what is your work culture like?

30 comments

1. No, where did you hear that?

2. It really depends on the job. I’d say the majority in the US have a pretty standard 40 hour week. Two weeks a year of paid vacation is fairly standard to start out with in a career-oriented job, with additional weeks of vacation added as you gain seniority. Most jobs will have paid holidays in addition, as well.

   Some fields have potentially crazy work hours; big law firms, the medical field, some tech jobs, etc. Before I retired, I worked a normal schedule during the winter, but put in anywhere from 60 to 100 hours a week from about May through September or October. I was well compensated, though, and had lots of paid leave available to use during the slow season.

3. Mine is 40 work week with only 2 weeks vacation but pretty lax on breaks, time for appointments and flexible hours.

4. I work a hair under 8 hours a day. Sometimes on rare occasions it will be more. The work place is pretty chill. They allow me the flexibility to come in early and leave early. I’m lucky to have bosses who don’t care as long as the work gets done.

5. >Do you all work crazy long hours with few breaks and few vacations?

   the standard American work week is 40 hours. vacation depends entirely on your job. I get several weeks of vacation time my boss is always nagging me to use bc I’m bad at taking time off. but that’s bc I really like my job and the people I work with + I work from home with pretty flexible hours. I’m very thankful for that.

6. No. Some people do, I’m sure, but I work a 37.5 hour work week and I get 4ish weeks of vacation and I basically take it all. We try to do quarterly vacations, though that’s not the norm for most people. I work over 37.5 hours a week rarely and work from home 3 days a week. It’s pretty great.

7. The average american works something like 38 hours a week.

   There are fewer legal mandates here so some real crap jobs exist but mostly that turns into a high-turnover shitshow and doesn’t last if you need any sort of qualification for your workers. The exceptions are generally low-skill hourly retail and service gigs where people don’t have a lot of options to just up and move to something better. And…yeah, those folks get screwed in a lot of ways which sucks.

   Me, personally? My job is super flexible and I don’t think I’ve ever used all the vacation I have available. I don’t vacation as much as some I know, but the barriers to that sort of thing are about the time, cost and trouble of travel vs what else I could be spending those resources on rather than anything about my job. I have plenty of time for breaks, no problems just taking an appointment or running out early to pick up kids, that kind of thing. As long as the work gets done and I don’t miss meetings people really don’t care that much what I do.

8. I do, but that’s par for the course in my line of work. I knew what I was signing up for, and I’m okay with it.

   I also like what I do. Contrary to what reddit will have you believe, it is possible to have a job you enjoy doing, with people you like being around.

9. I work as a consultant on the West Coast. I am lucky that most of my clients are in more eastern time zones. That means most meetings are in a six hour window, but I do exchange that for a few early mornings and giving up a couple weekends. I spent Friday through Tuesday fucking around in Portland and did all of maybe two hours of work during that time. However, some engagements require a shit ton of hours especially upfront, while others are like five hours a week.

10. For me I work in restaurants. It is very fast paced and stressful at times but incredibly boring at others. I work more than 40 hours per week but none of my employees do

11. I greatly depends on the company. I’ve worked at companies with open and friendly culture and others that wanted you to be soulless robot without a single thought of your own.

    I currently work 40 hours a week, and get 3 paid vacation days a year, aswell as 3 unpaid vacation days a year.

    In my opinion, the two worst things about my current job is that they want you to work extra hours for no extra pay, and that my current pay is pretty abysmal itself.

12. When people ask questions like this, I gotta wonder. In other countries is there like…no concept of different jobs having different hours and coming with different benefits?

    Like, does the 16 year old frying chicken at Nandos work the exact same schedule and get the exact same perks from his fast food job as a banking executive at Barclay’s?

    No, right?

13. My job is a 24/7/365 operation. We all work virtually. We are a mix of full timers, part timers, and people helping from other departments when we get busy.

    The job can be a bit stressful, especially when we are busy. Many of our callers are having difficulties that we are expected to resolve.

    Culturally it is pretty chill. Management supports us but rarely micromanages us. Most of my colleagues are knowledgeable and willing to help out.

    Our team chat is a mix of asking/giving help, blowing off stream, and just chatter.

    We are encouraged to take our breaks and use our PTO.

    The culture is important to retain staff. Working nights, weekends, and holidays is hard. I feel that management makes an effort to make up for it by making the “workplace” as pleasant as possible.

14. Mine personally? Pretty chill I guess. Work between 35-40 hours a week, remotely, sitting in front of a computer. A few hours of meetings per week during core business hours. Beyond that, I pretty much set my schedule and pace. We tend to take 4 or 5 vacations per year.

15. Depends heavily on your job. I get 26 vacation days per year and whatever I don’t use rolls over into the next year for a max of 36 vacation days per year.

    I work from home and my work week also varies. Sometimes it’s 20 hours and sometimes it’s 70 hours. But I’m also management level get paid a six figure salary, so it’s not bad.

    I would say that Americans work longer hours than Europeans on average, but shorter hours than Asians. We’re in the global middle.

16. I work crazy hours, yes. I’m a stage hand, I build concerts and live theater events. My personal record is 4am Saturday to 2am Monday doing back-to-back Justin Bieber and Carrie Underwood concerts.

    But I absolutely don’t do that all the time. I can go a month where I only get a couple 4-hour minimum calls a week, and then I can pull four 20-hour gigs in one week.

    The job is pure chaos. But I’ve been living it for nearly 20 years, and I still love it. Today was supposed to be a 10 hour day loading in Cirque du Soleil, turned into a 16 hour day. And I’m back tomorrow for another 12 hours. Then 10 on Friday, 12 on Saturday, and an indeterminate amount on Sunday.

17. I just started a new job dealing cards at a local casino. My shift is 8 hours long with a 20 minute break every 80 minutes.

    It is one of the easiest jobs I’ve had. There is no on-call, mandatory overtime, committee meetings, or TPS reports. I don’t take work home with me. Any issues or problem I don’t have to solve myself, I just call a supervisor. I clock in and deal the game I’m on that day.

    It pays much less than my old job, but way less stress than being the senior systems engineer at a biotech company.

18. The answer to the question in your post is no. Jobs are all different and people have different situations. Just like where you live, I’m assuming, but I find it very hard to believe otherwise, cause people are people.

    Anecdotally, a lot of my working life is/was in restaurants and bars, save a few relatively brief gigs. A few years I worked in a warehouse unstacking shit, stacking it back up in a different way, and fucking around a bunch on forklifts. For 7-8 years I drove around checking on accounts for a company that sells engine parts, doing deliveries and pickups, and occasionally picking up a new account. And a fair bit of warehouse shit. I am a beast on a forklift, and in a Sprinter.

    But to your question, all of those jobs had different expected hours, different systems for time off (paid or not), and different expectations of effort. Restaurant shit, the schedule fluxes. If you’re good at your shit you get more hours for most positions, and you make more money, and you get to choose your shifts more. There’s no paid time off most places, you just call out and don’t get paid. The other jobs I worked had more formal PTO and time off structures, but it varied between companies.

19. Toxic as hell, or Ohio

20. Not right now. I have a part time job while I’m in grad school, though I predict the schedule will ramp up once I graduate. Thankfully my job does have plenty of vacations, but the hours can be crazy.

21. I can work crazy hours and I have but I set boundaries for myself to limit the stress. I have a good amount of vacation that I just don’t use often. Tech mfg is pretty boom or bust and supply chain seems to always be a problem

22. I work a warehouse job that I despise. I work 3 12s except when put on mandatory overtime. Hardly anyone is happy there, morale is low, lots of people who were generally pretty happy and fun are now a lot more morose. If I could find another job that wasn’t another warehouse or fast food I would jump at the chance. There aren’t very many options though in my small town.

23. I work on a tugboat so I work 12 hours a day for 2 weeks straight. Then I get 2 weeks off.

24. 4 days on 3 days off and 10 hour shifts. But I flag between 10-15 hours a day which is a whole different explanation. Work place is pretty good, like my coworkers, everyone is willing t help and share knowledge. But the best part is all the shot talking we get away with.

25. I work 40 hours a week from home and usually make my own hours as long as I’m available to take calls or answer questions during the day. I get 4 weeks PTO plus federal holidays and also since unofficial days (like Christmas Eve, the week of Thanksgiving).

    I’m pretty happy with my work culture. But it changes significantly depending on where you work

26. My hours and break policies are quite good, but my employer is stingy about vacation time. I’ve worked here five years and only get two weeks vacation

27. I’m sure you’ve heard that the U.S. doesn’t mandate vacations for workers, but that doesn’t mean our jobs don’t offer vacation. It just depends on the job.

    I work 12 hour days. I work 4 days one week, and 3 days the next week, and every 4 weeks i get 7 days off. I get 12 days of vacation a year. If I take 4 days of vacation on the 4 day work week before the 7 days off I get 14 days off. I can do that 3 times a year.

28. I work 30-36 hours a week, love my job, and typically take one break to eat (work feeds me) per shift. Other than making sure I have clean clothes to work in, I never think about my job outside of work hours.

29. I’m in a union so work hours, breaks, and vacations are well-regulated.

    I actually aim to work most holidays because of the pay incentives.

    But most of the time I do my 8 hours Monday-Friday and call it good.

30. Depends on the time of the year. Freestanding ER.

    Covid is on the rise again, so we’ve been seeing 50-60 patients in a 12 hour period with the majority between 7p-12a.

    November and December are similarly busy with the flu. We normally eat at the nurse station and the second half of the shift normally only 5 patients in the whole building. Downtime varies.

    When the weather is bad we can relax a lot more.

    I work three 12 hour night shifts a week. If I schedule myself at the beginning of the week, take 36 hours of PTO and then schedule myself for the end of the week I’ll only use those 3 days of PTO for 15 days off making vacations easy.

    Edit: Yesterday I took my lunch at the nurse station because our break room is also the managers room because we are very limited in space so it’s just easier to eat at the station, this is had frosted glass and is where the nurse practitioner sits until she goes home so privacy from when people walk in.