I don't have time to take a vacation.
Welcome back to the Learn English Podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
My name is Dr. C and on today's episode, we will continue to explore American culture, specifically American work culture.
Now, if you know anything about American work culture, you might know that Americans have the stereotype of being very hard workers.
Our economy tends to be very productive and there's a saying that Americans live to work instead of working to live.
It explains this concept that Americans become super involved with their work and they spend their whole entire lives working and not really enjoying their life.
If they were working to live, they would work the minimum amount that they need to survive but then spend their outside time away from work, enjoying life and living life to the fullest.
Now, the saying living to work instead of working to live is a little bit of a stereotype when it comes to American workers, but there is some truth in it.
This truth especially is shown when we look at American vacation days or paid time off.
Americans in general tend to take less vacations than other employees around the world.
So when you compare American workers to workers in other countries, they tend to spend more days per year working.
One thing to know when we're talking about this, this paid time off for vacation days is that in the United States, there is no federal minimum amount of days that a company must give to their employee.
Because of this, it's up to each individual company to determine their vacation policy for them to determine how many days they're going to give to their employees.
Another thing to know is that these benefits and vacation days usually only apply to full -time employees.
Full -time employees are usually employees that work 36 to 40 hours or sometimes even more.
And if you work less than that, you're usually considered part -time.
And if you're part -time, you don't usually get vacation.
Now, I keep saying usually because every company is different.
Again, there's no federal law about this.
So if you're in different states, if you're in different companies, the policies can be completely different.
Another thing about workers is that if you're considered a contract worker, if the company is just hiring you for a short amount of time, you also don't qualify for these benefits and you don't get vacation days.
I have personal experience with this.
So when I was just starting my career, before I was a teacher, I actually worked in the healthcare field.
That's where I get my doctorate from.
And I worked at two different hospitals.
At one hospital, I was considered a contract worker, even though I worked there for a number of years.
And at a second hospital, I was part -time, so I didn't work a full 40 hours.
This meant that even though I worked at two hospitals, I did not get any benefits and I never got any vacation time, which wasn't great.
Now when we're talking about the amount of days that American workers get, there is a government bureau that at least surveys how many days the average American worker receives from their company.
It's called the Bureau of Labor Statistics and they've done a few surveys just to kind of compare and get an idea of how many days are offered to employees.
They did a survey in 2017 and found that the average amount of days a employee received was about 10 to 20 days off per year.
This amount changed depending on how long an employee had been with the company.
Usually when you are just starting out and brand -new to a company, you're offered less days, but the amount increases over time as you stay more and more years in the same position or at least with the same company.
So when they did the survey, they found that usually people who just joined a new company were offered 10 days off per year.
And then when they got to about 10 years with the company, that increased to an average of 15 days off per year.
And at 20 years, that increased again to an average of 20 days off per year.
Now hearing these numbers, they might sound high to you or they might sound low to you depending on what country you're from and what the work culture is there.
But in general, when we're comparing these numbers to other employees around the world, they tend to be lower than average.
However, when American employees are offered vacation time, they don't always take it.
Again, when they were doing this survey, they found that only about 50 % of American workers said that they actually used all of their vacation days in a given year.
And this might seem kind of weird.
It might sound counterintuitive that someone would be offered vacation days but wouldn't take them.
And it might actually show a little bit of a problem in American work culture that the work -life balance has a little bit off balance, we would say.
Maybe people are spending too much time at work and not enough time enjoying their daily life.
When it comes to the amount of time that American workers gave up, it was shown that if you added all of the paid time off in one year that Americans did not take, it would equal about 768 million days.
That's a lot, a lot of days.
And the question becomes, why?
Why is it that American workers just don't want to take vacations?
There's a number of reasons.
And again, it's rooted in this concept of work culture or American work culture.
One thing to know is that there is a very traditional view of employees and working.
And it's that if you take time off, you're lazy or maybe not as dedicated as you should be.
This idea, again, it's more traditional.
It's an older concept.
It's an older generalization about work, but it still exists in American culture.
This concept that you should be working all the time, that you should be available to your boss, and that you should spend the most amount of time that you can at work.
So if you're a new employee, if someone is a brand new employee to a company, even though their company might offer them 10 vacation days in a year, they might not want to take all 10 days.
If they think that their boss would look down on that, or if the company would look at them in a negative way, if they took all 10 days, then they might instead only take five, for example.
They might try to stay as many days as they can in the office and limit the amount of days they take.
So if they're up for promotion later, if they're trying to work their way up in the company, the managers or bosses might look at them and think that they're very dedicated for example.
If they took all their days, maybe the manager would think, oh, this person is not very dedicated to the company, they're taking too much time off, they shouldn't get a promotion.
Again, this is a very antiquated view, we would say it's a very old view, but it still exists.
And if you talk to people, I guarantee you will find someone who has a story of a boss that had this view about vacation days and paid time off.
Now another reason that Americans might not take all of their vacation days is because there is a fear of falling behind.
This can happen when your coworkers are expected to cover for you when you're on vacation or they're expected to do part of your job when you're gone.
And this doesn't always work out.
So if someone is doing their job and doing your job or part of your job, maybe they don't do as great of a job when they're covering for you or maybe they don't have time to really do all of the tasks that you normally would.
So when you get back from your vacation, you might find that you have a lot of things to do.
I can say this as a teacher, I don't take vacation days, but I have gotten sick for a number of days in a row and have had to miss time in the classroom.
And I can say that there is nothing worse than preparing for a substitute teacher and coming back after being out for a couple of days because there is just so much to do and it's so overwhelming and just even thinking about it gives me anxiety.
So I would much rather be at work than ever take a day off during the school year because it is just so stressful.
This definitely applies to other workers and other people that I know have similar experiences even though they don't work in a school, even though they're not in education, it's just taking that time off and knowing that you're going to be behind when you come back to work.
It's a stressful thought and it's difficult to want to take a vacation when you know you're going to have to pay for it later, when you're going to have to come back later and work twice as hard to get caught back up.
So this can be a difficult situation for people and might discourage them from taking all of the vacation days that they're owed.
A third reason is that a lot of Americans have very inflexible working schedules.
Sometimes not always, but sometimes you will find companies that do not want to give their employees time off or trying to find ways to limit the amount of time that they're able to take.
So for example, there are some companies that require the employee to find a substitute worker themselves in order to take paid time off.
Again, going from personal experience, I have a friend who went through the situation.
The company policy is that they had to find their own replacement to cover for them on any days that they wanted to take off.
That's a very difficult situation unless you know somebody who has your exact job description instead of skills and is available on the days you want to take.
It's almost an impossible scenario.
There's also companies that require you to put in vacation requests months in advance.
So you have to know what days you want to take off, maybe six months, four months in advance before the actual date occurs.
And then those dates have to get approved by a manager.
So it's up to a manager to decide if there's enough coverage, if it's okay if you're allowed to take that time off.
So even if you're offered 10 days per year, let's say you put a request in for all 10 days at once, that might not get approved.
Your manager might say, no, that's not possible.
We don't have the coverage.
We don't have enough employees for you to take 10 days off in a row.
So you can't do that.
Again, if you talk to a number of American workers, I guarantee you're going to find somebody who had this scenario happen to them.
It's happened to my friends.
It's happened to my family members and even just looking online, there are stories on Reddit, for example, of people who requested their wedding day to be off on their wedding day or to be off on their, for their engagement party or a surgery even, and it got denied by their manager.
So it's not super common, but it does happen.
And there's also some ways to move people's schedules around.
So if they request vacation time, they actually still are working the same amount of hours.
Now this is a slightly weird concept, but let's say you work five days a week.
You work Monday through Friday, but your company is open every single day of the week.
Now, if you want to take two days off, what can happen is that your company makes you work on the weekend, the days you normally don't work so that you can take two days off for the days that you normally do work.
So when you look overall at the week, you're still working five days.
It just shifted what days you're allowed to take off.
This happened at that first hospital that I worked at when people who actually were full time and had vacation days request a vacation, they had to work those extra days before they can actually take their vacation.
And I had one of my coworkers tell me that it was exhausting trying to get to the vacation because they had to work all of these extra days to make out for it.
So those aren't great situations.
Those aren't great scenarios for employees and it can lead to some burnout.
It can lead to negative feelings when people are thinking about their work and that is really taking that whole work life balance out of balance.
So the good thing about this is that since the pandemic, there has been a lot of reevaluation in the terms of what people are willing to put up with from their employers.
There was this thing called the great resignation, which I won't get into on this episode.
And that's a topic for another day.
But it was basically a lot of people resigning all at the same time and finding different jobs, finding better jobs, maybe jobs that paid more, had more flexibility or had better benefits like having more vacation days.
Going through the pandemic and going through all of the difficulties with work really gave people time and forced people to reevaluate what they wanted from their job.
What they were willing to put up with and maybe figure out if there was a better situation for them outside of the company that they currently worked for.
Hopefully things will continue to get better in terms of work life balance.
You never want people to feel burnt out or exhausted because they're not allowed to take time off from their work and really that's not good for anybody.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode on American work culture.
I hope you learned something and were exposed to new words or phrases to help you with your English development.
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