Life Enjoy Your Day Off?
posted by on July 5 at 9:20 AM
Tim Egan, former Seattle correspondent for The New York Times, and now a guest columnist of the paper’s Op-Ed page, compares American leisure with Italian leisure. (It’s behind the TimesSelect firewall so I’ll just give you the relevant portion.)
Americans spend nearly a third of their disposable income on good times, baby. But we can’t relax. Sorry — no time. Lunch averages 31 minutes. And the U.S. ranks dead last among 21 of the world’s richest countries when it comes to guaranteed days off, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.Most Americans don’t even use their allotted days of leisure. The Italians take 42 vacation days a year — No. 1 in the world. The average American takes 13.
A quarter of Americans receive no vacation at all. And it’s not like we don’t need it: one in three are chronically overworked. We even work 100 hours a year more than the Japanese.
President Bush has it figured out, with his month off at the ranch. But for a profile in clueless, Bush set the mark when he lauded as truly American some citizen who told him she had to work three jobs. Ain’t that something?
Canadians get more time off than Americans I think (I'm not positive) but my husband hasn't had a vacation in more than five years. We're going on one in a few weeks but among our class of folk this isn't unusual to be so completely overworked.
How appropriate. . .
A more important distinction is how we use our vacation time.
early in the last century people DIED for the 40 hour work week.
Just because we sit on our asses in the office for more hours doesn't mean we "work" more.
That's why I'm going to stay a lowly cashier, and fie on you elitists. 2 weeks off my first year (paid of course), and more coming all the time. I feel positively European sometimes.
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