By Mark Grzeskowiak
In May 2005, as summer approached, the travel site Expedia released its annual Global Vacation Deprivation Survey. According to the survey, on average, North American employees choose not to use (or “give back”) three vacation days per year. The French are a little better in this respect, giving back only one day per year, whereas the British give back only half a day.
There are three main reasons for this generosity:
Money
For most, money is the strongest incentive to remain shackled to the job and to forgo a crammed charter flight overseas, especially since more and more employers are offering compensation in lieu of vacation time. And for those who are hourly employees, grabbing a few extra shifts means more money, often at overtime rates.
Work
Work, on the other hand, seems like a less reasonable excuse for skipping a vacation. True, work never ends, but the whole idea of “hunkering down” these days seems to have less to do with the old Protestant work ethic than with a strange notion of survival of the fittest, particularly as learned from Reality TV. In real reality, most normal people actually need a break in order to remain productive. And in the real world, being “voted off the island” (for being unproductive) means you’re fired.
But speaking of reality, with staffing cutbacks across industries, some North Americans feel obligated to continue working when they’d really rather be on vacation. The pile of work waiting for them when they return from that happy jaunt abroad makes them think twice about going in the first place.
Not Being Forced to Go On Vacation
Sadly, the least reasonable excuse for skipping a vacation – not being forced to – is more widespread than you’d expect. Proof of this can be found in the fact that some companies have begun to use ingenious methods to get their employees to take a break. For example, companies with employees unwilling to leave the comfortable confines of the workplace during the summer months will sometimes set deadlines (usually, in March) for them to pick their days off. If that doesn’t work, rumor has that some companies will even force their employees to take a vacation.
A North American Problem?
The other big question that comes out of Expedia’s survey is why there’s such a discrepancy between North American and European workers, with European workers being less “giving.” According to some, this has to do with the fact that they have a much stronger tradition of trade unions. Others, such as the Nobel Prize winning economist, Edward Prescott, suggest that Europeans would work more, but because a larger proportion of what they earn is swallowed up by personal taxes, they don’t see the sense in terms of income. And it may be a question of work ethic, with North Americans believing that obligations at work trump vacation time.
The Real Answer?
In a world filled with cell phones, the internet, and PDAs, it’s become very difficult to make the distinction between being at work and being on vacation. When you’re on vacation and the workplace can still reach you, are you really on vacation?
Personally, I think there’s another reason why North Americans are skipping their vacations – they don’t know how to occupy themselves when they have nothing “official” to do. After all, few people would consider just doing nothing.
Having visited Europe on several occasions, I can say with a good deal of confidence that Europeans are much better at doing nothing than we North Americans are – just look at the number of cafés, particularly in countries like France and Italy! We could learn something from them...
