By Dave Mangene
I'll be the first to admit, I'm not much of a camper. I do like the sunshine, palm trees, and laid back vibes of a mediterranean campground, I just don't like tents. In fact, I'm horrible at pitching tents. If you want to see me at my worst, put me in the Spanish heat and ask me to set up a tent. It's hopeless.
I'll take it one step further: I'm not much of a vacationer at all. And neither are my fellow Americans - we aren't good at vacations. For the first week of vacation we're fine: relaxed, phone turned off, quality time, really getting into the vacation. On the eighth day, we go bonkers. That's the moment, the 8th day, when we need to get back to the office before we turn into Ugly Americans.
In truth, Americans pretty much treat vacations like work. A typical family trip to Orlando? Monday - Disneyworld. Tuesday - Epcot Center. Wednesday - Universal Studios. Thursday - hotel pool or golf. Friday - various gigantic Orlando area shopping malls. Saturday - one last park. Sunday - homeward bound. We can't even get sunburned because we don't sit still long enough. It's a whirlwind, baby!
If you don't believe the Orlando example, how about the once in a lifetime trip to Europe: Monday - London. Tuesday - Amsterdam. Wednesday - Antwerp/Brussels. You get the picture.
As a people, we don't wind down very well. We're too busy for reflection. Slowly taking in the lay of the land and the gentle roll of the seasons? Are you kidding? There's a lot of stuff to see and hurry up, time's a wasting. For many Americans, particularly the ones with a 'career', we'd just as well skip the vacation and keep working.
At work, we have an identity. A purpose. At work we speak the language and know our way around. At work we feel productive, useful, and active. We build our careers like beavers building a dam. Busy, busy, busy. We make money. We score! We add up the points and win the game. We are driven and obsessed, always working toward that ever bigger target. We will work longer hours. We will work more days. We won't call in sick. We won't take days off (unless we have to, like at Thanksgiving and Christmas). We won't have a 'daddy day'. If we take three weeks off and go fart around the museums of Andalucia, Spain - that would take us out of the loop, man! No way!
Why the workaholic nature of Americans?
First, the historical reason: we are immigrants. In our countries of birth, things weren't so great. We want things to be better now, here in the New World. So we work our butts off to create it. We know we can't depend on the Government to give us much. It just doesn't work that way in the USA. So we go to work and do it ourselves.
Second - we don't have many vacation days. Most Americans get around 10 paid vacation days. Two weeks per year - one in the summer and one around Christmas. That's it. We don't question it - we don't know any differently.
Third - Americans don't have much job security. If you take a month off to go 'find yourself' on an ashram in India, Bob, the eager beaver from marketing, is gonna swoop in and steal your gig quicker than you can say 'transcendental meditation'. If Bob's better, you're out. Hit the road Jack and all that.
Money is another reason. The more we work, the more we make. And we don't have to give it all to the taxman, like in Europe. America is a capitalist society and we lean towards materialism. Gotta have money to buy stuff. Money talks and bullshit walks - that's the American way.
A final reason that Americans prefer work to vacation is, as mentioned before, the way it provides us an identity. Many career oriented Americans connect our value as human beings, our worthiness, to the work we do. We become our jobs. We love to talk about work. To improve at it. To excel at it. To win prizes for it. To be acknowledged for it. Even to complain about it. Americans live to work.
I didn't realize this part of my personality when I first moved to Holland. Or how this part of my cultural upbringing had impacted my approach to work. My first paid job, as an English teacher at a language school, gave me 8 paid weeks of vacation a year! This was private, adult education, not a public school system.
8 weeks!
On paper it seemed ideal. So much time to explore. To chill. To have adventures.
But then I had to take the time off. Easier said than done - especially when you can't set up a tent.
Slowly but surely, I have developed the muscle. I can do longer vacations now. I can even (kind of) set up a tent. But those last few vacation days, I'm on edge, no longer the peaceful vacationer I was just days before.
Most Dutch people, by contrast, are good at vacations. By 'good' I mean they revel in the process of deciding where to go, saving the money, planning, organizing, anticipating, reading about and preparing for the trip. During the summer, when the schools are closed, the typical Dutch vacation will most likely be 2,5 to 3 weeks and involve a tent. But the Dutch are also massive skiers ('wintersport'), city trippers, sun worshippers, backpackers, and round the worlders. There is no vacation the Dutch don't love.
It would be easy to say the Dutch prefer vacation to work because they are 'lazier' than Americans. I used to think that. I was wrong. I thought, "you're going to Laos and Cambodia for 4 weeks in October??? Man, get a job!"
I was wrong because according to the statistics, the Dutch are the most productive workers in the Western world (as they will proudly, albeit a little defensively, tell you). By 'productive' I mean the Dutch produce the highest gross national product while working the fewest amount of hours. In other words, they are obsessively efficient, true to their Calvinist nature.
That said, there are many reasons why the Dutch love vacations so much. First, Dutch culture is set up for longer vacations. Most professional people have 20 paid vacation days per year, excluding the National holidays.
As a result, the Dutch have grown up taking long vacations - especially in the summer. They have created a culture in which they have time to visit a foreign country and watch the grass grow. To visit the local market. To check out a village or a castle, followed by a lazy day at the campground pool. There's no real hurry to see the sights.
From a philosophical point of view, this is a great thing. But longer Dutch holidays were not introduced as a cultural norm just to allow every Hans and Hanneke enough time to explore their inner French revolutionary. It wasn't just a romantic notion - it was also economic. The Dutch, and other Western European governments have realized since the early 1970s that workers can't work too many hours or it will mess up the intricate taxation and labor symbiosis. Holland has all kinds of mandatory days off (ATV dagen), part-time working constructions, parental leave arrangements, and other such things that I shall never understand. Whatever the reason, Dutch workers will be kept from working too many hours because it screws up the economy.
For better of for worse, the Dutch find their long vacations to be sacred, just as Americans find their commitment to work to be sacred. At best, the Dutch create an exquisite work/life balance, finding time to both explore their work and develop personal relationships with family and friends. At worst, they simply refuse to work and become dependant on taxpayer money to survive. For Americans, the best case scenario is a professional commitment to work that results in the world's highest levels of excellence and professionalism. At worst, it creates obnoxious workaholics that have no idea how to relax and have a good time.
~ DAVE
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