Asked and Answered – Workaday Life Editon
Conor Friedersdorf asks, “am I really expected to work 40+ hours per week, 50 weeks per year, for decades? Am I to savor only two days off each week? Am I to vacation but two weeks per annum?”
Yes.
(Well, actually, you should get some holidays off. And, maybe, get a third week of vacation at some point. But, basically, yeah.)
The moral of the story is to make your living doing something you love doing or else learn to love whatever you’re doing to make your living. You’re going to be doing a lot of it.
BTW, 15,000 years ago we were doing a lot less. Check the lifestyles of hunter-gatherers. But if you think that boom-bust is tough now check out what it was like for hunter-gatherers.
No, you can not be expected to do any of these things , as long as you do not expect others to suffer the consequences or reap the rewards of your behavior.
I get a max of 40 hours of vacation that accrues at 1 hour a week, with no carry over to the next year. This guy needs perspective.
Yeah – two weeks vacation a year sounds great. I barely get one.
Hey I work 50 hours a week and don’t get a day of paid vacation. Not one day.
I work 161 hours a week. To get to work, I have to walk six miles, uphill each way, in the snow. I’ve been doing this since I was three years old. I have never had a vacation. In fact, I have to have a portion of my pay taken each week that gets paid to my employer so that HE can have a vacation.
You people are all pansies…
Heh, Alex, I worked 168 hours a week turning this stupid wood mast around in a circle, wearing only a loin cloth, as an apprenticeship before being forced into gladiator death-matches.
Now who’s the pansy?
I’m contractually entitled to two weeks, but I’ll be damned if I know when I would take it.
I work about 4 hours a day, pick the time, pick the place, wear whatever is comfortable, and take off whenever I like for as long as I can manage without falling too far behind.
I welcome your impotent abuse. Ah hah hah hah!
I hope that post is in jest, otherwise somebody needs his ass kicked.
Job? You have a job? Luxury!
Reynolds is a professor?
A year or two ago I might have been talking right here at OTB about the low US savings rate. Some people might do better than expected with leasure time … but a high savings rate helps. It is possible to live paycheck to paycheck on any amount, and be insecure on 1/4 million a year, as other people demonstrate. (We are doing better, as a nation.)
Worse yet, a writer.