Serendipitwaddle - Tania Katherine

I posted the above Facebook status and something similar on Twitter yesterday. To be quite frank, it pissed off a good bunch of my friends. Lots of diplomatic DM’s, comments and a few messages. I’m still not sure why but here are my thoughts: 

• Very few people “earn” their vacation. I look at my father, who has a physical job, who frequently gets calls at 1AM to come in, who works weekends, nights and 38 hour days. Does he “earn” his vacation? I think so. My best friend’s father, my uncle, working on trucks delivering and driving? I think so. My friends (and in some jobs, my former selves) who sit at a computer all day playing Facebook games to pass the hours between 9 and 5? Not so much. 
• In the US, we have the least paid off of most major nations, as exhibited by this source amongst many others. While that causes many other problems (health, socioeconomic, etc.), it also causes us to cling tighter to the days we do have. 
• Whether or not you love (or even don’t dislike) what you do tends to have a heavy impact on whether you feel you “deserve” your vacation. My last position, I was miserable. When things were slower and I had the liberty to take my time with tasks, I thought I deserved my vacation based just off of how miserable I was. When things got much harder and there wasn’t the time to take a sip of water let alone do most of my job, I realized how very little I deserved my vacation in retrospect. 
• I think a few of my friends were threatened by what I said. I’m not sure why, I can’t take their vacation away. If you think you work hard and your employer knows that, why does it matter how you feel about a silly status update? 
• People love to whine. I posted the status in response to a bunch of friends who were putting up status updates like “I can’t believe I only get a week off for Christmas” or “I can’t believe I still have another day of work before a 5 day weekend! UGH!” Whining about how “little” vacation you get? Really? Really? Am I bitter? Yes. I can whine too: I haven’t had more than 3 days paid off this year and worked well over a 100 hours last week. I’ll have a three day weekend. But I amvery grateful to have a job that I love and respects me. Some people (like my mother, other friends) don’t have that liberty. I’m also not going home for Christmas for the first year of my life so excuse if I could care less that you “only” get a week with your parents that you aren’t close with anyway. 
• When I was in high school, breaks were reserved for projects. In college, it was reserved for getting ahead on the next semester. In internships, it was reserved for planning. In freelance, it’s like every other day of work. In employment, it is reserved for catching up on emails, finishing a few things off. I don’t get this “I deserve my vacation so much I’m going to sit here and do nothing” stuff because that’s not how I ever treated things. A bit workaholic? Sure, but I probably appreciate those breaks more for that reason. 
• People aren’t grateful for a thing in perspective sometimes. I say that as a hypocrite because I do the same thing frequently. I’m debating which Nook I want when there are children starving, blah, blah, blah. I can acknowledge that. But I’ve got plenty of friends working on Christmas Eve and a smaller handful working on Christmas. I can appreciate the fact that I’m lucky to have those days off - not go damn straight I deserve them for how hard I work. That belittles what they do as I’m sure they work hard (even if it’s only here and there) and should deserve just as much. 

In summary, I don’t really get the ruckus but it sure made me think about it a lot deeper.