I hate the rich

117 comments

I don't hate the Europeans for having fair working conditions. I hate the rich assholes that make my home country such a shitty place to live and work in.
It's time to emulate the french and set the place on fire if they don't start treating us fair.
- T'inquiète* or Ne t'en fais pas* would have been a better translation for Don't worry/No worries than "Pas grave"
- Or you can start with unions...
  
  And how do you think unions come about? Historically it's by setting things on fire.
  
  We need Syndicates and Worker/Consumer cooperatives as an end goal. Unions aren't the finish line and are only a bandaid over capital ownership.
  
  why not both?
  
  Or fires...
  
  Only for them to be destroyed in another 20 years by the rich
  Nah. Break out the guillotines, it worked well for the French.

30 days paid vacation + bank holidays + regional holidays + 0.5 days of vacation each on Christmas and new years eve + generally not having to work on weekends + generally not having to work longer than 8 hours a day + public transport ticket paid by the company.
Cannot complain.
- Cannot complain.
  Spotted the German.
  
  I'm going for UK, specifically Scotland.

I have:
14 fixed holidays.
31 vacation days.
35 hours workweek.
Summertime hours reduction (from 35 to 32 hours).
Fight for it, and force your countries and employers to apply those conditions, because I assure you, they are good.
- Summertime hours reduction (from 35 to 32 hours).
  lol these are my regular hours (webdev in Germany with a 4-day work week)
- What's the name of your employer again?
  Seriously, those are really good conditions, I'm glad you are aware of that.
  
  I cheated a little. As I'm employed by a public organization of the Spanish government. But it's true that we achieved these conditions because we have massive Unions here in the public sector. We are currently threatening with a strike if the remove remote work (as they are threatening to remove it).

I'm an American working in the u.s. for a company based in Germany. They have soooo many more days off than us. They're out at least 3 months of the year before taking additional PTO. They like to bring their European values of work to the u s. But unfortunately that doesn't mean that I get any more off time. I save all year from January to December and if I never took any of it my PTO amounts to 3 weeks. If you're an American they have different standards for you because american work culture means getting fucked and hating your life lol.
That being said I still feel like the days I get are generous and I am happy and grateful. But that's only because I used to get nothing at my old job. It's only crappy if I compare to others which is the thief of joy and whatnot.
- The magic word is: Unions. Without them, we would absolutely not have a minimum of 24 days per year by law. Get out there and unionize.
  
  Unfortunately Unions get corrupted easy.
- I work for a company based in the uk, and I get off around thanksgiving until the start of the year. I horde my pto though.
- 3 months... Are you including weekends?
- Your first sentence sounds like the Zeiss add on youtube that has been after me several times a day for months now
  
  Lol, I have seen that too.

My wife got her first pay check last week at her new job in a US school district. I was certain something was wrong when it came in, but the pay stub did nothing to show the breakdown of hours, rate, etc. She finally got a response today - and I've learned that school breaks are NOT PTO. She gets zero PTO she can take during the school year, and while frustrating not to be able to choose when you take your time off, I assumed that was just because she gets the summer off. But apparently she gets no PTO AND takes 71 days out of the year off without pay, effectively. So they do you the favor of paying you over 12 months, but you still only get paid for hours worked. The rate of pay seemed like it would be a pay raise on the surface, but I never anticipated needing to dock it by 20%.
Zero PTO. Just the perks of American life.
- Hourly wages for school teachers? I'm worried I might know the response, but does prep work outside school hours, in breaks etc. count as hours worked?
  
  She's not a teacher, shes in the library. But - she is allowed absolutely zero ot. She's already had her time card adjusted on days that she worked early or late to match her scheduled hours. And they only pay her for 7 hours a day, but it's an 8 hour work day and she hasn't once had the time to take a hour for lunch.
  What even IS the recourse when it's not a comproration, but the government that is stealing your wages? 🤷 I think I'm more upset about it all than she is, because the quality of life is way higher than her last job. And so I'll just keep it all to myself.
- my wife is an educator, and she teaches summer classes to cover the gap.

The most heinous thing is lack of required sick time. And who is it that's least likely to get paid sick time? Customer service, of course, the ones coughing and sneezing all over your clothes and food.

I only got 7 a year and I live in Europe...
- That's 7 more than most Americans get
  No but jokes aside where are you from so I don't move there
  
  It looks like the average is 11 PTO days a year according to Forbes, with nearly a third of employees getting zero. I myself get 24 days a year with it going up to 29 in about a year. That said I'm terrified of being effed over by layoffs so I've been hoarding them like a dragon for the payout, which is arguably way way worse than having a nice federal minimum of PTO days.
  
  Probably Turkey. Euro wannabes 😂
  
  The average American has 11 vacation days a year.
  https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/pto-statistics/
  I have unlimited plus my birthday off, once a quarter we all take off, a week for 4th of July, two weeks for Christmas and new years plus twenty holidays.
  This is pretty standard for any job I’ve had.
- Which country has such a low minimum? Or was that not a full time job?
  
  He means weeks, not days
- The European minimum is 10 I think

4-6 weeks?!
We Indians have 12 paid leaves per year.
- Yes. In Germany 30 are quite common. A fried of mine additionally changed some bonus for 5 extra days this isn't the normal case but she has 35 days off
  
  HR had some bug in their system and I got about two extra weeks (7 total) for a few years, but I didn't complain about the bug.
- Govt jobs in India have 30-40 days, which is 6-8 weeks. But the private sector will riot if you try mandating anything close to that.

I get 4 weeks, plus sick days, plus parental leave, various types of training days and charitable days, plus a 2 week carry-over and I’m neither American nor European.
- I realized how I am biased when i thought "how can he be neither American nor European?"
  
  I was married to someone from a "third world" country and boy americans have so much worst than them. If I were american I would reather live there than in the US just to get all the benefits
- Parental leave, sick days (unlimited), 10 national holidays, and 52 vacation days for me. And I am European. Edit. And two days telework a week.

I get 5 weeks.
In the US.
Thanks to a union.
And I get paid the hours on top of regular pay at the end of the year if I don’t use the vacation. Nobody gives you a second thought if you use your vacation. Zero pressure not to fuck off for a week or more.
Go Union.

American. I’m one of the lucky few who have unlimited PTO. I’m seriously underpaid though.
- So how many days do you take a year? As the other comments also touch upon, it becomes an outperform thing with co- workers, to take the least amount to "perform better". Also how easy and often do managers then deny requests?
  With a fixed set it has an actual value, at the company they can't deny PTO's as they are yours. Of course planning comes into play a little bit, but if you let the company know that 2 months from now you take 4 weeks off for a good long summer holiday, that is what you will be doing then in those 2 months.
  ps. I have 25 personal paid days, a bunch of public holidays. Doctor's appointments are on the 'please try to schedule them outside working hours if possible, otherwise, well, that's life, you need to visit that doctor'. Full travel reimbursement (fixed amount per month, can spend however i want), A lot of secondary items in my contract as well dealing with having to take care of partner / children if they become sick (is paid time off), etc etc.
  
  I do not take as much as I should. 5 weeks last year? For doctor’s appointments and stuff like that though, no one cares. You just let your boss and your team know. I am on salary, not contract.
- Is that really a thing? I've seen it in a few job offers but I have trouble understanding how it works...
  As I understand it you can take as many days as you want and it works on the company's trust, but that system sounds really toxic to me, isn't it?
  Edit: I'm European with almost 7 weeks off a year for context
  
  I've never experienced it but the somewhat obvious trick is that it turns into a race to the bottom, where if you want to outperform your peers (or even meet the expectations of the company), the number of days off you freely decided to take turns into a KPI.
  So, people take even less days off when they are made free to take any amount.
  It's why in Italy, for example, you can not refuse to go to holiday.
  
  I have unlimited and I’ve seen a few people take 2 weeks off consecutively. So it seems like the company is pretty flexible and doesn’t put artificial limitations on it. That said, I’m pretty sure even a month off wouldn’t fix the damage that’s been done to my brain from years stacked upon years of redlining it to write code and solve problems. I find as I get older I need more time off to truly disconnect.
  
  It’s a lie.
  By making it “unlimited” they don’t need to pay you out of you don’t use all of PTO days.
  If you use it more than they think you’ve earned you get terminated.
  Employees end up afraid of taking their PTO days and typically end up taking even less time off than if they knew there was a expectation of 3 weeks or whatever.

Self-employed, and not very well. I don't get any paid days off, unfortunately.
- Well, that should be part of your hourly rate. I’m also self-employed and sick and personal days-off are factored in (with a large margin too, just in case!).
  
  Yeah, I have no idea what I'm doing.

Australia is weirdly crap for this too. Only twenty days annual leave, though in theory you can bank it forever until you die at your desk.
- 20 workdays is 4 weeks non?
  
  I had 26 before :( At least there are endless AFL themed public holidays.

Not only european Brazil have paid leave too, and others more democratic countries
- Oh god, you don’t want to hear what the average American has to say about Brazil. Or really, any other country than America. Americans will do anything and everything to justify the totalitarianism they live under.
  
  True, I mean the totalitarianism they live on is the first in the history where companies own the country, that's why they got so mad when Brasil banned twitter, they can't fathom a company getting punished for breaking the law

I'm an American that had that, then we got bought by a German company that took it away. Shit's fucked.
- Wtf that goes against reason
  
  No, why? That's capitalism for you. It's still a US company/subsidiary, just with a German owner.

35 days hols per year, would be 27 or something but they give us the English bank holidays as part of our allocation (am Scottish but it’s UK company).

France is more than 7. Only things good here are benefits earned over the years by the workers struggle
- Nope, France is 5 minimum, each company can add as much as they want but the law is 5 minimum.
  I agree on all the good work of previous generations to earn us these though.
  
  You have RTT as well (overtime transformed into paid leave)

28 days + 8 Bank Holidays. Easter is great, you can have 16 days not at work, and only use 8 days holiday. (Good Friday and Easter Monday are Bank holidays, and I don't work weekends)

I currently have a paid leave balance of more than 30 days, what should I do with them?
- Took 3 weeks of vacation around midsummer, then another two weeks at the end of the summer and I still need to use another week or it will expire.
  We are allowed to carry over "only" 5 weeks of PTO.

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