American Workers Feel Guilty About Taking Their Vacation Days

Because most positions are disposable. And in this economy, which is only going to get worse, people are almost afraid to take time off for fear of losing their jobs. As a person who works in retail management, that's my take.

R1 Guilt, and fear of losing your job, are two different things, though

Vacation is part of your compensation. Take every day and don’t check your damn emails!

I never look at email when I'm on vacation. Work or personal. If for some reason I have to look at my email to reset a password, or something, when I'm on vacation, I will only look at that top email and put my hand over what's under it.

People also feel guilty about taking sick time. Not too long ago a woman I work with came in "because I know we're short-staffed" who could barely talk, and coughed all over the place. I'm sure she knew we could get along without her, but it's either a sense of guilt (she does apologize for practically everything, usually, including being late when she's on time) or else having to prove how "good" she is.

It's more than guilt about "what will happen when I'm not there to run Ned's TPS report on Thursday? I would never dream of taking two consecutive Thursdays off!"

Americans (and push come to shove, a great many of their employers) somehow believe that an employee's vacation time is purely at the discretion of the employer. In the U.S. the work contract only benefits the employer, not to protect the employee. At-will firings for trumped up causes, contention of unemployment benefit eligibility, health benefits are all at the discretion of the employer.

I worked for the better part of 30 years for one company. When my position advanced to where I enjoyed a lot of leverage, I used it to accumulate --and use-- vacation time. Every time there was a promotion offer I didn't really want or yet another merger/buyout/acquisition, I bargained a smaller raise for a lot of vacation time. For two-thirds my time there I had 16 weeks vacation plus a couple of weeks of holidays. I could at times get more where for delivering projects significantly ahead of schedule. I wasn't setting the world on fire with my salary, but I wouldn't have been doing that had I accepted the promotions offered and pushed for more. But I had months of leave and loved it. I could go away for three, four, six weeks at a time and did. My job was interesting enough, but what made it a delight was the freedom of working independently and entirely from home, and with the freedom to schedule more than four months off (with only a vague agreement to split it into at least a few segments) over the course of a year.

If you think having 18 weeks off a year doesn't improve your attitude to ward work and your employer, or if you think that the office would literally fall apart if those TPS reports had to be run two days late, you'd be wrong.

Americans even feel guilty about asking for sick days that are part of their work benefits in the form of X days per year. I told younger employees that all they owed anyone was a phone/text/email message saying "I am taking today as a sick today." Nothing more was required, no need to ask permission unless that had exceeded their allotment.

I experienced a formative situation early in my career. My first real job was with a young company that didn't have a lot of policy in place, including anything taking vacation time or losing it. One of the managers of another department had worked there since the very beginning and had not taken a single vacation day, accruing his four weeks for about 10 years, meaning when he finally quit he'd be compensated for almost a year. He died of a heart attack. The company cheated him out of the vacation pay; his family didn't pursue it, but everyone in the company suddenly started using all of their vacation time.

My job does not allow me to take any time off-- I have no coverage and I have accounts that no one has electronic access to-I do work from home but my company is toxic and about to have a round of layoffs.

Sometimes life traps you until you unwrap yourself.

And all of the VP's I work under are bragging about 2 -3 week trips to Europe.

This is why unions were invented.

I wouldn't say I feel "guilty" about taking time off, but as others have noted, I have no back up and layoffs will most certainly come by the end of summer/fall. Since I'm unlikely to get very little if any severance, my vacation days will be paid out & give me some cushion if I get laid off, so it's more of an insurance policy.

R10- Check this out. My company is so VILE that this year they started NO PTO also known as unlimited time off..(right)

We have no vacation banks.

What this means is ((for a layoff heavy company like mine) they do not have to pay out PTO to anyone upon termination- even in strict states like CA and MA-

I also learned that PTO goes against revenue- as its all considered a liability..

I hate these fuckers more than life itself.

They also started distributing our HSA quarterly instead of at beginning of year- You guessed it! To fuck us all in the ass - so if you get laid off- they don have to pay you any outstanding HSA

One thing I learned about being a well-paid grownup was that while “going on vacation” meant I didn’t have to do any work at that time my deliverables remained the same.

To R5-That happened a lot all thru the 1990s. It's even worse now since the economic collapse of Wall Street in 2008,09.

Companies are making employees feel guilty into working sick& not taking scheduled vacations. I never had that problem, I just went on vacation. My 1st boss Harvey always told me " I can't fire you, every time you go on vacation to Fire Island, you came back with new overseas clients from Asia." You did that twice!

Covid changed the work experience forever.

[quote]We have no vacation banks.

Is that where they give you a certain amount of PTO for the year, but you can't carry it from year to year?

So, the pandemic didn't permanently shift attitudes towards work.

Early in my career, I thought the company I worked in would just explode if I left for vacation.

I now know that, in fact; NOTHING of significance even happens when I’m gone.