If we take 7-14 vacation days in a year, it will damage our career? We’ve gone completely insane.

What the fucking shit? 1-2 weeks off is a vacation. What the fuck is going on?

wtf

why is everything so fucking weird

These people are exhausting. Wait till they find out that other countries have mandated up to 8 weeks paid leave a year.

if we got as little paid leave as Americans there would be heads on spikes

Is this a gag

I’ve never seen an entire generation crash out before. But knowing their parents I guess it makes sense. On to Gen Alpha my Millennial brothers and sisters.

I guess they’ve given up thinking they will ever have a real retirement. Same, here.

Feels more like a corporate attack on the idea of PTO, by using Gen-Z as an excuse to shrink these pesky un-earned mini retirements. I am elder Gen-Z and have never been in a position to take a Vacation ever.

I wonder if it's also a response to the precedent recently set that no one takes true vacation and is pressured to work thru it. I'm a millennial and was always made to feel guilty or keep working thru vacations so I'm sure this braindead piece is trying to keep that status quo for the next gen.

ffs

Duh? Other generation called it vacations.

How can anyone afford this without being bank rolled by parents

I was trying to figure out how a public school teacher slash grad student in effing California can afford to do anything but porn two weeks out of the month to pay rent much less "travel internationally" but I did not consider family money. Oddly.

Fast Company does not acknowledge the existence of people who don’t have family money

I'm wondering what kind of KPIs are standard for the perfume side hustle industry.

Key perfume indicators, duh

Hahahaha.

I tried out a perfume side hustle for a minute, couldn’t stand so many people in that space. Feeling vindicated.

Interviewer: “Can you explain this 2 year gap in your work history?” Me: “Blue Prince was just a much deeper game than I thought and I’m not great at word puzzles.”

Enjoying my 30 second micro-retirement as i walk around the car after buckling the kids into their carseats

Um ... I take three weeks every year, and many labour laws require a set amount of vacation time. Are we supposed to also take two EXTRA weeks ... ?

Who wrote this? Good lord. It has to be ai right RIGHT?

Only american zoomers that don't have job laws

Maybe next they'll invent trains.

When I retired from the US company I worked for I had 28 days annual leave plus 8 days of national holiday because I worked for a European subsidiary. New recruits in the US got 10 days annual leave. Americans are paid a lot more but their quality of life is much lower.

Stop helping make fetch happen

Gotta go tell my spouse he’s really been taking “mini-retirements” from his job which requires salaried employees to take their vacation in weeks. Dang, he’s retired twice this year already!

Ok, I read the idiocy and am now appalled - this article is about taking time off UNPAID. Wtf! So if you take a week off, stay disconnected from work, AND get paid, can we call it vacation?

(The media portrayal of zoomers has rebranded vacation)

Is this disdain I feel for an entire generation a sign of getting older? Or do they just deserve my disdain?

I think the disdain belongs to the true enemy all along - business writers who try to make workers sound ridiculous for taking time off

yeah you should reserve your disdain for the person who wrote this article and the like three people it actually refers to, I am pretty sure most zoomers aren’t doing this

2 weeks isn’t even a sabbatical?!? we’re losing recipes

I was expecting it to be like a year long sabbatical, but really? 2 weeks a year and you return to your existing job???

*Experts* warn these breaks could come with long term career and financial consequences…” So MAGA is coming for our vacation time next? How dare we have a couple weeks vacation from slaving for the corporate oligarchs?

No one is doing this, and people that are arent calling it “micro-retirement” lmao

10 years from now, we'll get an avalanche of articles about Gen alpha pooping at work.

So vacation. They are taking vacations?

i like my vacation like i like my LSD: in microdoses

I save up my PTO in case I have a major health issue because we don’t have separate sick days. We just have PTO. That doesn’t even get into the lack of money to take a vacation. PTO is spent mowing the lawn or doing DIY home projects. We ain’t got money for vacations.

And the journalist of course tries to find fault in the idea.

That’s literally a vacation. I take three a year. 😆

i want to like this post but god, i dislike it so hard. hard, hard dislike. bordering on hate.

I’m enjoying a four day micro retirement right now!

The millennial habit of "funemployment" (defined here as: intentionally not seeking a new job immediately after leaving the previous job, and therefore living off of savings for a few months) seems much more like a "micro retirement" than this supposed zoomer thing

The person behind this shitty article is Kimanzi Constable. We should start to put the names of these writers.

I like how it still attempts to guilt you into not taking vacation. Corporate America is gonna be so happy when slavery is fully legal again.

Jesus Christ how is this not satire

What kind of sick 💩 is this??

Isn't that called vacation? "I'm taking my summer mini-retirement for our family beach trip".

I think this is more alarming than anything because zoomers seem to be unable to picture spending time away from the grind

Is this a joke article? Please tell me this is a joke article 😅

What the actual fuck

it's a vacation.

i'm taking "mini unemployment" by eating a mid-day meal at my job lasting 30-60 minutes

taking a “sabbatical, jr.” (trip to the bathroom)

Doing a leave of absence (looking at Bluesky on my phone during a boring meeting)

Not if you're in 'murica - a land where 2 weeks off is branded 'retirement' unless you're a cOnTeNt CrEaTor

Is this like Uber inventing the bus.

lol, yeah I'm like "You mean vacation?"

business school minds have gotten even more cooked with each passing generation

Ok, I actually read it and, while I think using the term "mini-retirement" is both inaccurate and stupid, I appreciate the spirit of younger workers asserting themselves wrt creating a better work-life balance than older generations. (I'm Gen X and self-employed, so I just kind of do the same.)

I'm not taking a sick day, it's a "break from wellness"

I'm guessing the difference is that vacation is time a company pays for, whereas a mini retirement is something the worker saves up for (by hitting KPIs and getting a bonus). Once again the thing Gen Z "invents" is the capitalism shadow version of the previous better thing

So, unpaid leave of absence

Probably better to say they are reclaiming vacation. Internet means you can’t unhook by default. I remember well my first job where you didn’t always have to go into the office but you were expected always to be available (even on vacation or at 10:00 pm).

"is unplugging worth the risk?" how about "do we live in a culture that punishes work life balance and self care and how do we destroy this as quickly as possible"

This is literally the most depressing thing I’ve ever read. I work in France now and people fuck off from Bastille day to September. My watch literally reminded me there will be no doctor appointments so make one now.

did the zoomers rebrand it or did some asshole get paid to attempt to rebrand it for zoomers

And they are programming them not to risk taking a break.

This.

In other countries, this is what's known as "Annual Leave". America should try it sometime.

the article is like “it’s not a vacation, it’s a different thing!” btw (it’s vacation)

In Europe it’s “holiday” and everyone gets a ton of time off for it and the author of this article would be a laughingstock

Yup, definitely a vacation.

This reads a lot less like "Gen Z calls them micro-vacations" and more like "we at Fast Company have decided that Gen Z calls them micro-vacations." The author's the one acting like it's some new idea, not the Gen Zers quoted, this framing seems weird

this is different from a vacation for secret reasons

Can I "micro-withdraw" from my 401k during micro-retirement?

KPIs, dawg? Whatever he’s calling it, he’s doing it wrong.

We need to pull Gen Z for a chat, a history lesson if you will.🫠

it's different because he has the kind of job where you get 4 weeks of usable vacation days every year

This is satire, right? It has to be.

Just think, when we get rid of history, English, composition, social sciences, and philosophy, there will be a whole new world for the ignorant to rebrand.

only going on vacations if i hit my kpis

I'm going to become Clayface

wait, is the only difference that this time off isn’t paid? this is just a scam by business to trick employees into furloughing themselves

okay wait they saved the most insane quote for last. here’s a zoomer talking about estate planning. I wonder how much money his dad has in his bank account. no reason

ok but also how does a school teacher do this? A week or two ever month?! That’s…not a flexible job

I remember being really genned up on estate planning when I was young oh wait

"...they're probably squander the money anyway." Is he telling on himself?

That has to be a bit, right?

I hope so. I hope it’s a bit this guy got over on a Fast Company writer because I shudder to think he is loose on the streets of my town like this when he is not micro vacationing

Hope it is. And I'm taking a mini-micro-retirement of a four-day weekend. That includes a US holiday and a single day off on Monday.

"All I"m gonna do is hand it off to my kids who will squander it" Well, no, for like 20+ years each, you're going to have to feed and house and educate them, not to mention taking them on vacation WITH you..... (I am very sure Ben does not yet have any children)

He’s a public school teacher who takes a week-long vacation each month? Naw.

As a bay area/I80 teacher, I gotta say that kinda "financial freedom" seems super common along the inexperienced 25 year old PhD students who aspire to be consultants paid by the district. (no, don't ask why they started accepting Ed PhD students without prior teaching experience)

Broooooooooo

So really this is just weird congenitally rich people shit, right?

I feel like they should have fact checked this last guy. logistically how is a public school teacher traveling 1-2 weeks a month while school is in session?

Chat-GPT ass article. No fucking way that guy exists.

unfortunately I live a stone’s throw away from the Berkeley campus and there are probably a dozen of him over there

I believe it! My baby sister is a Berkeley High grad, my mom taught at a cute local preschool for like 8 years. There is no shortage of out of touch trust fund dipshits around, but this anecdote truly makes no sense, top to bottom. Even as a lie it doesn’t hold up.

def some job where you can fake it or go remote but you got 30 kids in a class room someone is going to notice

Public school teachers generally do not combine the words “when you consider how estate planning works” in that sequential order

Seriously! Joshua Charles and Benjamin Fields are also both listed as employees at Frontier Dominion as well. www.frontierdominion.com/team

He's not. The PhD program he claims to be in is full time (I've had people from that program do field work in my room). He might be able to sub or be part time, but let's be honest, he doesn't need money.

Lol. I just found this: I Quiet Vacation From My Jobs As a Teacher; Employers Have No Idea www.businessinsider.com/quiet-vacati... Same dude

> I had the opportunity to speak at a conference in Dubai, and the Dubai government funded my transportation and hotel. > I used to work at Subway during the summer in high school for 60 hours a week. Neither of these things sound true. He never mentions any names. What a weird article

It really seems like he may spend his time convincing gullible journalists about his supposed lifestyle

he said “In the future, whenever someone compares US economic figures to European figures, I will point out that Americans consider a ski vacation a micro-retirement” 💀💀💀

hän sai meidät perseelle

Apologies to Teemu for what is surely a wrong translation

Close enough. A more Finnish way would be to say "He showed us the jay's eggs" (don’t ask).

I love this, thank you!!!!

OH MY FUCKING GOD

apologies in advance but [kendrick lamar voice] EIGHT MINORRR

Everyone has worked with this guy and everyone cheered internally when he left. It is not possible to have EIGHT minors unless you went to school for a minimum of eight years.

my fellow Americans, we are getting absolutely cooked in the quote posts. I translated one from Portuguese that said “1-2 weeks of vacation a year? and they still consider themselves a first-world country?”

and rightfully so

😂.. I was waiting for comments from Europe on this (and with all the traveling he does during his micro-retirements, you'd think Joshua Charles would know this about Europe)..

I'm a lot older than the Gen-Zs that they're talking about. I took my current job a few years ago and negotiated everything else, but they stood firm that the amount of vacation was the same for everyone, so I'm stuck with that and the only way to get more would be to switch jobs...

Two years at a company is just when people start hitting their stride and I'd hope management types would see that they could stem the bleeding by giving people an adequate amount of vacation and maybe even a sabbatical every X years, but I doubt it.

gonna mute this thread because it’s taking off but I will leave you with: of course not all zoomers, most of you are lovely and I will be happy to fight alongside you in the water wars. it is a time-honored tradition to have a journalist write a weird trend piece about your generation ❤️

i think Linkedin missed a trick in not hiring you

now that we’ve officially passed the torch can we admit avocado toast is just fine? even the best avocado toast is mid. xoxo a millennial

Maybe Gen Z will editorially be allowed to grow up while millennials will forever be perceived as the youth as we enter middle age.

This skeet in the thread getting the fewest likes feels just

ok wait shoutout to @mmasnick.bsky.social for the investigative work, here's what we know about Benjamin Fields: 1. he teaches high school online and sometimes does so remotely via VPN 2. the guy who wrote the fast company piece also wrote this piece 3. I don't think it's much of a secret now!!

I will go so far as to say it sucks. Toast is fine, avocado is fine, mixing them doesn’t make either better. Gimme some tasty jam and keep the avocado for lunch where it belongs

Weird business-speak psychos happen in every generation

"Money is just a tool" Yup, definitely daddies money.

Substitute

Yeah, I’m thinking a sub…

ok actually rich failson moonlighting as a sub absolutely makes sense here

Oh sorry. Lol.

no it’s okay it’s such an obvious question I fear for the reporter who didn’t ask it

"What am I gonna do? Pass my wealth onto my kids? Kids? They are out of frame. You dont know them."

What kind of public school teacher can take off one week a month?

A substitute teacher. There's *plenty* of work whenever you want it 50-50 he's real and has a trust fund. The part about estate planning seems like a giveaway

did about two minutes of digging and he’s definitely real, he even has the perfume side hustle in his LinkedIn bio lol. but yeah he’s probably a sub

I dunno, that perfume side hustle...smells. I'll see myself out.

Public school teacher who spends a third of his time on vacation in addition to being a business owner and grad student…

I have decided Benjamin Fields trolled the author of this article and I applaud him

His linked in says he graduated college with a double major and eight minors.

omg

So he just took every class offered at his school to avoid having to graduate.

Could be a substitute teacher who is overstating their role, or a dude who is not getting their contract renewed come June.

Someone posted another article he actually penned, and he's a PhD student. He's supposed to teach in person as part of that program, but he's been teaching virtually and since no one is checking up on him, that's how he's managing so much travel.

Generally speaking in public ed you will put up with someone like this for one school year, because filling in a new full time teacher in the middle of a school year is that much of a hassle.

From now on I will incentivize myself to reach certain KPIs so I can take time off but first I need to throw myself into a boiling pit of lava because WTF is this shit

I really need to believe that *someone* is being had here

Chevy Chase was hilarious in „Micro Retirement“

I hate these people.

kids today

Back in the ‘80s, my sister used to quit jobs to take every summer off - said work was a winter sport. By the ‘90s, she realized it wasn’t the best financial strategy. 😂

Is this a paid or unpaid break, I wonder. Trying to figure out why two weeks off hurts your career.

I’d wager that if most people tell their bosses they’re leaving for a few unpaid weeks, boss is gonna say “Don’t bother coming back.”

Yup, so it’s not regular vacation time.

Isn’t that the Travis McGee model?

I do occasionally need to be reminded not to take my six weeks of annual leave for granted. So, thank you, I do appreciate it 🫡