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Comment by naturalmovement | Hacker News Reader

It can honestly be annoying, if you're not privvy to it.

I remember years ago needing urgent support for some bespoke European hardware we were developing software for. When we called support, we were greeted with a phone message stating the company was closed for the entire month due to vacation. This was not a one-man operation; the whole office closed for a summer holiday. We thought it was a joke.

Needless to say we started to look for a new vendor shortly thereafter...

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I'm surprised, typically we don't all take vacation at the same time, but stagger it.

It's not entirely uncommon, even companies like Volkswagen have 3 weeks of summer vacation. Strictly speaking, some people still work there for maintenance, etc. that can't be done while making cars, but the majority is on vacation.

I know a handful of companies with a week of mandatory Christmas vacation as well (but there's typically not too many working days between Christmas and New Years' either way).

In England, I had summer jobs in factories when I was a teenager, since they needed extra hands to help with cleaning / maintenance during the annual shutdown.

I don't know if this work would have been offered to staff who turned it down, or if they preferred to have their staff on holiday at the same time.

It really depends on the areas. On white collar jobs yes. It is more frequent in blue collars workers because it is easier to close completely or partially (several lines) in a factory than having to manage different vacations schedules. Constructions companies also do stop because you usually need most workers available + hot weather makes it harder anyway. Small/familiar companies also do it frequently because it doesn't make sense to work if you have dependencies on a number or unavailable persons.

I've seen construction companies use all their vacatiom in December in America (since it sucks to work in in the cold)

My advice is don’t ever buy anything that might need support from New Zealand between 24 Dec and 5 Jan. The entire country is just about closed (other than non-niche consumer stores).

Many companies force staff to take vacation days during this time, and there are four (yes four!) public holidays during this period.

Four? Poland has five! (Counting 6th Jan)

I mean, that's not usual at all in Europe either.

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