Current mood:

aggravated

US work ethic sucks.
OK,

Lets ignore the fact you can be fired without warning for no reason, and the other crap about working in the US - lets just talk holidays.

In the US, you get 2 weeks - almost everywhere else in the world, its 4 weeks minimum.

Apart from my cousin's wedding, when I took a day off, I've not had a holiday since I worked for this company (over 1 1/2 years). Infact, since I've been in the US, I've had exactly 2 holidays, that one, and a trip to Rochester, NY to visit a friend (for which, I went on a long weekend, thus no time off).

Of course, they told me at the END of last year, that my holidays did not carry over between years, so I had to take them within the year. So I subsequently submitted an application for leave for most of the rest of the year. However things broke, and I never got to take a single day off, in fact working even days I was supposed to have off (public holidays). My boss promising to make up for it in the new year.

Early this year, we get acquired, and I find out that aparently, my leave has now been reset to 0. Which is even worse than only having two weeks, and no 'make up' time - but with the new company, leave DOES roll over, and after 2 years of service or so, you get an extra week's holiday to use per year. But any previous time at the company pre-acquisition does not count - so my 'years of service' starts from the acquisition date. Which just completely sucks.

Fast forward today - I've still not taken any holidays this year at all. We decide to take a trip to LA and Vegas in August. 2 weeks and a day - I figure the extra day won't be a problem. My boss tells me its a problem for me to take two consecutive weeks! So not only do I only have 2 weeks a year, and its most of another 2 years before I can get an extra week per year, but I have to split them!

The reason? "We are a very small company. If there was 1000 people in the company, 1/1000th of the workforce taking off 2 weeks isn't a problem. But we're much smaller, and we can't afford to have someone out that long." So it means we have to split the LA and Vegas portions of our trip, and go out to the west coast twice (remember, its approx. $250 per person to go out the west coast and back).

My boss calls me back and says "You MIGHT be able to take the full two weeks if you can push back the date a bit." - however the date was not chosen by chance. We want to go to Bats Day At The Funpark on the 29th August - and be back for the Drop Dead Festival on the first weekend in September. Plus, my job is such that there is never a time when something urgent needs to be done - its not like if I pushed back the date, then in September, we would not have something else that was urgent - just because we don't know what it is yet, doesn't mean it won't happen. I know this job too well.

Splitting the trip does have one advantage, we get an extra two days (since you include the weekend before and after). However it costs an extra $250 per person for those two days! Aparently he's still thinking about it, however I think I'm just going to have to split the trip :(

I suppose Vegas later in the year (or early next year) would be cooler then. Maybe we could do Vegas over xmas/new years - if I took off 6 days from the 20th we could come back Jan 2nd, thereby getting 2 weeks off for the cost of 6 days (since I believe I get the day before Xmas, Xmas and New Years Day off). We'll see, I don't know if I want to be flying around the place at Xmas, or how holidays will work out, or even if they could live without me for 2 weeks any better then.

*sigh* how utterly annoying.