On Vacations and Boundaries (Aandego Podcast and Transcript)
Cecil is a 12-year veteran of the IT (information technology) industry in the United States
So, what exactly is it these days with vacations and the disappearance of boundaries?
Let’s fly a little farther and investigate. 🐦⬛
Aaron: Vacation Days! I want to talk a little bit about vacation or lack of vacation. So, I am Profe and this is my co-host Cecil. Say hi, Cecil.
Cecil: Hi, Cecil.
Aaron: There ya go. So, different countries have different mandatory minimum vacations [1] mandated by their governments. Did a little research and Japan gets 10 days, France has minimum 25, Mexico has a minimum of 12 and that goes up the more you work. The USA is a little bit special because it’s actually zero. And that’s home country for both of these hosts. Isn’t it great? Doesn’t it feel great to be from the only country that doesn’t give vacation to its citizens?
Cecil: That’s one word for it
Aaron: Great?
Cecil: Yeah. Weird honestly, because it feels like if I may just add anecdotally that you have to have a certain level of education to get into a certain job. Or you have to work you know five, ten years, or whatever that threshold is to get into a quote ”management position” where vacation time is officially offered.
Aaron: Yep, that’s America. I guess we can just leave that for another session because that’s an entire topic on its own.
Cecil: It is, really.
Aaron: Really is. So in the USA, the government actually gives zero mandatory minimum vacation days. Any vacation is at the discretion of employers. As you mentioned and so I’ve known you for a while I’ve known you for 13 years now and I’ve heard quite a few stories about what has happened to you on days that were supposed to be your vacation.
I’ve heard from my students rather similar stories about what they were doing when they were supposed to be on break. So Cecil first of all, have you ever had to do work on your vacation?
Cecil: Of course! Sadly, so perhaps the most infamous one was when I was on vacation and out of state. I was in a completely different part of the country and my employer asked me to get a passport while I was out of my home region. And anyone who has obtained a passport in the past knows that that is incredibly difficult to obtain a passport if you are not at your home area.
So, I spent the better part of two of my limited vacation days visiting friends…trying to figure out how to get a passport because they didn’t even give me any guidance. They basically just said ”hey we need you to get this before you come back” and it was up to me to figure out what all I had to do.
Aaron: So, they called you on your vacation while you were in Texas…on the other side of the country…and barked orders at you [2] and gave you no instructions whatsoever?
Cecil: Yeah. You know I honestly didn’t think of it until now doing this. It was literally, ”Hey! We need to do this and it’s got to be done before you come back”.
Aaron: I’m not shocked considering the company that you were working for at the time. That’s just par for the course. [3]
Cecil: Unfortunately, it’s, it’s difficult in the information technology field. I feel like there’s an especially unfair burden on the workers, quite honestly. It’s beneath the management level that that really comes into play and as you kind of hinted to I don’t even think that it was necessarily that employer per se.
Because even my next job as, as you know, I didn’t get anything quite as extreme which could have been also because of COVID times, so travel was very restricted. Even just during my regular vacation days with that, you know, being the only administrator for two or three hundred servers…if something was broken, you know, there’s literally nobody else in the company, unfortunately.
Aaron: They called you pretty frequently on your off-days or sometimes when we were hanging out on Friday nights or Saturday. Both of those companies used to call you pretty frequently during your off days. [4]
Cecil: I do understand that there is a certain level of expectation and part of that could be just my own feelings of responsibility, which I have a feeling that many of your students will also you know empathize with is that they take ownership of their job [5] and what they do and they want to be good at it. Which you can’t fault anybody for. You know it’s it’s not a crime to want to do the best job that you can.
But where that starts to kind of come back as a double-edged sword, it’s like you said…my personal favorite was when we went out literally to the middle of nowhere to an Amish store to buy donuts…
Aaron: Yep! Next to the horse. that’s when you got the call next to the horse.
Cecil: Yes. My boss called me and asked me where I was and not even thinking just because you know I’m on time off so my professional brain wasn’t on, he asked me where I was and I literally told him ”I am on the side of the road looking at a horse”.
Aaron: You were! We both were.
Cecil: And he, he paused for a second and then kind of laughed. And then we went on with the reason why he called. But just the absurdity of that moment, that that even had to happen, is strange.
Aaron: Right, right. Employers these days, not all employers, I’m not making a blanket accusation, but a lot of employers expect their employees to be on call 24/7…
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DIALOGUE EXPLAINED
The men you heard in the above sound clip were both born and raised in the United States of America.
Aaron, a man of shadowy and stormy origins, has a Midwestern accent, whereas Cecil Underhill was born and raised in Idaho. Their accents are quite similar.
Here are some teachable moments from the dialogue. You might have noticed that there were 5 numbers in brackets (like [1]) throughout the dialogue. Each of those numbers is one of our Aandego Teachable Moments, which further information down below.
KEY TEACHABLE MOMENTS:
Teachable Moment #1 ^
The phrase ”Minimum vacation” often is called ”minimum annual leave”. This refers to how much time a government requires employers to give their workers each year. It varies a lot from place to place.
Related to this, you might also see the acronym ”PTO”, which stands for Paid Time Off.
Teachable Moment #2 ^
It’s not great if someone is ”barking orders at you” like a dog. This phrase really has a negative connotation, meaning that managers are being rather rude and/or angry when they are delegating tasks.
Example Sentence: The supervisor called Tamara over and over, barking orders at her, on her lunch break while she was just trying to eat.
Teachable Moment #3 ^
Par for the course is a golf term that means something is expected, anticipated. It’s ”normal for this situation”. In this case, Cecil’s employer calling him with insane demands and disrespecting his vacation was just par for the course, because the employer had done that so many times before.
Pro Tip: English uses many sports expressions, particularly in the business world. Familiarize yourself a little with golf, basketball, baseball, soccer/football, and gridiron football. (Gridiron is played in Canada, Japan, and other countries, millions of people around the world play Madden now, stop snottily calling it American football. Please.) Become more familiar with sports metaphors and expressions, and I guarantee that you’ll run further and faster than your peers.
Teachable Moment #4 ^
Off days. Another way to say the days that you aren’t working. ”My off day” can refer to a Saturday, Sunday, or a vacation day of any kind.
Example sentence: My normal off days are Sunday and Monday now, ever since the schedule changed.
Teachable Moment #5 ^
Taking ownership of a job. Cecil here is talking about showing responsibility for the success of the team and completion of tasks. He liked to take ownership of his job, and believes many other people feel the same way; that is, he wants to do the best he can.
This audio conversation was all about vacations, boundaries, and how to stand your ground.
You deserve a work-life balance, don’t forget it!🐦⬛
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