REWahoo
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give
Indeed, the French are much more civilized than we Western barbarians...Regular French employees get a minimum of 25 days vacation per year, plus 10 public holidays.
Indeed, the French are much more civilized than we Western barbarians...Regular French employees get a minimum of 25 days vacation per year, plus 10 public holidays.
You aren't going to like this, so I'm pulling on the flameproof suit.
There.
Regular French employees get a minimum of 25 days vacation per year, plus 10 public holidays.
I get:
- 30 days vacation, basic
- 4 extra days for my ex-pat status (because when my employer was founded in 1949, it took 1 days each way to get to your vacation destination, twice a year)
- 8 extra days every 2 years for "home leave" - but that got simplified, so now it's another 4 days a year
- 10 public holidays. But wait, there's more! We're an international organisation, with people in several countries. Some of those have more than 10 public holidays. It would be wrong for them to have more than us, right? So we all get 16 public holidays a year. If there aren't enough local holidays, or if one falls on a weekend, we get the rest off between Christmas and New Year.
Still counting? That's 54 days, where the average American probably gets 10-12 discretionary vacation days plus 10 (?) holidays.
And the worse part? Per Katsmeow, for every day I take off other than general holidays, when I get back, there are 60 e-mails waiting for an answer. It takes me a day to recover from 3 days vacation, plus half a day to recover from that day.
I try to take all of them, but DW can't always come along, and she is consuming days on regular visits to her aging parents. So I'm accumulating days. I have a 3 month final notice period, so my aim is to FIRE with 38 days in the bank from last year, 20 or so from this year (you can't carry days past August), thus saying "I'm leaving in 3 months, but don't expect to see me as from tomorrow".
Well, after a few days of voting, it looks like this community uses more of their vacation then the US average of 57%. 87% members take their vacation and 13% do not.
I guess it's not too surprising, considering overall goal for most of us.
Not only do we want to FIRE, but we want to take as much time off - that is given to us - while working towards that goal. That seems like a healthly balance.
There are obvious disadvantages to that arrangement; but it least it ensures that everyone does get time off. I could certainly go for that!Additionally, most French folks take off the month of August. That's 4-5 weeks that you are expected to be off. I don't think most folks in the U.S. would like to be told that this is when you must take your time off.
In the past few days, DW received a letter from HR saying she absolutely needed to use up her vacation days before the end of the year. HR reminded her (quite sternly I might add) that the company was proud to offer paid vacations days to their employees and that a rested employee was healthier and more productive. So she went ahead and scheduled a 2-week break. They came back and said it wasn't a good time for it... Typical.
I agree (I'm retired). My DW still wo*ks so when we take a trip, it's a vacation for her but it's going back to wo*k for me (I hate going, but that's another story).One thing I never did understand is when my friends who are fully retired say they are "going on vacation." How do you "go on vacation" when your life is a perpetual vacation (one that I look forward to) ?
I agree (I'm retired). My DW still wo*ks so when we take a trip, it's a vacation for her but it's going back to wo*k for me (I hate going, but that's another story).
The term "vacation" is for the pre-retiree.
For the retiree? It's just a trip, IMHO...