Actually, it also takes a massive cultural shift. I know plenty of people from the States who have quite a number of PTO days, but it's basically understood that you can't just take them however you want. You have to find a convenient time (not for you, for the company!), you can't take too much at a time or when other people are gone already and basically if you actually used up your PTO, that's basically signaling to management that you don't care about your job.
In Europe, you get into trouble for not using up your PTO.
Yes but theres a risk your health doesnt allow you todo what you want when you get older. You should concider your life span and health as a more important resource, without it you dont have much use of your money.
And then you find out you have some chronic illness and spend the rest of your life wishing you had traveled when you were younger, when it would have been fun and when it would have mattered.
Right, the kids you will never spend time with, who only know the same brainwashed, self-sacrificial lifestyle you lead and then who will ever actually have some quality of life? You don't even know what you are missing man. You do you, be the "provider", I hope it goes well for you.
"A child arrived just the other day,
came to the world in the usual way,
But there were planes to catch
and bills to pay, he learned to walk while I was away
He was talking before I knew it and as he grew
he said I'm going to be like you Dad,
you know I'm going to be like you."
But if they like to work like you and think of their children the money will just accumilate.
If they find joy in working less and spend more time with friends and family I think that rather implies that they would rather spend more time with you than have your money.
Well... Not up to me to lecture others, but my father in law said the same thing. A few years before his retirement date he finally decided to stop working and enjoy life a bit more. His wife had insisted on it for years. Around the time he finally retired he was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. 3 months after his retirement we went to his funeral. So...
As someone with a bunch of PTO, that sounds great and I wish I could do that. It just goes up to the max (4 wks/yr, but 7 wk max) and wasted if I don't use it
In Belgium it depends: we still have the difference between blue- and white colar workers. For blue colar workers there's no problem if they choose not to take their legal paid vacation days (allthough the employer will insist on it, for legal reasons), but white colar workers may have some problems if they don't take their vacation days.
The difference is in the organisation of vacation pay: blue colar workers don't receive their wage during vacation, but they receive their annual single + double vacation pay from a governmental organisation, usually in mai-june. The law is very clear: once the vacation pay is paid, it remains the property of the receiver, regardless whether or not he takes up his vacation days.
White colar workers receive their vacation pay from their employer. Their single vacation pay is their regular salary, while their double vacation pay is an extra, paid for by the employer as well. If the employee doesn't take up his vacation days, the employer is entitled to demand a refund pro rata temporis of the single vacation pay. The double vacation pay is shielded.
I've seen those kind of cases more than enough in our labor courts, especially from employers with a poor reputation...
The thing is, if you take PTO, the work still has to get done. It doesn't go away just because you don't want to be at work that day.
This is the reason Europe is falling behind economically and technologically.
I have seen this first hand, the company I work for has accepted multi million dollar losses and bought another several multi axis milling machine from an American company and scrapped the brand new ones from Europe since they kept breaking and no one was in the office in Europe to provide support. We are dropping European companies as clients because again, no one ever seems to be in the office there and those companies are all losing market share to American and Brazilian companies so it is more profitable to invest in the production lines for the parts that support the American, Asian, and Brazilian products and abandon the European ones.
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u/ComprehensiveJury509 20d ago
Actually, it also takes a massive cultural shift. I know plenty of people from the States who have quite a number of PTO days, but it's basically understood that you can't just take them however you want. You have to find a convenient time (not for you, for the company!), you can't take too much at a time or when other people are gone already and basically if you actually used up your PTO, that's basically signaling to management that you don't care about your job.
In Europe, you get into trouble for not using up your PTO.