The last paid holiday

[darkemeralds]

Today is the last paid holiday of my career.

Though it's true that Americans don't take much time off compared to, say, Europeans, I'm still very cognizant of the generous plan my public sector place of employment has given me all these years; how many days they've paid me not to be at work.

From the very outset, when I was a just a wee Word Processing Clerk I (anyone remember those?), they gave me ten days of vacation, twelve of sick leave, and three personal days per year.

The vacation-day count has gone up along with the workload, so that when I turn in my badge next week, they're going to pay me for all the vacation I haven't actually managed to take for the last several years. That drop in the retirement bucket will make an audible splash, I can tell you.

As to sick leave...well, I learned an important lesson in my early days. A woman I worked with was singled out for praise because she had never taken a single sick day in, I forget, something like three years. Her reward? A free day off. It was obvious to me that she could have skipped the praise and had twelve paid days off in each of those years.

(Also, praising someone for the "virtue" of naturally good health is, at the very least, annoying.)

In short, I've never been afraid to "call in well" when I needed a mental health day. I'm pretty sure that's why a) I never climbed higher in the organization and b) the benefits of retiring at the first possible moment outweigh the big pay cut I'm about to take.

Besides, they don't buy back your unused sick leave. I'd've been dumb not to use it.

Back to work tomorrow for a few more days of toil in the fields of the System.

Comments

[darkemeralds]

As Michael Pollan pointed out in a talk I went to after the publication of Cooked, the labor movements in the US and Europe different gah! differed on one essential point: in the US, labor agitated for more pay. In Europe, the emphasis was on time off. (This related to his main topic, as I recall, because the American standard resulted in a need for convenience foods.)

Of course, the American labor movement just reflected the already-existent American ethos: that wealth is paramount and that long, hard hours of work, while in no way guaranteeing wealth, are at least a necessary prerequisite, and character building.

Or some such bullshit. The degree to which I feel guilty and apologetic about being able to retire is a pretty accurate gauge of my culture's pervasive beliefs about work, money, and worth. Somehow, I'm going to soldier through it and retire anyway.

[lamentables]

Oh, that's a really interesting response - I had no sense of a reason for the fundamental difference, just dismissing as another 'Americans are weird' thing. But it does tie up so many points of what I observe as your nation's weirdness.

Of course, we have many dreadful things going on in our labour market at the moment, such as a minimum wage below that is less than the living wage, and the sudden proliferation of 'zero hours' contracts, but these are - I hope - aberrations.

[darkemeralds]

I hope they're aberrations too, and that the UK, and Europe generally, can hold the line against multinational corporatism long enough for that dinosaur to fall.