The new chat thread - now with bitter arguing

Up until the early nineties I believe it was common for certain types of workers (the assembly line kind, I'd say) to have the month of August off because most major companies used to shut down production completely in that period.
I think it was only ever common for this assembly kind of work, maybe other businesses shut down as well when suddenly, 90% of the customers wouldnt show up, but otherwise it wouldnt really make sense.
It's probably a rumour from back when german car factories employed tens of thousands of people, not only a few thousand like nowadays. After all, several thousand italians came to Wolfsburg alone in the 60s only to work in the Volkswagen factories. Those times are over.. not sure anyone still has company holidays
 
Teachers here have 2-month long holidays. Ie if we don't count Xmas and Easter in it. And i believe everyone here gets at least 1-2 weeks off during August. Clearly Greece is Paradise.
 
teachers in belgium also have a 2 months summer holiday. in the company were my father works, they all have a 2 weeks holiday in july, because most of the other companies that work in the "building" sector have their holidays at that time of the year.
 
Too bad our MIA and good friend 'gtranquillity' does not frequent the forum as her photographic skill would of hooked us up with some great photos of DT's first show(Loud From The South) with the new bass player
the festival is tomorrow and its in her hometown of Eindhover NL -
 
the "puke" smiley seems to have a problem:
:puke:

:lol::lol:

maybe the webmaster doesnt like manchester city?

EDIT/ huh, seems like the problem only appears on my computer. Screenshot:

mancpuke.jpg
 
@Rahvin: Not sure why I didn't say this before, but I guess I forgot: you shattered my memories of my high school cooking class, in which we made "cultural" dishes and discussed said culture of origin. My teacher who has been to Germany "uhh, once or twice" professed in photocopied handouts of textbooks written in about 1977 that all Europeans get August off, so never go there in the summer. My ignorance has been blighted as the diffusion of American workaholicism (workahol, the best drink) is nearly complete, even the stereotypically "lazy" Italians are working now.

MUAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAHA! *strokes cat*

I'm tired. I got up too early today. /stupidity
 
@DoC: Now I'm gonna contribute to your childhood nightmares: Italians who work for the government (read: me) have 32 paid vacation days per year. It's just that we don't take most of our days off in August anymore, but - believe me -they're still there and it's of course many more than your average American worker has. I don't know how things are in the rest of Europe, though. Some of us might in fact be motivated to work harder and take fewer days off, but we're called names by other workers, and it's not as if we earn more money or have better prospects for a decent career because of that, so basically it's just because we have an abnormal sense of loyalty towards our impersonal employer (read: I'm insane).
 
In Germany people have around thirty days off per year. Students and teachers obviously have more.

We Germans are of course the hardest-working of all people. In the last century we managed to build up a huge army, defeat half of Europe, loose everything in the end and build up our country again from close to nothing twice.
 
We Germans are of course the hardest-working of all people. In the last century we managed to build up a huge army, defeat half of Europe, loose everything in the end and build up our country again from close to nothing twice.

You forgot about genocide, concentration camps, villages burned together with people, and close to 30% of my native country's population dead in WWII. Done by the same hard working people who conquered half Europe not that long ago.

Heil führer or what?
 
Italians who work for the government (read: me) have 32 paid vacation days per year.

The guy actually works for another government: I only have 26. :erk: I knew there was some substance to the whole Padania story.
 
You forgot about genocide, concentration camps, villages burned together with people, and close to 30% of my native country's population dead in WWII. Done by the same hard working people who conquered half Europe not that long ago.

Heil führer or what?

Sorry, did not mean to make it seriously positive sounding. I know that that is one of the darkest moments in history.
 
What's with this forum and reductio ad Hitlerum* these days?

First Niklas reprimanding Taliesin for a joke about the war. Now all the PC-ness.

For fuck's sake. None of us is to blame for stuff that happened ages ago.

* I am not making this up. It's an actual idiom in sociological research.
 
Sorry, did not mean to make it seriously positive sounding. I know that that is one of the darkest moments in history.

bah. We make it all look super evil and the worst thing humanity as ever seen and blah blah but, it's only because these are recent events. Not that I'm trying to justify both WW, they were both horrible but when compared to let's say, the Spanish inquisition or the crusades...well then WWII is just history being repeated...