Happiest at Work and Play

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Maybe that’s why Americans are so fond of partying on Labor Day weekend. America’s work ethic is an admirable, if dogged pursuit. At parties, people love to swap horror stories of excessive 85 hour work weeks, unpaid overtime, unused vacation days, and valiant feats soldiering on despite hideous illness, sick days accruing in their leave-time bank. That’s all well and good if you plan to take a month or two off and burn those amassed days, but it doesn’t seem to happen.

The typical American vacation is about a week. Sometimes less. There’s little of the sort of summer time exodus you might see in France, when Paris decamps to the coast. Or the two and three week family vacations typically booked in the UK. Even New York’s summer escapes to the Hamptons or Jersey shore (at two ends of the spectrum), or even upstate into the ample bosom of Columbia County, tend to revolve around bucolic retreats or hedonistic Saturday nights crammed into willing weekends before the Monday morning commute crawls back around.

My initial foray into the American workforce was a shock. I would have ten vacation days for the year – the entire year! This in addition to, as the HR rep kindly pointed out, all the US national holidays. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to kiss her or the ground with gratitude. A later employer was sufficiently cynical about the use of sick days that all leave time was lumped into one. Employees were given a pretty decent three and a half week vacation package that included sick and personal days. Sure, you didn’t have to make up phony illnesses to tack a few days together but nothing burned more than spending a week on flu-ridden bed rest glumly regarding each day as another that wouldn’t be spent sunbathing on the beach.

After labouring outdoors before our own Labor Day party, I snuck out for a quick pedicure at an untested neighbourhood salon. The trio of Vietnamese staff was the friendliest I have ever encountered, extraordinarily chatty, and insatiably curious about Britain. “What were you like, originally, before the Romans came?” was the opening question. I told him how we ran around smothered in blue paint, largely factionalized and fighting one another. We have a lot of Nordic and North European blood but Rome really helped to sort things out with some roads and organization. “What about work?” he wanted to know. “Do you have the same sort of long workdays as Americans, working every day or just parts of the day? (I think he meant a midday siesta.) “No”, I told him. “We don’t work. The Queen pays for everything.”

With US unemployment at 9%, job losses affect not only those out of work but place greater burdens on remaining employees as they absorb the tasks of eliminated positions. And according to a new study, job dissatisfaction is at an all time high. The old notion of mutual loyalty to a firm, staying with them for 20 years or more, is long gone and far from being a negative, rapid job-hopping is sometimes admired. (Perhaps more for the implication that you’re being continually hired.) But along with the fluctuations in employment and the economy, there has been an overt increase in the quest for personal happiness. Much like the health market, online dating, or stress relieving activities like yoga, acupuncture, Pilates, or Tai-Chi, this trend extends beyond work – where most people spend the vast majority of their days – to the inner self, and a goal to proactively isolate elements that make us happy. Some personal quests have turned into books like Gretchen Rubin’s bestseller, “The Happiness Project” or Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love”, a tale that resonated so clearly with the masses that it was a movie before the ink was dry on the book’s second press. Now, a Gallup Well-Being poll is telling us that American workers are unhappier than ever at work. And this year’s ‘go to’ authors of “The Progress Principle” identify the cause as companies consistently missing the need for employees to feel as though their work is meaningful and contributing to progress.

This may be true but that American work ethic still persists: pride in never taking a sick day, pride in being too busy to vacation. Perhaps the authors of ‘The Progress Principle’ can compare happiness scores between employees who vacation and those who don’t. After doing all that work, don’t you think it might be OK to take a leaf out the European model and enjoy some of the R&R that your job affords? I’m going to guess advocates of this approach must be among the happiest of all. So, Happy Labor Day, America. (Don’t work too hard.)