“Before you can go to the Bahamas for a week, don’t you first need to learn how to tolerate an entire elevator ride without checking your email?”
This Slate article explains why we need to take more vacation and offers examples of how some companies get more of their employees to do so. Definitely something you don’t need to teach the Swiss, but seems to be the case here in the US.
Taking a Vacation is good for your stress management. sometimes we need to relax a bit.
Oct 26th, 2016 / 12:44 pm
“Definitely something you don’t need to teach the Swiss, but seems to be the case here in the US.”
So, the Swiss are lazy. Something you don’t need to teach us here in the US….
Oct 26th, 2016 / 3:10 pm
… the Swiss voted AGAINST more holidays some years ago. I guess there’s a lesson to be learned on both sides of the pond …
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/6_Wochen_Ferien_für_alle
Oct 26th, 2016 / 4:13 pm
Andy, didn’t mean it that way. Sorry it came off across condescending.
Oct 26th, 2016 / 6:12 pm
That quote made me laugh loud and long. A great start to the day.
Oct 26th, 2016 / 8:13 pm
@Me Well, they already have 5 weeks. The US standard is 2.
Oct 27th, 2016 / 6:11 am
It’s fine, I presumed you didn’t mean it as a jab, but you sure talk super highly of the Swiss and not so fondly of Americans for someone who makes probably 90% of her income from US transactions. I don’t get it.
Oct 27th, 2016 / 11:55 am
@andy, Well, it’s not my intention to come across that way. Fact is, I love living in the US. I picked this country for a reason. But, like every country, there are pros and cons to everything. If you knew me, you’d know that I actually speak very critically of my Swiss roots.
Oct 27th, 2016 / 2:11 pm
I lived for a year in Switzerland as an exchange student back in the mid 90s. We also hosted a boy from Switzerland and his family is the one that wound up hosting me. Our families are very close and travel back and forth to see each other every few years. I will concur that the Swiss have it figured out when it comes to vacations. They typically take several weeks back to back, several times a year. It’s no dig on Americans but our working culture just doesn’t allow us to take many vacations. For most of us, we have to work somewhere 20 years before we have enough paid vacation to total 4 weeks. The Swiss are extremely hard workers… and I think they protect this work ethic by allowing adequate time for true unwinding. Heck, when attending high school there, while I had school on Saturdays too, I had two and sometimes three hour lunch breaks. It made school somehow a heck of a lot more manageable, even though my German was never great. Shame Swiss German is lost on me because I’d love to live there again.
Oct 27th, 2016 / 4:25 pm
Oh, and I’d also like to add that I never participated in so many marches on the government as I did in Switzerland. The young people did a great job challenging their culture and politicians. I think we, as Americans, feel somewhat powerless compared to our Swiss counterparts. So yes, Switzerland is amazing, but saying so doesn’t detract from America or any other country for that matter. At the end of the day, we’re all humans who belong to the planet Earth.
Oct 27th, 2016 / 4:31 pm