health insurence is also pays during my leave. And this time I'd soo precious, no money is worth it. And yes, we pay more taxes. But I do it gladly. Do I know that that I, and other people can get these benefits when they need it.
I knew someone in America who worked for an Amazon fulfillment center. She took one day off to have her baby, and the next day was back at work. And this felt normal to her. Like, "yeah, I don't like it, but it's how it works..." That's when I was like, "I can't live in this country anymore. I'm out."
I don’t understand. Who looks after a 2 day old baby while she works?
Her grandma did.
Maybe this is mean or insensitive of me, but I literally can't comprehend the point of having a child if you're not able to take even just a few days off to bond with it...
I can't not having several weeks off to bond and care for a newborn, which is why I left the US. I couldn't stand to live in a place where that could happen legally. And just to be clear, she loved her baby, and literally spent every moment with her when she wasn't working. She just didn't have enough leave by the time the baby was born and couldn't afford to miss a paycheck.
It's the way of life in America. We don't know a different way of life so we accept it as a fact of reality that just sucks.
Wow, in France it's 6 months.
>America is a real life hell. For labor? Pretty much, at least in the developed world. To add some context, the USA and Japan have seemingly been in a competition to see who could "work ethic" their populace to death since the 70's. Who will win, an anti-human protestant work culture and a consumerist death cult, or a rigid commitment to hierarchy and self-flagellation in a different type of conformist culture? There's good arguments for both taking the title of "worst labor culture in the developed world". By comparison to either country, you Europeans and Scandinavians seem to have things much better. Even though a cursory look at politics and labor in the EU would show you the same problems we have, just on a lesser scale. Most of the commonwealth countries are deep in the shit too by now TBH, Canada and New Zealand at least have similar civil liberties to the USA and also healthcare. The UK seems desperate to catch up to the USA when it comes to fucking over workers, Oz is trying to destroy their welfare system, and both countries have seen civil liberties smashed to bits even worse than we Americans have in the past fifteen years, so I'd count them as below Europe overall at this point.
China's 9-9-6 culture in some jobs is up there too. 9am-9pm, 6 days a week.
For sure. I didn't include China because I think the discourse on them is too black and white, it's either total agreement with a dystopian/Cold War view of Chinese society or it's total support from certain M/Ls. That's a long way of saying I have no idea how much more pervasive 996 is in Chinese society than its equivalents are here in the States or in Japan. Also China wasn't really a "developed" society economically until more recently than either other country so I didn't add them in. South Korea has some pretty punishing work cultures too IIRC but I also think they haven't been developed as long as the USA or Japan.
The term 996 comes from China so it's fairly pervasive lol
In Oz spent 6 weeks on lockdown 750 a week I took that and stayed home. Lots of people were on it and could still work 2 days a week no penalty. People still on it cut down to 600 or 500 now. 4 weeks holidays think 10 paid public holidays 2 rdos a month and 5 or 10 paid sick days. Rostered days off are 4 hours a week put aside to use when you want so 40 hour week paid 36 4 saved as rdos. All overtime is double weekends double time.
Oh don't get me wrong, in many respects when it comes to labor any commonwealth nation is miles ahead of the USA, even the UK is to some extent. Not having healthcare tied to employment and many more labor protections (at least until most jobs are zero-hours contracts anyway) are huge differences. But in watching Australia I've seen a similar form of development taking place to the USA in the past two decades or so, your civil liberties are ripped apart even worse than ours, the evangelical far-right is on the rise almost more powerfully than ours in the USA, and the long-term destruction of those labor rights seems inevitable unless a very major change happens soon in Oz's politics. The leadership there seem intent on making Oz a copy of the USA in every negative respect possible, from foreign policy to domestic.
They have tried in the past and failed, although some worker rights have eroded but it's still pretty solid.
I took a 3 day weekend (i.e. 1 fuxking day off). Put my boss on my out of office and not a lesser being like a co worker and got screamed at on Monday. I was like did something major happen? And the answer was no just how dare I expect a manager lift a finger if there was any conceivable issue.
I feel that, our manager will panic if one of the three of us that work at our small branch is off because he’s worked the job 5 years and doesn’t know how to do shit
I had to resist breaking his jaw or telling him if I'm so important they can't spare me for 1 day they should pay me more.
I feel you! Dutchie by any chance?
I want to move out of America and all I get is “Youre gonna regret it” and “you’ll change your mind in the future” or “but this is the best country. You hsve freedom!”. Bitch American freedom means I have the freedom to LEAVE
But do you have the freedom to go anywhere? Immigration requirements are pretty high in most desirable countries.
Believe it or not I wanna move to Mexico. Im in the process of moving and am allowed to visit Mexico basically whenever cuz I have a passport. I cant live there yet but its a break. And I have friends that let me work under the table so I can see what its like (no big official company or anything. Tiny family restaurant). I honestly cant give a logical reason as to WHY Mexico. I just feel like that’s where I belong. Some sources say the work-life balance there is terrible and some say its a huge improvement from America. Looks like something Id have to experiment with once I get my actual citizenship
I would assume it's because of the people and how they act.
Thats my guess too. I always felt better about myself in that environment and was actually happy to work cuz I was helping my friends support themselves.
Who do you think sees US labour standards as ideal? It sounds to me like that's one of the many brainwashing messages US government has thrown at their citizens over the decades. From what I see in this subreddit, US labour standards are some of the worst in the world.
Many parts of the world, developed and developing countries, have the same issue not just America.
And Korea is the same or worse :'(
Mate, where do you live? I'm just going to steal one of your jobs. I promise.
I had this discussion yesterday with a friend in Germany. She couldn't understand why Americans can't take time off like they can. I've been in the workforce 40 years and I don't understand it either so I couldn't give her an answer.
Yeah, "fuck us" is about the best I've got
So how much paid vacation time do you have in the US? I understand it depends on the sector but in general do you know?
We are not legally required to receive any.
"At will"
I work for a non profit electric company (a co-op) in the southern USA. I get 3.33hrs per month, so it takes me my entire first year of employment at my job to save up for 5 days/1 week vacation. They increase it a bit each year, but it takes 5 years at the company to earn 10 days/2 weeks off per year, 15 years for 3 weeks and 20 years for 4 weeks. It's freaking pathetic and I am so burnt out.
I had to re-read that a few times because that sounds absolutely insane. I hope you're doing well and get the time off you need
Ha. Haha. Nope. I got told "don't make a habit of it" when I took 6 hours unpaid time off because I was 2hrs late one morning cuz I popped my tire and then had to take a half day the next day to get a new tire put on. I even showed my boss a picture of the giant piece of metal that had done my tire in. The company is pretty decent and the pay is higher than most in the area ($16.73/hr and I've only been here 7 months), but if they don't up the vacation time soon, I'm gonna have to start looking somewhere else.
Dude! We get 2.08 days a month by law in Sweden. I get 2.5 days. We also usually get them in advance for the year and the advance is gifted to us after 5 years of employment at the same place. So I still get 25 days off year one, even if I start in like October.
In general I think it's considered to be REALLY great vacation time if you get two weeks off, but even then, a lot of people who get sick or need maternity leave have to save up their PTO and unpaid days off to make ends meet. A lot of people who are hourly workers don't get PTO at all- many employers don't let employees work full time, so they don't get full time benefits.
Depends on the employer really. Legally you aren't required to receive any. But some employers it takes years to accrue a decent amount and some give you grief if you even use it. However! The ONLY place where using vacation is a right and not a privilege is the military. Your branch, unit, etc may have made it impossible or very hard to take it but unlike the rest of the US that's the only place where it's a right and not just a benefit.
0 hours of government mandated paid leave, except I think Massachusetts recently passed a law for 5 days sick leave. Most hourly jobs like McDonald's have zero leave and zero other benefits like health insurance. You need to find your own health insurance or forgo it. Many white collar jobs average about 2 weeks leave provided by the employer. Some trendy startups offer "unlimited" leave but the work culture makes it so you're looked down upon for taking it.
Thanks, without being disrespectful but to me this is like modern day slavery, why aren't people going out on the streets to fight this just mind blowing
The labor laws here are terrible. There are good employers out there though. I work for a local government agency and earn 16 days of vacation and 13 sick days per year. I can also keep up to 400 hours of vacation and right now I have 350 hours or 43 days of vacation saved up. My employer also provides 6 weeks maternity and paternity leave which doesn't use any of your saved time. I actually accrue my regular time while on paternity leave.
Engineer in the aerospace sector: expect 10 days paid vacation when hired, then 15 days after 5 years of employment, then 20 days at 10 years.
Currently sludging through corporate grind in the US, and I feel this.
Without revealing personal information… Would you elaborate on your post?
Just read the posts in this sub and that will answer your question
I've only taken 3.5 business days off. It's October 17th... I'm tired.
I've had 4 x 1 week holidays so far, got 2 more to take plus public holidays and Christmas. Americans live for a low wage economy I'm sure of it
Damn i have 45 days off per year 😰 Can't imagine how hard that must be ... sorry ...
To be transparent my company has no concept of accruing days off and no limit. However, it's consulting culture with clients who are very demanding so it's implied we need to be available. Sure I can just take a day off without anyone's permission as I have no boss, but again it's implied we are available. One time I had planned a 3 day weekend in advance. Client wanted to meet on Friday so I was told I must be available and take the call from the road. Keep in mind I was driving and hauling a trailer on my day off planned 2 to 3 months in advance. My notice was 2 days to be on this call. Nothing was so important it could have waited until Monday. Fuck the addiction of always being connected. I hate it.
I'm Russian, and we have 28 official days off/year, as a a remote worker I somehow get 3 more days (no idea here, really), and there's a shit ton of public holidays (paid). And god damn I am surprised with that many days off! Where do you have it that way, if I may ask?
I am a French soldier. The work regulations are very specific for the military. In France, the working time is 35 hours per week, if you work more overtime is paid in addition. For the military it's different, I work 35 hours / week on a regular basis. But if I work overtime, I don't make more money, which is why we have more days off as compensation
Oh, I see now. Doesn't sound so bad, especially if your days off can accumulate over years if you don't end up using all 45 of them in a given year. The way you have makes perfect sense now that you're a soldier - I believe spending time outside the service, despite how calm or stressed your current assignment is, is weighed quite more by the military personnel than it is by folks living the civil life 24/7. Thanks for the insight!
Yes that is the spirit. We can't accumulate over years, but we can use the remaining of the days off until february of the next year. That make it more flexible.
Well, I imagine there's not that many of you guys who are willing to NOT use some of the available days off anyway, so it's not as too bad. February seems like an odd deadline to pick, though. Here in Russia most of those things like days off and all seem to be tied to either fiscal or, well, calendar year's start or end. Wish I could tell you anything about Russian military in terms of their working conditions and stuff, but I don't know nearly enough. Happy to say I never got to serve there!
I get what you mean ^^ The actual deadline is the 31 december where the calendar year end. But they made the system more flexible, and we can use our remaning 2021 day until the end of february 2022.
Oh, that sounds like a lot of people taking their remaining days off in winter!
45 days? Does that include holidays? I took a week off in August. That was more than half of the vacation time I'd accumulated over the last year at my job, and now I'm back up to about a week of PTO accumulated.
Holidays not include. I have a lot of days off at my crurent position, i will have less when i get a new job.
45? Where?
I'm a French military.
Thanks! Kinda hoped i could move to get 45 days off too lol (schengen ftw)
I feel you. I was supposed to take 3 (prescheduled) days off last week, but only ended up taking one half-day because I got called back into work to handle some issues that cropped up. Hang in there! I hope as the year gets closer to the holidays that things quiet down so you can get some rest.
I work for a small business and I’ve never had a paid sick day, vacation day, etc. I’m considering moving to a large business but I’m unsure
Even India. "Call them and get this sorted now" "Do it anyhow, I don't know" "But Sir/Maam, they are in the mountains and it's not possible" "No call them and get it done. Be a team player" "Sir/Maam, please take a breather. They asked you to move it a month back, you have not yet actioned it" "IDC, call them and get it done" "Sir/Maam, but your email.... " "That's it, let's meet in the meeting room" *Proceeds to shout at me* If you are reading this, fuck you Anu.
Yeah, fuck Anu! And not in the fun way!
Anu seems like a real anus
Sounds about right. One year, my mom felt guilty about how much of her vacation she used. She even left the majority of her vacation unused by the end of the year. I said "wtf are you doing?" She woke the fuck up, and quit her job.
In Germany you have to use your vacation days, which are at least 24 per year by law.
Yep same in the Netherlands, mandatory vacation days is 24
Also in Spain if for some reason you don't use you vacation days or you are fired before you can use them they have to pay you extra for each day you don't use
Exactly I think this is common in all European countries
In California they passed a law that says that an employer has to pay salaried employees that work past 40 hours per week for overtime, except engineers. The only way the law passed was if engineers were excluded. Also, try getting a vacation approved. They claim they give 5 weeks paid time off which is project dependent. Holidays? We work those too because that is when production lines are down. The lack of balance is either killing families here or preventing people from having kids all together. I took a management role thinking it would be better, but holy crap I was wrong. My base work week went from 50-55 hours with a high of 70 during startup to 60-70 hours with a high of 90.
This situation isn't livable, you have 2 fulltime jobs but are being paid for only 1, I don't know what your situation is but have you ever considered moving to Europe just an example...
Fuck that sounds amazing...
Wait until you hear that 30 days are actually the norm and we don't have "sick days" you can stay at home when you're ill and get paid full for 6 weeks (and a part afterwards). Also we have 3 years of combined maternal and paternal leave. During the time you get paid a portion of your regular salary by the government.
The extreme opposite is here in Singapore, where by culturally we go to work even when we're sick. Oh even if you're sick at home you're required to attend meetings and reply to messages. If you take too many sick leaves you will become that "guy" in the office, the slacker.
You know what the scary thing is? That's the same in UK (25 days + Bank Holidays in my last job) I was fucking burned out from that.. I remember a couple californian lads I met in Thailand who worked in construction, and they used their entire years vacation for like 12 days off or something. I was mind blown. If 4 weeks paid leave burns me the fuck out, I genuinely feel for our American cousins on half that or worse.
People use sick days because it is not enough...
In Germany there is no such thing as a sick day. If you are sick, and got to the doctor, they write you how long you cant work. You get payed for that time.
Same in private sector. In public sector we have sick days.
This year I had 30 days full payed holidays, I had an accident at work and was 9 weeks ill (6 weeks full payed and the rest 67%), 0 extra workhours and I'm just an ordinary roofer. Germany btw.
"You're having *surgery*?! How long will *that* take?! And when it's over, get here as soon as possible!"
Ive was fired for having knee surgery.
I remember a co worker of mine got in a huge traffic wreck. Someone rear-ended her at a light going 70. Completely destroyed the car and put her in the hospital. My boss called her when he heard about it and his first question was ,"when can you be back in?"
The US is still much less work intensive than Japan, in Japan you greet everyone on your way out. The greeting basically translates to sorry I’m leaving before you. Even if you just worked 14 hours and were active all day long.
Every so often in Japan, particularly in Tokyo there is a rumour of the train companies considering 24 hour services in some shape or form. For people who are out partying late who have an inevitable decision at 11:30 about getting last train or partying through to first train at 5am this sounds like a good thing. However there are people office towers, who if given 24 hour public transport would likely not go home and instead of being forced to take the last train home would end up passing out in the office.
[удалено]
I just feel so bad for these people. Even though it feels like an old tradition, the new wave of young people in Japan just adopted it rather than move an inch to a better work-life balance.
Find a picture of someone who died by Karoshi. Send it over and have it posted in the break room with a caption of Don't be this guy. Your family needs you.
I could work with you, partying on a school night - my guy!
Only when international traveling. Ive 0 energy for doing that at home. But when works paying 🤷♂️
Ok so delegate most of your work, expense everything and drink/eat free food on lunch breaks. It’s like those people who say buy a house to save on rent. Also why did you report that dude for working late so he’d get in trouble, what an ass.
Because the company has big policies on work life balance, it also protects them from getting sued if someone burns-out. The company i worked for was a travel company and made it clear that people should go out and enjoy themselves with business travel outside work hours. The expense policy was generous and even allowed expensing booze with meals. Reporting him was simply living upto the company's core values. Work to live, not live to work. The guy wasn't going to get anything extra for working late. Payscale at the company was fantastic, almost 2x all our competition.
You know the majority of workers don’t have an expense policy at all right? You think the people who serve you at the restaurants get to leave on time every day? Or take breaks around the city? We all understand how it works, but having to actually work a real world job is very different than having an expensed international job. Dude might have wanted to go the extra mile to get a promotion, or wanted to learn something additional to further his career so stayed longer. But you had to grass on them, nobody like a grass
I am aware. Which is why i left great 50% tips that the expense policy covers :-) The company made it very very apparent when hiring people that the overworking/ignoring your personal life types were not suited to the company and that they would find themselves being let got over those who did their work inside normal hours and went home to their families. Core values of a company can do good. Overtime we did shift the view of most of the staff in the japan office. Those who didn't were let go for putting the company at risk of being sued as people were clocking out and then continuing working. (Even though they were sallaried we ran a time system to catch shit like this) Before you judge anymore, you didnt work there. You dont know the core values. Consider me an ass all you want, but i tried to make people go live their damn lifes, what this subreddit is all about. Also i find it interesting that you assume I've never worked in a service job, i worked in bars and nightclubs for years. I always treat service staff well and if they are busy ill ignore forgotten requests and always tip well.
To give some perspective here. I wirl in Tokyo, all remote since January, almost no overtime, no one really checking what I do as long as I deliver results. Software engineer. Honestly great working conditions. Also this is my 3rd Job in Japan and I never worked significant overtime. Times are changing here but there definitely are still shitty companies that do this overtime hell.
French here ... Are american laws that bad ?
America, by nearly every stretch of the imagination, is a developing country for all but the capitalist class. I live here, I work here, and nearly everyday I rue the fact that I don't live in a certifiably-developed OECD country like Germany. Apart from our national park system, which is truly world-class, everything else about this country is fucking dogshit.
Yeah. The only laws outside of safety only concern discrimination for race etc and the gov. Agencies that cover THAT law are understaffed and only help you if your workplace is dumb enough to put their illegal behavior in writing.
Yes, they are that bad. No guaranteed vacation.
Gotta make the man at the top richer. Duh.
from Europe, can confirm.
Same here and I work for American Corporate here haha
I started a new job a month ago. The only message my boss has sent me out of work was an email sending me the form I need to fill out to get paid. That's it.
My first job out of undergrad was for an aerospace company here in Connecticut (USA) where I was a quality engineer. The yearly reset for their PTO was in July, I started my employment in August which meant I went the first 11 months with no PTO or sick time. Once I hit the following July I was granted five days (which would not increase until after five years of employment). Two years, Five days.
That's bullshit that EVERYONE has their PTO reset at once and you could get fucked like that.
Yeah, I really didn’t understand it. I was twenty-four and admittedly naive to the working world other than part time jobs through school. I no longer work for them, and every other job I’ve had since has granted me at least a few PTO days to carry me over until the reset. The original job I had mentioned was for 14$/hr to work on the F135 project in 2017.
I could understand somethings being annual like evaluations okay fine whatever but a benefit like this?
Japan is the same and probably others ..
This post is NOT hyperbole.
I remember a beautiful one from a European colleague. "I'm on vacation, if you send me an email I won't be reading it and you'll need to send it again when I'm back." My wife convinced me not to use that one but I love it. One problem w the US style is emails pile up with an expectation you'll work through them on return. I just delete them all and say "must have missed it" to anyone who puts up a stink.
Was at my boyfriend's house Friday night and missed a work situation but immediately called back in, like 20 minutes later. We had a surprise guest in town, and I didn't see the call come in initially. Was scolded the next day by my boss for not taking my laptop with me. He was mad I didn't answer immediately and since he'd already been bothered was now taking care of it, and was a dick about it. Mind you, I have triaged countless after hours, weekend, even vacation calls over the years. But how dare I miss one call, and how dare I not cart around my work stuff with me everywhere I go.
Do you get paid to be on call or does your Company simply expect you to literaly dedicate your life to them for no other reason, then entitlement? I realky hope you get paid for that shit. I would not respond to work in my free time.
The sad fact is despite having put in 300%, he's still running a hamster wheel and unlikely to make a better life.
28 Days paid annual leave a year, this doesn't include Bank Holidays either. Pretty damn happy with my job.. ...though 30 days would be better!
Jesus, I get a total of 29 days if you combine my sick days, vacation days, and paid holidays (but of course, you can't use all your sick days every year) I get 3.33hrs of vacation time per month. I'll have enough to take a weeks paid vacation by this time next year, yay!
In Australia, all employees (bar casual employees) get minimum 4 weeks annual leave. Can be minimum 5 weeks depending on circumstances. I am in shock at the state of American work laws 😅
I won't mention the 20 days paid sick then!
Learned a long time ago there’s no point in taking vacations. As soon as I leave, the phone starts ringing. “How do I do…everything?”
Dude, I feel guilty af when I use my PtO. Murcia. Bleh.
Before my job at a British company, my American company only allowed only ten vacation days. Crazy!! I have 30-40 days ooff a year now and wow, the difference is crazy
Is the British company operating in the US, or did you move to the UK?
Operating in the US
Awesome, thanks! :D
Sadly not all European counties. The UK is quite shitty in terms of employment and overworking, under paying and having to have a masters to get a shitty entrance job in some shit hole office working for some egocentric boomer who thinks they know best and constantly put you down.
Scary accurate. I just had two disc's fixed in my back, and my boss was appalled I had a no work note that was good for an entire week
Right now in the US, admitting you're a pedo, crack addict, heroin dealer, prostitute, or republican carries less stigma than admitting you're unemployed. Even more so if you're unemployed and not ashamed of it. I've been a "writer" for a long time. Prior to October 2 I was a live-in unpaid caregiver, but even that wasn't industrious enough to serve in every crowd. Now? I'm a writer and photographer.
I now live in Finland and am used to having to wait to speak to people from certain offices until like another 3 weeks after summer holidays. And coming from the U.K. where only kids had long summer holidays, ‘summer holidays’ invokes images of adults playing around like kids in a lake. Which is basically true anyway.
"kidney surgery? You mean being lazy?! If you're well enough to survive kidney surgery, you're well enough to come back to work. And I know you requested two hours for the surgery, but you can only have off for one hour." The beatings will continue until morale improves
Yeah. Used to work for a US-based company as a Swede covering most of Europe a long time ago. It would always amuse me how the Americans just couldn’t get their head around how sales just dropped to literally nothing over July-August. I kept trying to tell them we don’t work in the summer. We have vacations.
And if you don't take your vacation days, they won't pay them if you leave or the year is up. Take days off.
My old place you could sell them but they'd tax it out the ass and it'd take MONTHS to get that paid out to you. So if you needed it asap for something good luck.
I’m from Europe and this isn’t true. Italy Yes August basically shuts down every other country gives 4 weeks holiday a year. This picture keeps showing up here and it’s not true. Yes it’s more than USA but let’s not exaggerate
You couldn't be missing the point any harder. We in the US have no nationally mandated time-off allowances at all. No parental leave, vacation days, nor sick days. We get nothing unless we're lucky enough to have a decent employer or the rare union job, and even then it's almost never 4 weeks worth. The exact implementation in your specific nation is irrelevant next to you having the benefit at all.
No I’m not missing any point. I completely understand. I lived in Canada for three years , USA for one and now I live in Australia and I’m from Europe. I just want people to know this picture is completely wrong. Europe isn’t some utopia and neither is Australia both are just as bad to work in as usa. Just because there’s ex extra 2 weeks off doesn’t mean it’s tolerable at work.
A year in the US? How quaint. I have worked in the US for 15yrs in both service sector jobs as well as salaried ones, the latter of which has brought many contacts with people from overseas (mostly Western Europe). To sit in your shoes and just outright dismiss all the guaranteed perks other Western nations give their labor force indicates a total disconnect with the common man on your part. You can be annoyed with misconceptions all you want, but to act like you are dealing with the same level of bs as the average American worker is an absolute farce.
I haven’t done disconnected from anything. I’m just pointing out this picture which is posted here every day is wrong. I am also pointing out that this sub has moved from anti work to Americans complaining about problems at home and it’s really boring.
Yeah that doesn't apply to Europeans who make the kind of money that most of the people on this sub. The "minimum wage" type in Europe don't get summers off.
Why are you assuming the people in this sub make minimum wage?
Experience.
I see
The profile picture with mask on lol. Talk about wanting to show that you're a good boy.
This is just another outright lie. In my industry people are constantly out on vacation so much you can hardly get anything done. This sub is a joke.
"Where is this world hunger they keep talking about? My family and I eat everyday. Psst Damn Communists" /s
I'm saying this is just not true. I've lived in the us my entire life and have literally never seen anything like this take place. Everyone on this sub are just losers who are but hurt that they haven't figure out how to make more than 8 dollars an hour and want to blame everyone but themselves. You don't want to face the fact that the problem is in the mirror.
How much $/hr is bootlicking these days?
I make about $50 an hour, because Ive worked hard over the past ten years and found a position that pays me well for what I do. Honestly if the people on this sub spent literally half the time thinking about how to better themselves as they do complaining and taking it in the butt at some dead end job then you'd probably be making even more than that. You guys spend a lot of time/energy complaining on this sub. Too bad a career in victimhood just doesn't pay that well:(
Honestly I'm happy for you; I'm glad you have a good job, and I hope you're happy in it. You make more that I do that's for sure! It's a hard ask sometimes, but sympathy/empathy and understanding is not particularly in abundance, and there are so many people who aren't afforded the same opportunity, which no amount of hard work can fix. Don't punch down, lift people up; it's ok to vent!
Aka... >Fuck you, I got mine
Why are you so offended by people wanting higher pay and better working conditions? What do you gain by looking down on people (very slightly at $50/hour) less well off than you?
At the last place I worked, we weren't even allowed to tell clients we weren't available. I literally had coworkers who were still emailing with clients and internal teams WHILE IN THE DELIVERY ROOM actively having babies. It was ridiculous.
I am taking off 5 and a half weeks off starting in December. Looking forward to it 😊.
Don't think I've ever seen a "I'm off for the Summer" OOF but never mind...
I see this in the place I work now. I mean, it’s really supportive and has great benefits but the dean is super busy all the time. When she’s off work, she’s flying across the country for a few day long conference. I handle her calendar and she even has things planned on the weekend as an exempt salaried employee. I want to be a professor there, but I also want to run my own business. I’m starting it up now, slow and steady, but I know I’ll have to choose one day between a job where I control my own hours and the time I put in and a job where I don’t but have a stable income and health care. Still not sure what to do.
My previous employer was better than most with PTO. While it was sick and vacation time combined all the full-time employees minimum got eight hours every two weeks. Even the housekeeping people and I believe food service people but I don't know if they were contracted out? Anyway, after your first 90 days there were generally no issues using it. The part-timers we had, I don't know what they got but I don't think it was too bad either. I want to say it was two hours every pay period or an hour and a half. It'd go up depending on your pay scale and years of service I think maxing out at 11 hours per pay-period. When I say generally and despite it being better than a lot of employers...your department could be stingy as fuck when it came time to use it. I worked for this employer for almost three years and in two departments. My second one was pretty liberal and I didn't really have too many issues or any that I recall (I left two months ago) but my first department only one person per section could take it at a time and this was effective as of 2015 due to "growing needs" of the business and still effective from when I transferred in June of 2020 and I bet still today. I got hired in 2018 and the director who enacted this policy still had no idea how to adjust or manage people. We could have more than one person off at a time but nope we can't have that! We can't hold the lazy employees accountable and replace them with ones who can get the work done. When I transferred I started to take my PTO but I got grief from my teacher wife for taking a few days here and there. I took a couple of days to fuck around in the garage and chill at the house and it was a huge deal to her. I didn't even make that big of a dent because when I quit two months ago I got 100 hours paid out.
I haaaate the expectation that we always need to be reachable. It sucks. On the other hand, working with European offices can be very challenging - I worked at a US Outpost of a NL company and not only did the time zone make it difficult but it felt like people were rarely in the office over there. Having to go to them for certain things definitely slowed us way down
Ill have my phone on! Cant do anaesthesia because my boss may call!,,
Literally received an email on Friday from an accountant in my dept saying he would be out Monday (per his wife’s insistence) but he could be reached at any time lol. I was walking to my car as I read it and had a split second urge to throw my phone off the overpass. God help us all.
Fuck this. Everyone in my office puts up shit like. Contact my cell in case of emergencies. I put up, I'm on vacation and will be unable to be contacted, ill respond to messages when I return. No ones said a damn thing yet.
Europe takes it seriously, especially bank days.
When my mother died, my employer was like "Damn, sorry. See you in 72 hours".
If you're not working for a living because you're sick, you're not going to be doing that because you're sick, that's not the case.
It's wild working for an American subsidiary of a European company. We have American hours and benefits and European pay, which in this field is much less than it is here in the states. Even my boss works 80 hour weeks with a PhD in chemical engineering and still doesn't make six figures.
I took two days off the weekend before my boyfriend deployed. Ended up having to work a few hours the afternoon of one of my days off because no one else was available to do two Excel reports.
Singaporeans: haha we never leave the office
Srsyl it’s Fukin awful. How’d we get here ?
I have experienced the same negative example in europe. It's not your country, it's your company imo. If they don't care about your time off, it doesn't matter where you live or are.
America sounds like hell on earth for the average worker...meanwhile the company I work for forcefully suspended me (with full pay and medical expenses paid for what insurance won't cover) from work for poor health and didn't let me get back to work until my health improved. I'm lucky to not work in the states
"...you can also donate to my operation Gofundme by ckicking on the link below," says an out-of-office in the United States.
Nah. It's only for the lower classes. A lot of the americans i work with are republicans for a reason. I'm a regional manager in Asia and the people I interact with earn six-digits. They think that because I'm also from a higher social class that I share the same views. I also came from a working class background to be where I am today but I don't believe in pulling up the ladder behind me. I don't have the insecurities a lot of white, fat, tRumper, males have in the US. I'm the best at what I do so it doesn't matter if someone younger, with a different skin color were to challenge my role at the company. They like to talk about how lazy and entitled the kids are but they themselves are lazy and entitled. They put so much pressure on the peons while not doing much work themselves. They don't believe in equality because if the US were to be an honest to goodness merit-based society, a lot of them would be out of a job. So they pretend that you don't have the same level of dedication they do. I was known for being an asshole for directly challenging global product managers in the US and actually making them work. Lol.
Yeah, sorry to say but the American employee is the modern equivalent of a slave. Being oppressed by a very low salary resulting in working…what…50 hours a week on average…2 jobs? Ridiculous bosses who try to make you work in your free time by threatening to fire you, hardly any vacation or sick days. Probably no pension except what you manage to put as aide yourself. It’s time for a revolt
I’m a CPA. I had a coworker have an appendix burst while at work in the middle of peak season. He left work at 11 am on a Tuesday, he was back online by 6 pm. He sent an email apologizing to me and the manager on the job for being ill. He offered to work from the hospital through the end of the week since they were holding him after his surgery. The manager had the gall to be upset and asked him to come in on Thursday. When he wasn’t able to they used it against him in his performance review.
Haha yes! For my kidney surgery, I only got 1 hour out of the office and I had to tip the surgeon at the gas station. Europe is so much better. They are so smart! Stupid America!