Cross Culture Reversal
My German is nothing special. I can get by in some pretty basic conversations and only if the other person is really patient. Since we’ll be in the US for a full year, I’m really concerned that I’ll lose what little German I know if I don’t use it. That’s why I went to a German Conversation Group the other night. We met at a local restaurant and out of the 11 people there, 7 were native German speakers. It was great to hear so much German being spoken and as we introduced ourselves just hearing about the different areas of Germany was really exciting. I was very homesick for Germany at that point. As the evening went on, I found it fun to hear the Germans talking about American culture. This is something I know we do with other Americans in Germany so it was great to hear the reversal.
One of the subjects was the idea of vacation. The Germans thought it was amazing how little vacation time Americans get and the most astonishing aspect was that most Americans don’t even take all that they are given. In most of Europe, workers get 20 days of vacation (4 weeks) plus many holidays (if in a Catholic area, there can be 13-18 holidays observed). But here in American, most workers start off with 10 days of vacation (2 weeks) and it can take 5-10 years of employment before they can earn any more than that. They may get an additional 5-10 days for sick/family care time if they work for a more “progressive” employer. One of the Germans said that she was out sick for a few days with a fever and when she returned to work, her co-worker asked her how her vacation was.
But one German really nailed it on the head about why Americans don’t even take all of their vacation time – they’re afraid that the company might find out they don’t need them and there might not be a job to return to when the long vacation is done. (Outside observers to a culture can sometimes have a better understanding of what is really happening – it’s great) In Europe, governments do a lot to ensure job security for employees which is why you hear about a lot of unrest when anything is done in government that might jeopardize those rights.
So this begs me to ask the question – are we/you doing something that has worth? Well, this blog may be a little quiet again as I leave for vacation in a few days. Be back in a few weeks as I’m confident there will be work for me when I return.
I love this sooooo much!