Free Republic

College-educated and gainfully employed 36-year-old Eriko Sekiguchi should be a sought-after friend or date, planning nights on the town and faraway resort vacations. But she works in Japan, a nation where workaholic habits die hard. Often toiling 14 hours a day for a major trading company, including early morning meetings and after-hours “settai,” or networking with clients, she used just eight of her 20 paid vacation days last year. Six of those days were for being sick. […] The government wants to change all that. Legislation that will be submitted during the parliamentary session that began Jan. 26 aims to...

Blame it on the Puritan work ethic. Despite unprecedented prosperity, Americans work longer and take fewer vacations than almost any developed country. Indeed, we're the only country that doesn't mandate paid vacations for full-time employees. Only Canadians and Chinese work more days. CLICK ABOVE LINK TO SEE THE LIST OF COUNTRIES AND THEIR AVERAGE TIME OFF DAYS

Managers in California's government routinely ignore official limits on the number of vacation days their employees can save, compelling the state to cut huge checks — many worth six figures — for unused time off when workers retire. Prison doctor Fong Lai received $594,976 when he retired in 2010. Jay Wickizer, an administrator for the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, saved about the same number of days, resulting in a $294,440 check upon his retirement last year. The controller's office cannot tell how many employees do this, because payroll records offer no way of tracking it.

I was watching a piece on CNN about obama's vacation in Bar Harbor, Maine, and the CNN reporter said she talked to a CBS reporter who "keeps track of tese sorts of things", and she said that while obama has taken 85 vacation days, this was not as much as Bush, who supposedly took 216 days at this point in his presidency. 216 days is 7 months....out of 17 months? Cannot believe the lies these people spew.....I do not have the caol, hard numbers for number of days, but I do know it was NOT 7 months at this point...