The sun had barely risen, perhaps 10 minutes earlier, and it was a perfect yellow globe warming my shoulder. I had snuck quietly out of the hotel room and found fresh coffee in the lobby. From the rope hammock chair facing the ocean, I watched the waves, hoped to see some dolphins, and became preoccupied by the deliberate actions of a man surf fishing, the same one who had been there the day before, the same who had yet to catch anything. It didn’t seem to matter to him, just as the book on my lap was mostly unread, and I doubted I would find time in the following five days of vacation to finish it. It didn’t matter.

I was, however, blessedly uncluttered and unhurried, and the days had already become pleasantly long. I looked forward to my children waking up, for we had planned to bike to the grocery store. Leisurely. It would be one of the day’s big events.

I thought back to a month earlier. I had been high atop a mountain at Cataloochee Ranch under an outdoor tent. WCU Business School Dean Ron Shiffler, myself and dozens of others were eating dinner and congratulating graduates of the recent Leadership Haywood class. As we ate, talk turned to a recent trip Shiffler and his wife had taken, and I whined a bit about not having taken a vacation in a couple of years.

“Scott, you’ve got to take time to recharge your batteries,” Shiffler told me.

But I have a new business to run (two years, one month old) and too much to do. Many Americans know the story, whether they’re in business for themselves or working for another company. Vacations are expensive, hard to justify, and require a tremendous amount of work beforehand and extra work upon returning. They are, in the minds of many, just not worth it.

The studies about Americans being overworked and under-vacationed could fill a library. A landmark report released this summer by Oxford Health Plans put it clearly: Americans take fewer vacations than workers in any other industrialized nation and American companies provide workers less time off than any other country. That means we are allowed fewer vacation days and that many of us don't take those we are allotted.

Here’s the breakdown of average paid vacation days in a sample of the so-called industrialized countries: Italy - 42, France - 37, Germany - 35, Brazil - 34, Britain - 28, Canada - 26, South Korea - 25, Japan - 25 and U.S. - 13.

As a business manager, I'm not sure we could survive if we provided everyone that much paid time off. Another side of me, however, knows that giving people that kind of time to rejuvenate and recharge has to be beneficial, especially in a business that thrives on creativity and original thinking.

When Americans do take time off work, however, they don't always take vacations. We don't go somewhere to unwind, but rather to be thrilled and intrigued. Before our children came along, my wife and I were more likely to head West for mountain biking and rafting, go south for scuba diving and exploring, or grab a weekend away to participate in a race.

So when we saw a window of opportunity open up, a chance to simply load the van and head to the beach to do a lot of nothing for a week, we kind of baby-stepped into it. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered being a teen-ager and scoffing at people who worked their tails off all year so they could take a one-week vacation at the beach. It seemed hypocritical to suffer for a year to enjoy a few days away.

But that, perhaps, is where Americans may be different. It’s work, sure, but most of the people I know get a great deal of satisfaction from their work. It may be demanding, relentless, and exhausting, but our jobs define us. It is who we are, and we want to do it better than anyone else.

What I found during my vacation is that it wasn’t the time away from work that proved so satisfying. It was the time with my wife and children, time when we weren’t running from work to swimming to the babysitter to piano to the grocery store. It wasn’t a weeknight when we are both so exhausted we fall out before 9 p.m., or a night when one of us does just that while the other stays up past midnight finishing some work.

It was also gratifying to visit other family members and friends, catching up, renewing bonds, laughing and just sittting around talking.

Perhaps we Americans don’t dread work so much as we use it - and all the other activities in our frenetic lives - to replace other, more important, relationships. Our jobs and businesses fill a real need, but the problem is that they are really a sorry replacement for more important human relationships. When we do finally take time to re-connect, it’s easy to see the difference. At least it was for me.

(McLeod can be reached at info@smokymountainnews)

 

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