Time to Stop and Smell the Hops

June 23, 2017 – There’s a crisis in America!  No, not that crisis de jour.  We’re talking about a real crisis of people not using all their vacation time.  Last year more than half of workers surveyed by Samuel Adams and Project:  Time Off admitted to leaving vacation time on the table. That amounted to 662 million vacation days – equal to approximately 1.3 billion hours of golf, 662 million sunsets, and 2 billion beers with friends.

The survey also found that only seven percent of workplaces offer Summer Fridays, a perk that started way back in the 60s allowing workers to leave early to relax and recharge during the summer months.

Stressed, tired, cranky employees are not good for business.  Some businesses add an extra hour each day Monday through Thursday to compensate for everyone taking off at noon on Friday.  That sounds like a workable solution.  Others just close up a couple of hours earlier, and that’s nice, too.  Psychologically, even a small amount of time off makes employees feel good and appreciated. When given a list of summer activities to choose from, more than one third of drinking age Americans said they’d like to go have a beer.  How simple is that?

The survey found that one of the five cities topping the list for overworked populations was Boston, Sam Adams’ hometown where 11.6 million vacation days were unused.  Obviously, this was a call to action so they are hosting an exclusive summer “Sam Summer Friday” party at its brewery in Boston for the offices around Boston who feel they most need a Summer Friday afternoon break. Bostonians can nominate their offices through Twitter using #SamSummerFriday to win an exclusive opportunity to attend the Sam Summer Friday party.

But Boston has competition. Look at this chart:

1. Washington, D.C. topped the list by failing to use 64% of their vacation days totaling 17.3 million days
2. San Francisco-Oakland, CA left 62% of vacation days totaling 12.8 million days unused
3. Tampa, FL workers left 62% of vacation days on the table totaling 5.1 million days
4. Los Angeles, CA also failed to take 62% of vacation days totaling 32.5 million days

These folks need help to get them out of the office on a Friday afternoon so Sam Adams will be hosting #SamSummerFriday experiences in these cities also.  Tweet #samsummerfridays to be chosen to win a free office happy hour hosted by Sam Adams.  There’s all kinds of information from the Project: Time Off survey to convince your boss that taking a break is good for business.

Stop checking email on your phone, gather your colleagues and head for a local drinking hole and talk about something other than work, which can be hard to do.  In other words, get a life, at least for a few hours on a summer Friday afternoon.

By the way, Sam Adams Summer Ale, one of the most popular beers of the summer season, is finally old enough to drink itself.  It has turned 21.