We in the USA have fewer paid holidays than any other industrialzed nation in the world. Fewer personal paid days (sick days, etc) and less vacation time as well.Brian Lutz wrote: ↑June 19th, 2023, 12:48 pm It also seems like most employers are still treating it as a normal work day. Some larger companies do make it a holiday now, but that seems to be more the exception than the rule. Then again it still seems relatively recent (within the last 10 years or so) that employers started giving employees Martin Luther King day off, and days like Veteran's Day and Columbus day are rarely given by employers as holidays in my experience. In my current job there is one "floating holiday" given per year that could theoretically be used to cover one of these, but there's no hard and fast guideline. I know some of the offshore people I work with seem to have a lot more holidays than US people do; The people in China I've worked with get a week at a time off for things like Chinese New Year and Golden Week, and it seems like the Indian people I work with get frequent holidays too.
Plus, we don't even take what we are given. Work/Life balance is the exception.
I'm not proud of my participation in that American way of living.