Crosswinds Tagaytay 2023
For many people, holidays gives them the opportunity to relax and unwind after a long period of study or work. It gives people the break that they need to spend time with their family or friends, and perhaps, even do activities they enjoy, such as travelling and other hobbies. Others also use this time to either go on a vacation or just spend the rest of their time at home to rest both their body and mind to prepare themselves for the next work cycle. As for me, holiday is nothing but an alien word. What I mean by this is that the nature of my job requires me to work even during holidays, unless it takes place during weekends, which also happen to be my day off, that when you look at my country's list of holidays, only two were set on weekends. Of course, my company compensates me for working during holidays, so I still reap some of its benefits. But for the question of whether we need more holidays, I think that my country has more than enough of them, looking at my country's calendar.
If I were only thinking of myself, perhaps having more holidays would make it more beneficial to me. During a regular holiday, I got double pay and 50% additional pay on a non-working holiday. And while I don't get a break during holidays, I got 5 days of paid leave, which I could spend any time of the year, as well as another 7 days of accumulated paid time off per year.
But when I consider how it can potentially affect other things around me, I think it may bring far more harm than good. For example, in education. Teachers and students may enjoy the additional break they get from a holiday, but that may end up harming the students' learning, especially when our country already has lots of class cancellations due to the effects of the recent and upcoming typhoons that will hit the country. At the same time, having more holidays also means that there will be fewer working days for other people, depending on the industry they work in, so even if they have a break, it may also make it harder for them to spend the time elsewhere without that disposable income.
As for its economic impact, having holidays may be able to help contribute to retail and tourism, increasing consumer spending, but having too many of them affects productivity for the businesses that will have to close for the holiday. Also, with the majority of people taking a break on the same day, that means that most of the establishments that you want to go to will also be crowded with many people, like during last Christmas season, I had this experience where I had to wait in a long line just to buy grocery, which on a regular day would take not less than 5 minutes. And the road traffic, which is already a pain even on a normal day, becomes a nightmare during holidays.
So, rather than increasing the holidays, I would rather want companies to give their employees more opportunities to take leave. Not only that the companies will be able to keep their operations running, but the employees can also plan more about how they want to spend their break.
Thank you for reading my post, and see you in the next one!
