To wonder why US dramas fetishise workolism?...

[coconuttella]

... Grey's Anatomy, West Wing, Suits... I could go on, but all seem to worship at the altar of the all-consuming career.

The median age for entering medical school, for example, is much higher in the US than in the UK, and it is a postgraduate degree/post Bacherlor's degree programme, as is law. People can and do apply for entry to both medical school and law school after achieving undergraduate degrees in a gamut of fields or after working in all sorts of fields for some time after gaining an undergraduate degree. It's not at all unheard of for people to enter law school in their 40s, whereas here it's not at all common. I worked with one GYN surgeon who became a lawyer in his 50s and had no problems getting a job after his JD/law degree and passing the bar. Even medical school, plenty enter in their mid-30s.

Sorry, seneca it was a bit tongue in cheek. I suspect that things are better now although some young people are forced even more into corporate culture.

We had to give weekends to build houses for Habitat for Humanity, attend company picnics, etc. They tried to build a community and loyalty but it was really just more obligations. Although loyalty was high, I will admit.

It wasn't too bad for me, I was young, single and had no children. The work was great and the times were exciting as the money was rolling in. I was lucky to have had the opportunity to push myself hard when I had the capacity to rise to the challenge.

I'm guessing with such little annual leave, the majority of Americans haven't left the USA? You couldn't get too far on a long weekend

'I'm guessing with such little annual leave, the majority of Americans haven't left the USA? You couldn't get too far on a long weekend'

Plenty have . Quite a few are dual or even more nationals. That's a bit of a myth. I've met just as many Brits who've not been abroad as I have Americans. There are over 300m people there.

80% don't have passports. But you can go to Mexico without one.

WRONG. only 36% of Americans have a valid passport.

But is is a big arse country with a diverse geography. We have to go abroad for good skiing, they don't.

Doctors becoming lawyers isn't common here at all, but I do think anyone who'd been a surgeon and then wanted to be a lawyer would find demand for their services in a clinical negligence department. My experience of second career lawyers in the UK is that the most successful ones usually find a way to translate their previous experience into their legal specialism. Ex medics in clinical negligence being one of the most obvious examples.

I have had one or two jobs here where weekend attendance at activities has been expected, ie not overtime. I refused.

I love to travel, especially to the UK. I have sometimes taken unpaid leave in addition to annual leave; my employer is happy to allow unpaid leave on a reasonable basis, but of course not everyone is in a position to take it. My last vacation before I went to part-time status was a month in Scotland ; three weeks paid, one week unpaid leave.

Yeah, you can use an ID card. Easier just to get a passport. Not sure how it worked on cruises we've been on that stopped in ports outside of Mexico.

But is is a big arse country with a diverse geography.

And culture. I grew up in the American South. New England might as well be a different country.

My mother's bucket list was to visit every state in the US. She did manage to do it but it took a lifetime of 90 years.

I grew up in Texas, but traveled a lot with my parents and my father's job. Loved living in Colorado and saw all the Western states and Canada. We took unpaid leave a few times. Ex was a geophysicist and able to take time off unpaid to go climbing in Canada, S. America and Asia. He'd work an extra job and I'd do overtime to pay for us to go, even if I went just part of it or I'd use my long weekends to go with friends to various places. We used our $1600 from the airline to go to Peru. Plenty of long weekends in Vegas as it's not such a long flight from Denver. S. America pretty doable and little to no time change. Lots of people take vacations in Costa Rica or other Latin American countries. I grew up bilingual Spanish/English but many people pick up Spanish quite easily. We thought nothing of driving hundreds of miles on long weekends to Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico.

It's a different culture but it does have its plusses.

I'm from USA. My dad is 74 & still working about 25 weeks/yr. I think he's capped at 28 weeks if he still wants to get full pension & retirement status tax breaks.

My dad thinks it's amazing & marvelous that me & DH can both work PT AND pay all our bills. One of my cousins got to be a SAHM for 4 or 5 yrs; this was also a family point of much . My mother couldn't do that in the '60s.

I have/had relatives on Welfare, too, or who beg for a living. Being on Welfare is a dirty status, though.

One of the boons for retired workers in the US getting a part-time job after retirement is that it is often cheaper for employers to hire several older workers part-time because they don't have to pay certain benefits, the most expensive being heath insurance. And older workers like me don't need it because we have Medicare as long as Trump doesn't fuck with that, too .

Yeah, that's pretty scary, Seneca. My folks are in their mid-70s and early-80s. There's no way they could even get insurance. They've had excellent care under Medicare, too.

I took jobs during Christmas season, too, to get a discount and bring in some extra $$$. So everyone would get good stuff from Nordstrom's and I could stock up on makeup and the like and indulge my Kate Spade desires.

My folks have prescription insurance, too, it's fairly common there. But you do have to watch out. My dad has to take medication to control his blood pressure and for his heart condition. The meds are posted to him every 90 days. One time, he went in to get his eyes examined, as he thought his glasses needed some tuning as his vision was decreased. Turns out his blood pressure was sky high and he had to be sent to hospital. Turns out they'd switched his meds to a cheaper version and those weren't doing the job. Pretty scary and he spent 4 days in the hospital getting it all back on track.

My dad loves his Medicare, too. It's with same provider, just rolled over to Medicare rather than via his employer.

Oh, yeah, the employee discounts. Even part-timers get those. DH just took a part-time job at our local golf club because he gets a discount on greens fees and meals in the clubhouse. They figured that he was spending so much time there anyway, they might as well hire him.

The tax system more overtly supports families in the US, e.g. the tax deductions for dependent children, childcare etc

Unless you've ever worked in that type of culture I guess you can't understand it. It's normal to me. Seems a bit of a silly question though.

And it's probably very much shorter hours than adults in Singapore or Japan work.

Hmmm, some of this rings true for our families experience of living in the US and some doesn't.

Certainly there didn't seem to a culture of long working days. Office hours usually started earlier; at 8 am, but everyone finished bang on 5 pm too. If I was downtown in the business district at 5 cars would be pouring out of the multi-storey car parks as everyone set off home.

We moved out there so DH could run a US branch of the London office, and he was initially rather unpopular with his American staff for trying to import "London hours" (ie working until 7 pm or so). He, in turn, was disappointed by how unproductive they were. I spent a lot of time declining invitations to social events that started at 5.30 pm, because DH wasn't home from work to take over the childcare when everyone else's husbands were (as a trailing spouse with preschoolers I became a SAHM and ended up hanging out with other SAHMs).

I did absolutely insist that when DH was negotiating the terms of his secondment, he held on to his UK holiday entitlement!

I worked in the legal and medical fields, so long hours were expected. The pay was generally very good, though, and what were called 'benefits' there - insurance at low cost to the employee, gym membership, things like that.

Socialising generally seems to be much earlier in the evening than in the UK. 6pm is a normal time for dinner in a US restaurant!

'6pm is a normal time for dinner in a US restaurant!'

You have to get up at 6 to get ready for work if you work in most offices, particularly if you commute. I lived about 15 miles away for some years, but if I wasn't on the road by 7.10am on the dot or a little before, I'd be late for work. I was always expected to be ready to work at 8, not just getting in. In Denver, too, when it snowed, the plowing was dire. So they'd tell you to give yourself extra time to do the commute. If you have to get up at 5am, you get to bed by 9 or 10.