You must log in or register to comment.
Your boss did not give you vacation days. Your government/union did.
That’s not strictly true. In the US there is in most states NO requirements for paid leave outside of a few protected types. But not vacation or sick. And we also are largely not unionized. We still have time off albeit MUCH less than Europeans and such.
Though I’d argue the norm of having any paid time off is a byproduct of labor/union battles in the past.
We’re given just enough scraps to avoid mass unionization. That’s because the last time it happened we got The New Deal. This time it’ll be the Economic Bill of Rights. The leftist platform hasn’t changed for 80 years.
Would be nice if there were more voices calling for democracy in the workplace. That would change so many things and make concentration of wealth and political corruption much more difficult.
How the fuck is sick leave not protected. Y’all Americans need to be rioting over that shit. That’s wild
Where did they say they were from the US?
Nowhere, but they said it as though it was a universal truth and I provided an example to the contrary.
Guys, he’s from the US.
It’s implied from the combination of English and the boss being mad about the worker taking their vacation days tbh
I dunno. I work a 35 hr week with 6 weeks paid vacation and 20 days paid personal leave each year… Oh, yeah, and it accumulates annually if I don’t use any of it.
Oh, and 17%>of my income is paid into retirement in addition to my salary, not out of my salary.
It’s a bit above the legal minimum, but it’s still pretty normal here.
I’d say you earned them as part of the agreed compensation in exchange for your work. That way you also cover circumstances where there’s no union, and no government requirement, but the employer still offers PTO to be competitive with other employers. Which theoretically could also be driven by other people’s unions or governments, but then that would be indirect.
Besides which, regardless of how the arrangement came to be, you earned your PTO.
Tell me you work in the US without telling me you work in the US.
Not calling you out specifically, but I see this phrase everywhere and don’t understand its popularity. It would be more concise and equally “clever” to just say “Sounds like this guy works in the US”. What is the appeal that everyone keeps typing this?
AFAIK it’s been a challenge some people did on… twitter I think?
Basically it’s “Tell me you’re XYZ without telling me you’re XYZ” and people responded with funny answers.
At some point that got turned around and people satrted to use that sencence structure to indicate that the thing they are commenting on would have been a great answer for that challenge.Thanks yeah, I’ve seen that sort of thread. If anything in this particular case it would make more sense if the comment was “tell me what country you’re from without telling me what country you’re from.”
Tell me you don’t get memes without telling me you doing get memes…
deleted by creator
Lol, well I didn’t mean specifically “tell me you’re from the US” just the general phrase “tell me X without telling me X”.
And can confirm that plenty of Americans aren’t thrilled with how things are run in America. We’re running democracy v0.1 beta
Someone said it on Twitter once so I suppose it’s stuck. I find it a bit long-winded and all.
People gotta go watch that scene from The Newsroom.
I’ll link it. It’s true.
https://youtu.be/wTjMqda19wk?si=p-IgIHmjlNOGr8ut
There are lots of places in the world where people have far better quality of life and don’t need to cower in fear of who’s going to try and kill them and their families next.
Or let simple medical issues become complicated medical issues because of fear of bankruptcy.
Yup. I had 2 medical procedures that would’ve set me back over $100,000 in the US. In Canada I was miffed that I had to pay for parking during the surgery.
Colombia for teeth, cheaper than home with good insurance.
Memes gonna meme.
It’s a colloquialism of Internet denizens that I’ve seen floating around for many years. In fact it’s somewhat baffling to me that you haven’t seen it until now.
I was saying I see it everywhere?
Right, my bad. I guess I’m hinting at your comment needing a bit of a massage until it says what you mean. My suspicion is you actually just don’t like the turn of phrase, not that you don’t get why it’s used, right? Which is perfectly fine yo.
Hell, the way you phrased not liking something as "not getting it’ and yor statement just now with the “?” At the end of it are both standard interwebby colloquialisms.
Not fighting, just saying
Well like other people were saying, there’s a trend of people posting this prompt, and then others responding with funny answers. You’re right, I don’t like it when people use the same formulation in response to a comment. I also don’t get why people are doing it, for the same reason: I don’t think it’s funny, and it doesn’t really add anything to the conversation.
Usually memes are funny because there’s a familiar pattern and then people riff on the pattern and make little unexpected tweaks. The type of usage I don’t like and don’t get is when people are just saying “you’re this” in a more wordy way. It has the form of a joke with no punchline.
I get what you’re saying bout the repetitiveness of the way people communicate. Someone it can feel like a bunch of LLMs slapping together the same 10-15 lines together to mimic speech.
I attemt to say things in different ways and have a “voice” you can hear to fight this repetitiveness, and out of sheer boredom towards the ways things are commonly said. THAT said I’m “guilty” of using memespeech too, and if course it can be clever shorthand to convey feeling if used properly.
Dunno where I’m going with this but i do feel ya.
Personally I think this was a good use of the phrase. I was thinking it already when I read it. Good comment.
Regurgitating memes isn’t about being concise or clever lol
It may be coming from those popular AskReddit threads, such as: Tell me what you do for a living without telling what you do for a living.
Not calling you out specifically, but I see this phrase everywhere and don’t understand its popularity. It would be more concise and equally “clever” to just say “Sounds like this guy works in the US”. What is the appeal that everyone keeps typing this?
Tell me you’re from the US without telling me you’re from the US.
My current boss is by far the best one I’ve ever had.
It’s me.
I’ve also got a great employee. That’s me as well.
Yeah but the sexual harassment never stops!
Goes to HR:
“My boss grabbed my dick and shook the piss out of it in the bathroom! Then he made me go into a stall and wiped my ass to check if that risky fart he had noticed earlier was indeed just a fart!”
“No shit?”
“None!”
Then he sits down and makes himself an award certificate for best personal hygiene and another for most caring boss and wonders if talking to himself really means he’s crazy.
HR: “You know what? Promotion!”
“For me or the boss?”
HR: “does it matter?”
Any good office pranks?
I wouldn’t know. My office moves on 4 wheels and is full of tools. She’s the one pulling the pranks on me and they’re never good - just expensive.
FunkFPV, is that you?
Kidding. Sounds like you’re still mostly winning though, good on ya.
I also choose this guy’s boss
I’ve heard from friends who are self employed that this is a double edged sword. When you have an employer and take vacation, it feels like you’ve earned it and are taking time off at the expense of your employer. But when you’re self employed it feels like you’re just not getting paid.
One of my friends didn’t take any time off for something like 5 years before realizing how incredibly bad that was for him.
Are these people related? I smell nepotism
I’m currently at my best job, and it’s because I have a union who can tell the boss to fuck himself for me.
Same. Technically I report to someone at the company I contract with but mostly that’s just to let them know when I’ll be in and when I won’t.
I’ve got 9 weeks of vacation saved up, and I must take it you say?
Ok, I’ll see you in 9 weeks!
What do you mean, 9 week is too long to be gone? Make up your mind!
In my younger days I witnessed this conversation
Guy was basically Brent (if you know you know) for a huge project. So on the 2st of Dec our boss phoned him and said he had 4 weeks to take before jan 1st. Brent’s responce was cool see you next year and was told no I can’t let you do that
We just looked at eacother in total amused confusion
Was it me? Because I had that conversation back in '10 or '11. I ended up taking most of it off then took off the rest after the project “off the books” (but with an email paper trail because I’ve been burned before).
Maybe. Did you move to Germany a couple years later?
Sadly I did not. I have visited but I was only there a few weeks to have beer and bratwurst.
I’m starting to think that there are a lot of managers who demand the impossible.
I’ll never understand this. I regularly encourage my staff to use their PTO and only deny requests if multiple people want overlapping days. Even then, if we can rearrange the schedule to make it work, we will.
See, you have morals and empathy.
Most managers and owners don’t.
Most managers and owners in US don’t.
Sorry, my US brain was assuming only US people again!
Though yalls owners class frequently does want to be exactly like the US owners class. Don’t think I haven’t noticed the sharp rise in barely-not-fascist and outright fascist parties in Europe! And the middle east has been run by fascists for decades thanks to the US and various European powers.
Basically we all suck, some just suck less and slower
Yes, companies want to do the same in Europa, but we have laws for that.
Well considering the median worker in China, the place we all mock for their employee protection laws and poor wages, makes more than the median American, maybe its not as close a gap as you make it sound like.
Even when you take morals and empathy out of the equation, you just generally get better results from people that aren’t run down and miserable.
Apologies,
Owners and managers have no empathy, morals, or brains.
The point is to harm people that have less power than you do. There’s a whole political ideology based around that idea.
Well, at my work, all of the regular decent people with consistent morals refuse leadership positions because that would mean they’d be responsible for this dumpster fire.
Meanwhile the actual leadership is the people who were to stupid to realize they could cause harm in a leadership position but were just smart enough to see they would make more money changing from hourly to salary.
And then they find out about 6 months into the new promotion that the company puts them on salary because in america that means they both don’t need to be paid for overtime and can be fired if they refuse to do overtime.
Oh right this is about time off. At my company if you ask for a day off they will:
- Guilt trip you into retracting the request.
- Demand you find someone to cover your own shift, you know, like how a manager manages a team.
- Demand you trade something for the day off like working an additional day or staying late other days.
- Tell you that the date you asked for is in a “blackout period” where noone is allowed to take time off, sorry!
That last one, I had a job where the blackout period was from October through new years. Noone was permitted to take vacation time due to our “busy months”.
This is the way
I go so far as to get all involved parties together and discuss to see who has the greatest need. I also make a point of trying to make the person who doesn’t get have as easy a time as possible on their next request.
It would supprise you how often the reason for the holiday is meh got to use em before the end of the year
It’s none of your fucking business what I’m taking my time off for.
Cool story bro.
And yes that’s just as valid a stance. I however try to work with my staff as adults who have to work together with no favourites or otherwise.
Fun fact i have built a team that respects each other enough that I have never once had to deny a holiday. It must really succeed to work that based on your responce is such a hostile environment
I go so far as to get all involved parties together and discuss to see who has the greatest need.
Fun fact i have built a team that respects each other enough that I have never once had to deny a holiday.
Which one is it, bro?
And where the hell do you live, where people refer to leave/vacation/time off as a holiday?
Btw, once you get out of minor leagues, you’re realize you’ll need an actual company policy for things, including vacation. With rules that aren’t subjective to your opinion on what the greatest need is. You know, normal proper company things, like using either seniority, or date the time off request was submitted.
It’s both when a conflict occurs. I say that much, and then someone cancles the request am usually not involved in the decision process at all. Holiday requests are visible to the whole team when approved and they know my criteria which is basically no more than x off in 2 day 1st come 1st served so it only ever comes up if to people ask when I’m on holiday and haven’t approved it yet.
I find transparency is key to building trust. Unlike how it seems to be on the American front, we’re all in this together. If I fail, we all fail and vice versa.
We have a policy, and everyone knows what it is. And while my little corner of the company is only worth a few million, it is a global team.
Tldr: don’t be a prick with the team, and they won’t be a prick with you.
As for where am I, I’m in Scotland. Vacation isn’t really used that often in my experience outside of request forms at work
Like I said to date I have not needed to refuse a holiday request. Of course, i could just be really lucky
Might be nitpicky but setting up rules where you have you employees essentially refusing themselves sounds a bit problematic.
That said, can’t really argue with your track record if its true there have been no disputes.
There’s defined operrunity for issues and I can see where they would come with conflicting personalities etc but so far at least it hasn’t come.
There is some wiggle room in the limits to deal with that which is used for emergency and sickness that I can lean on.
The way I see it, my job is to keep everyone as happy as possible while ensuring the work gets done. An no were not a family. I hate that shit were all here for the same reason. Pay me.
IT manager of more than a decade here. Vacation days are earned. They’re part of your pay. If you’re not taking vacation days, you may as well be not cashing a paycheck. That’s unacceptable.
If several folks request off the same day I’ll gently ask if anyone is willing to swap. If they’re not willing or able, it’s OK. I’m paid more and I will work the overtime needed to cover them, because they earned it and it’s their time. Period. The company will survive a few days of less stellar work so that my guys and gals can live their life and work a job where they feel confident that they’re taken care of.
So glad my work has sick days too. Mental health is a good enough reason to use one and you don’t even need to use a reason. I do my best to show up for important things but I am so thankful I can call in sick or use a vacation day any time I want for the most part….
Fun fact, over here vacation days you don’t take are paid out, at overtime rates.
That’s amazing! I’m able to sell up to 7 vacation days per year if I don’t use them, but it’s only my standard hourly rate.
your boss does not give them to you, it is your right (possibly only at a minimal level too)
In civilised countries yes. In the US that minimum (federally at least) is 0.
🍁?
Varies by province I believe.
At my work if I don’t book at least 75% of my holiday days by like a month after renewal my boss starts to really moan at me.
The meme must be an American thing.
You in Germany? There is some kind of tax thing, so it costs money if people don’t take there holidays in the year itself, so companies are mostly quite keen with you raking all holidays.
UK. But it’s actually a German company. Everywhere I’ve worked has been pushy about you using your holiday though (managers obviously don’t want it to hit the end of the year and suddenly everyone wants to use it instead of loosing it) but the 75% almost as soon as it renews is the most extreme example I’ve come across.
Lmao what an American comment. Bro it’s not just in Germany, it’s more like it’s only in the US
I was adressing the “aggresively urging to take your holidays on time”, which is a very German thing and it is so due to local laws. Never heard that about any other country. I am also not American, but turkish (living in Germany).
Interesting. At my place HR explicitly encourages using up all of our paid vacation days every year
HR wants the liability gone, your boss wants your ass in the seat 24/7. Neither are looking out for you.
I am fortunate enough to have a manager that only gives a shit about deadlines being met. I’m 100% WFH and can work at whichever hours I choose. Though I feel I must mention I neither live nor work in the US
That’s really good. My boss looks out for me too.
Or, your boss is more checked out than you and legitimately, gives no shits
Are you allowed to carry over PTO hours? I might just be a pessimist, but my immediate thought is if they ever have to let anybody go, they don’t want to pay-out accrued PTO hours.
At my previous place, there was one employee that NEVER took PTO for some insane reason. Had saved up like 2 months of PTO.
He was told by HR he had too many hours and needed to use some PTO time. This specific scenario is not unheard of.
However, a month or so after he came back from a month and a half of PTO, he got laid off for reasons unknown to me.
Rumors are they didn’t want to pay-out the PTO.
Honestly it doesn’t make sense, they had to pay him for the PTO anyways, but when has HR made sense?
Oh that’s definitely because they don’t want to pay it out at the end of the financial year. But at least it kind of sometimes ends up working in the employee’s favor
It’s at their convenience though. Want Christmas week off? Too bad. What Labor Day week off? Too bad.
I have some weird memories being 12 and wanting to be American haha.
I would never
Let be honest, Hollywood is a hell of a good propaganda, I mean, it’s where the shit happens
Yeah I bet it was because of movies / TV shows
That’s too
TBF, there are a lot of upsides to living in the US. It’s the “fine print” that usually fucks people though :p
I get 5 sick days a year. I can roll over sick days, allowing up to 13 sick days a year. If I use more that 2 in a row, I need a doctors note. If I use 5 sick days in a row I forfeit my bonus pay for that month. Fuck me right?
You should know better than to get sick!
Easy, take 4.95 sick days and go pick up something from the office on Friday afternoon
Sounds like your country has really shitty workers rights.
Yeah thats why foreign companies have their manufacturing here where they can underpay and abuse stupid americans.
I pretty much order my staff to take time off.
Government job I had gave 10 sick days a year. Use or lose. I’d do extended weekends. Boss said he’d noticed a pattern of me calling in sick on Fridays. Well duh. Started alternating Mondays. He gave up.
Had one that let you accumulate one sick day per month, but if you didn’t use them they rolled over. First few years I didn’t use all of them, and then one year I used thirteen sick days in one year (most of them for kids home sick from school) and got lightly scolded for it in a performance review.
I wanted to say “removed why do you allow rollover at all if you don’t want us using more than we can possibly accumulate in one year?!” Looked it up in the contract and it said nothing at all about maximum sick days usable in a year. Of course if you have sick days left when you leave, they pay out at one third, but FUCK that, I earned that time, I’m not taking a one third payout. And they didn’t EVER give merit raises for those years I barely called out sick.
So the next year I took even MORE sick days, and afterwards made sure not to leave any unused, even if I wasn’t sick, because fuck them.
In a perfect societ, we would have paid and unpaid leave instead of sick leave
In the US, a lot of companies have started doing this.
I just got PTO, no separate vacation or sick leave.
Oh geez this thread is full of cynical amuricans
Hard not to be cynical when we’re treated like shit because our parents, grandparents, and dipshit neighbors keep enabling the billionaire oligarchs in stealing our money and our time. Yeah I’m fucking cynical, mate.
“Not a team player”, gripes and mumbles the boss as he drives towards the Wells Fargo Center that weeknight, he and the other executives have a luxury suite to watch the 76ers and Flyers, season tickets!
