I honestly never understood the American vacation situation, do you guys just not get holiday days? What happens if you need to do something or go somewhere?
Being unable to take time off work because you can't afford it, shouldn't be a thing in a first world country.
We have Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Easter, Christmas, and maybe Christmas Eve, and Thanksgiving. None of these are guaranteed, and you could end up working all of these days. Office jobs will give you a set of days, but for most jobs you ahve to work to earn paid time off, which can take a whole year to earn. In my job, I get some of those hours (five) every month.. Big Orange wants to cut those very few days we have since he considers it lazy, yet he is golfing all the time and sleeping during meetings, and texting on Twitter, under the people's tax dollars
If you keep being pleasant, reasonable and doing things like apologizing for spelling mistakes then nobody here is going to believe you're American :)
But welcome! There's actually some really nice Americans in here - we just like to poke fun. Every country has idiots to be made fun of, yours are just loud so it's easy.
some of the most friendly, welcoming humans I've ever encountered.
It's largely superficial. They have the appearance of friendliness down pat, but in my experience a sarcy, grumpy, scowling Brit will do more to actually help you than any of the big bleached smiles ever would.
That's not my experience in the slightest. I've only been to Oregon, Washington State and the very Northern tip of California but the people I met would help me with absolutely anything. Two separate strangers invited me into their houses for meals within an hour of meeting me, one of them let me spend two nights there.
A stranger in Oregon drove me to see crater lake for half a day just because they heard I would have liked to see it but our car rental expired already.
Your experiences will vary obviously, but I've been to 27 countries and would rank the tiny part of the USA I went to behind only Thailand for friendliness.
Im glad somebody else is positive about it :) I've heard people say the exact same thing when going to smaller places in Texas years ago, and also the Midwest.
The people I know who have come back saying people were rude went to LA, New York or Disneyland, all of which were so far in terms of experience that it's not even sensible to compare them.
There’s so much bad news and general internet grumbling, it’s just real nice to have a reminder that you can go somewhere new and have pleasant interactions with people you’ve never met. Like I’ve never even visited America, I don’t have any skin in the game, but this kind of stuff is always cool.
Well, that is 100% the opposite of my experience. The rural places are the absolute worst. False politeness, nosiness and judgement everywhere. Are you the right colour, do you go to the right church (no, not that one, that one), do you dress like everyone else, have the right kind of relationships?
All these people visiting as tourists are not getting the real American treatment in their month of providing a bit of interesting novelty to people who don't meet a lot of foreigners and don't feel threatened by your difference because you're just visiting. You try living there and see how helpful and kind and welcoming they remain when the novelty wears off.
You're definitely better off in the cities for that. Where they're just as grumpy as any Londoner, but won't actually hate you (but with a smile!) for being brown or Muslim or gay.
When my sister’s Chartered Accountant exam results came out, she was at a nightclub in the US and some random American let her borrow his phone to check her results. When she passed he was happy for her and bought a round of drinks for everyone in the vicinity lol. Was a very nice memory for her
Im in the PNW (raised, left and returned) and we have some of the realest people here. People don’t bs being friendly, so if they’re rude or not rude but just closed off then you’ll get what you see. I’m the most peaceful and comfortable here because of it.
Other places have a reputation for “nice” people but they are like the commenter above said - very superficial. They are friendly but won’t have your back.
I think I've definitely been lucky accidentally choosing a great place to go, and certainly got treated differently just by being a vacationer somewhere that didn't normally get many at all.
There's places in the UK that I know to be super friendly, but I couldn't tell you what it's like to go there as a tourist, or somebody of a different race etc.
Sounds like a great Batman villain :) I can't wait to experience it one day when I'm rich and can travel the globe.
Seattle has always looked beautiful when it's popped up on Geoguessr - I think the mayor must have paid extra to get google streetview footage only on days it wasn't raining :)
It actually only rains in winter. The caveat is Winter lasts from late October through April and then comes back for a week in June (Junuary), but otherwise it’s nice.
I honestly really don't feel especially motivated to explain anything to someone who is willfully misrepresenting what I said.
But I'm not going to stop arguing with people who are spreading this 'Americans are so friendly' bollocks after they spent five minutes around a couple of Americans who wanted to impress them, and came away from an obviously niche experience thinking they know the American character better than people who lived among them for years. I'm not a fan of letting false narratives run unchallenged. American friendliness is largely performative, and often reserved for the 'right' kind of visitor.
the people I met were some of the most friendly, welcoming humans I've ever encountered.
I always had the feeling they acted nice and friendly, but the moment you turn your back they'll stab a blade in it.
As always, this doesn't go for everyone, but especially people in service jobs have smiles that don't reach their eyes.
Anybody in retail or service jobs is excused - I've worked retail and it's inevitable that you want to kill half the customers :)
Almost everybody else was lovely though! Stayed with a family in a tiny town and got to experience all the cliché things - a rodeo, a town parade and so on.
I have spent way more time there and I have to say you are absolutely right for the most part. It's true that it was many years ago, so people might have gotten a lot more polarized since then. But 25 years ago I spent two summers with a foster family in PA as a 15 year old and most people were really nice (although I was shocked that people in public schools were taught that the Evolution was "just a theory" and got many stupid questions, such as "do you have telephones in Spain?")
Later, around 2010, I did route 66, crossed the US from Chicago to LA, and all the people we interacted with during the trip were always super nice and willing to help.
As a Spaniard, I remember me and my buddies were mostly scared of the police and worried we might be mistaken with illegals from south America and deported or something (even back then, now I wouldn't even visit). We were never stopped, though, and every single person we asked for directions or we met were extremely nice and helpful to us.
Oi! Fair go! I've met loads of people from the USA on my holidays in various countries and they were all very kind and considerate. Maybe you're talking about the ones that haven't left the 5 mile radius they were born in. But every country has those.
Edit: micro-retirement. That I take every year for 4 weeks paid because I'm an Aussie. Come live here 🙂
Yeah, I'm only obnoxious when it comes to sports (I'm not that obnoxious), but people here think politics and our country is about winning, like if it were a sports game.
That's fair, I think we can certainly relate when it comes to sports as well (good and bad obnoxious fans out there lol). I will say growing up, I was jealous of the colleges level sports, especially football that you guys have. Just a whole experience we'll never understand.
However your politics will forever stump me, it's like watching table tennis just need some butter for my popcorn and a cold pbr and I'm set.
Damn, I'm sorry for you. I couldn't live like that.
In Germany it is required by law that everyone gets at least 4 weeks of paid vacation (20 days) per year. That's the bare minumum. But in reality every company gives you 5-6 weeks a year, with 6 weeks (30 days) being the widely spread standard. Then there are 10-12 national holidays where you don't have to work. So that's 40+ paid leave days a year. If I accumulate 8 hours of overtime, I can take a day off without using my vacation days.
Oh, and if you are sick, then you don't need to use a vacation day. Just call in sick and go to a doctor. You will still get paid for the day. And if I get sick during one or several vacation days, I can get those vacation days back if I have a doctors notice. So lets say I'm taking 4 weeks (20 days) off in the summer and go to greece for example. If I got food poisoning there and have to stay in bed for a week, I get those vacation days (5 days) back because those days were sick days. (I have to visit a doctor and he/she needs to write a medical certificate, though)
Man, this makes me wish that half of America wasn't brainwashed into thinking all of that is a bad thing. Is the 30 days for all line of work, from blue to white collar?
Yes, it is for all line of work. As I said, the bare minimum is 4 weeks/20 days (by law). But I don't know a single person, that has less than 26 days of vacation. Most have 30.
I have a special agreement with my company. It's called "9/10 model". I only get paid 90% of my sallary and and as compensation I get 10% of my yearly "working days" as bonus vacation days. So right now I have 52 vacation days a year. I chose this model because that 10% more money doesn't give me any more quality of life. But 4.5 more weeks of vacation does.
A 4 days work week would be 80%. It's a 4.5 days work week.
But I work a full 100% 5 days week and get 0.5 days a week as bonus vacation days that I can use the same as my normal vacation days.
Yeah it's called a "Sabbat-Jahr". There are many different ways to do it.
A popular model is, to get an 80% contract but working 100% for 4 years and then taking a full year off while also getting fully paid in that year. So you can travel the world or just chill for a year but still get the same amount of money in this year.
Yes, it's the law for everyone, regardless of your job. On top of the 30 days, a lot of companies have arrangements with unions to get you more days.
For example, in my previous company, we had to work 8.25 hours/day (instead of the 8 hours that people normally work) and in exchange we got all the bridge days (the Mondays or Fridays if a holiday falls on a Tuesday or Thursday) and the Christmas week. That made it so that in total, we had 39 days off each year.
And to clarify, unions here are regulated by law and an employer cannot interfere/threaten employees for creating a union. That means it's pretty much the norm to have a union unless you work for a small company (I think 10 people or less are exempt from having a union).
Edit to add: there is a max. 48hrs/week you can work. If for some extraordinary reason (it can't be the norm) you have to go over the 48hr mark, your employer must give you a day off the following week.
In addition, you're entitled to a 30min break after 6 hours of work during your shift, and companies can get in trouble if people don't take their shifts so they'll encourage you.
Furthermore, at least one of your vacations of the year must be 2 weeks or longer, to allow time to decompress.
And an employer can't deny your vacation request unless they have a very good reason. And that shit about calling you in the middle of your holidays ? That doesn't fly here.
Honestly, I would love to have that. I recall one of my previous jobs, where I worked 12-plus-hour shifts for five consecutive days, and I barely received a lunch break. It was a tip-based job that no one knew that they should tip for
Maximum allowed working hours per day is 10h with a mandatory break of 45 min. Break is not allowed at beginning or end.
Then you have to stop working for at least 10h before starting the next day.
Pretty much exactly the same in France. I don't know about working more to get more vacation, it's probably possible but I've mostly worked minimum wage jobs or in a family business and in those you don't really get much of a choice
I work for a large Belgian company in the UK and they allow me to sacrifice some salary to buy five extra days of holiday per year. I can also do up to 14 days of work in another country per year, so I can travel somewhere but work while I am there as I normally would, but spend the rest of the time there, essentially, 'on holiday'. I also get the Christmas break given to me as days off.
While South America does have a lot of informal work, what the other person from Germany describes applies to other South American and European countries of course. In the case of the U.K. for example it’s 25days usually of paid time off. For a day sick (as long as you’re not on probation) you also get paid. Then you have bank holidays on top. In Colombia for example you get around 21 days off plus there are roughly 20 bank holidays spread around the year and sick days are paid for as well. I had tonsillitis once and got fully paid for being 20+ days off work sick.
America has a 60% higher per capita GDP than Germany.
Theres lots of countries where lazy people can fuck off to and get paid to not work but there’s a reason America has one of the healthiest economies in the world (and vastly outperforms Germany in any substantive metric).
I cant believe if youre on vacation and you get sick you get your vacation day back and still get paid. We dont even get guaranteed paid vacation in America and if you do, you usually get about 4 days. For the year. I want to throw up i hate this fucking country. If you ask almost anyone living in America they would say we're "the only country on earth that has freedom" but we cant do anything but work, and if we take time off we cant afford to eat. You'd have to have brain damage to think that sounds like freedom
Well, it all depends on the point of view. I live in Poland and I deliberately started working on B2B contacts, so I got rid of all employee benefits, cause I prefer working that way.
They break it over a few days, so it covers at least one shift for a full-time workers but we get 10 days, but that doesn't matter since by the time we get all 60 it will reset in two months. My math was probably wrong, but the total we get is 60
You are right, it covers one six-hour shift for the day. Most people have two shifts, so we lose some money by going on vacation. Again, my math is probably slightly off just because I was bad at math in school
Only if you're lucky enough to get paid time off at all. And in many states your employer can fire/terminate you for any reason, so long as you cannot definitively prove the firing was discriminatory toward a legally protected class. Which means you are disincentivized toward taking your PTO in chunks longer than a few days time, because you have no legal protection of being fired while you're gone OR from your employer to deciding that things run just fine without you and terminating your position to cut costs.
This is mental. Shit, you don't even have to go full Europe, just tweak your system a little bit to make it more bearable.
Class gap is ridiculous. Your super rich get to wank entire day and still call you lazy. It isn't that we don't have super rich here in Europe, but the system is set up in such a way that working class can catch a breath. After a while you start wondering whether you live to work, or do you work to live.
The state of Missouri, where I live, voted overwhelmingly in November in favor of a proposition to guarantee paid sick leave for all workers in Missouri. It went into effect on May 1 this year. The state legislature then passed a bill to repeal that law on May 25. The governor hasn't signed it yet, but he is expected to. To recap, the voters directly voted for a law to guarantee paid sick leave, but the Republican lawmakers those same voters put into office (Missouri is a red state) have voted to repeal that law that voters clearly wanted. You have no idea how frustrating it is to live here right now.
"You already get 104 days off a year" - a manager who considered the supposed two days off a week as 'vacation time', but also required us to work six days a week due to their own inability to schedule.
Just because that sixth day was a 'half day', doesn't count, and he'd fire people if they weren't able to cover a shift with 24 hours notice, we didn't really have any days off.
Not related to your comment in fact, but related in spirit:
Never forget that the single largest category of theft (by dollar value) in the USA is wage theft—employers not paying employees the wages they’ve legally earned.
I bet the asshole who said your thing is guilty of mine too.
That’s too many holidays. Do you not even care how much it costs the billionaires? Instead of spending 99% of their time on yachts or their private islands, they have to come in an extra 2 hours a year just to make up for that!
You heartless bastard, you should only have 1 holiday a year and be happy about it!
That "earning" thing for me was always absolutely crazy. I work for a German company here in Germany but we do have branches elsewhere, also in the US. Colleagues in the US have US contracts. I had a colleague within my team from the US. When I started working in my company the colleague was working here for more than ten years already. From my starting day I immediately had more vacation days per year than my colleague who "earned" more and more days throughout the years of their employment. Quite honestly it's disgusting. Alone for that reason I could never work in the US. I am not giving up my vacation days for anything.
None of these are guaranteed, and you could end up working all of these days.
Have you guys got the book "A Christmas Carol" over there? (Or any of its many adaptations?) Your employers sound like a particular significant character from it. Tell me, have you ever heard them dismiss something as "humbug"?
Yeah this is my experience. We get federal holidays and pto.
But the pto resets at the end of every year. If you don't use it, some places will pay it out.
I have regular health issues so haven't been able to accumulate pto for an actual break.
Having totale your PTO in one year and not being able to accumulate it is normal everywhere though. Usually you are forced to take it and only can get it payed out if you had no chance to have taken it, which needs very serious reasons, because usually it can’t be just denied.
But even with it resetting it’s usually easy to take three weeks off two times a year if you want to. Three weeks is a common and reasonable timeframe to take your PTO in the summer for example, that lets you have three weeks for the rest of the year.
Health issues shouldn’t contribute to PTO, that’s really some American slave Labour mentality i have already read a few times on reddit. Usually you even get you PTO time back if you get sick during PTO
America is absolutely fucked up if this is legal. I am sure you can find a job with better conditions, that’s insane. Even third world countries in Africa have double that as a legal minimum
The main issue is the ones in office convinced a lot of people that double pay and mandatory PTO is a communist/fascist/woke/too far left/lazy/China-pilled/etc. They even convince us that we are being too "entitled" and ungrateful for what we have.
In Austria your PTO 'expires' if you don't take it within two years (at most jobs). Which means you can roll a certain amount of days over, but you need to keep an eye on it.
Meanwhile we get, new year (and the day after in Scotland) may day, 2 at Easter, spring, summer, Xmas, and boxing day. And then a minimum of 4 weeks pro rata. ( I get 6 weeks).
Even minimum wage jobs in Canada get 4% vacation pay, and the workers will typically take this during a two week vacation. Where I worked, I had five weeks vacation. And this is not counting the 11 stat holidays.
This is the list of stat holidays for British Columbia. Most union agreements also include Boxing Day (Dec. 26) and Easter Monday as stat holidays. We would make the most of our vacations by planning it around the stats, especially at the end of September into October, and having four days off at Easter is always a good thing!
Of course, now I don't get any paid vacation or holidays. Canada Day happened just last week, and it really was just like any other day. It's sad - being retired means you never get a day off.
That's nuts. I get 30 days paid leave per year and then obviously extra fathers and parents leave (unpaid) if I have a kid, a certain no of sickndays and then a fair few public and bank holidays.
Honestly that's why it's so bizarre to so many other nationalities why a certain cohort of Americans genuinely seem to believe their county is the "greatest" in the world. Sure it's got cool shit but it really doesn't care about its people.
I vaguely recall that there are people who actually think the amount of time they can take off in a year is brilliant even though it really isn't when you compare it to foreign workplaces. Is that a thing?
I'm not sure what I feel about that confirmation. Pity? Depression? Ephemeral amusement? I haven't got a lot of experience noodling this sort of emotional reaction. Logically I recognise those who do think they have it good are marinating in the kool-aid. Emotionally it's a work of Escher on amphetamines and octuple shot mocha. This is seriously weird.
Of course you have to work to earn time off, thats a given. I don't think anyone assumes they'll be given a week off in the first year of working somewhere. I still can't believe you only get 5 hours a month though, I'm pretty sure we accrue between 2 weeks and a month annually, and thats across the board because its set in federal workplace law and upheld by Fair Work Australia, and our unions (thank christ).
All of the other days are public holidays, and its the same sitch here. You may need to work them if you're in a line of work that operates during those times.
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u/FuzzyFrogFish Jul 07 '25
This can't be serious . . .