When I worked in retail, I wasn’t offered vacation days, so if I wanted a day off, I wouldn’t get paid (even though I was in management and worked there for over 5 years as a full-time manager, but that’s just another depressing story). But now that I have a different job I get actual vacation days. I get 15 days a year (not including holidays so it’s more than that of course) but last year I only used 12 days.Why did I do this? After not having a vacation day for over 5 years, you’d think I would use them all. I think since I didn’t have vacation days ever, I felt kind of bad for using all of my vacation days.
This year I plan on using all of my vacation days. I still have 4 left, and I’m using one day this Friday and the other 3 the rest of the month. It’ll be nice!
I also came across this article from Yahoo that talks about how $34.3 billion worth of vacation days will go unused this year. Here are some interesting facts:
- The average American worker earned 14 vacation days but will only take 12 of them
- Most people didn’t use all of their days because they said they couldn’t afford a vacation
- Too much stuff to do at work so most people can’t even use their days
- Many workers feel that if they took a day off, that they may be fired due to the economic situation
- Most other countries use ALL of their vacation time.
“Workers in France earned 30 vacation days, on average, in 2011, and often used every single one of those days. The same goes for employees in Brazil and Spain. In the UK, workers get 25 days and they used all 25.”
Do you always use all of your days?
