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Well, summer is finally upon us and we all feel the need to get out. Out from behind our desks, out of our offices, taking a break from whatever day to day we have to do for a living, and just absolving ourselves from whatever responsibilities we may have – even if it’s just for a short time. 

You can’t help but overhear people everywhere talking about how they will take a few days off here and a couple days off there, and balance whatever limited days off they have per year. It’s no secret that here in North America we have the shortest amount of vacation time in comparison to other Western countries, but the Middle East has everyone beat, hands down.

Right now they are celebrating Eid, which is a holiday they rejoice after the holy month of Ramadan, and this year most Muslim countries gave their citizens 10 days off. Eid is technically only two days long – but this time around it’s 10. When was the last time you had 10 days off for Christmas and it didn’t count towards your vacation time? 

This is just a tip of the iceberg my friends – they actually celebrate Eid twice a year, a plenitude of religious holidays, and a whole lot more public and political holidays. On top of all this, I also had another 48 days off each year. I was managing a national radio station so I really couldn’t take all this time off each year, but it would carry forward or I could collect a cheque at the end of my contract. I worked with people who were literally owed years worth of vacation time, and they would and could just disappear for months at a time. 

Sounds fantastic doesn’t it? However, it does come with a few caveats. A major one is that things move at an incredibly cumbersome pace, especially when everything needs approvals from different department heads, and you could pretty much guarantee that someone will be on vacation and the paperwork will sit on their desk waiting for their return.

You can work around this by tracking where your paperwork is at any given time. If it ends up on a desk of someone on vacation, you find their subordinate and ask them very politely to bring it to another person, who’d have to be higher up on the echelon, to sign in their stead. Now, if you have something that’s urgent, well there is a system in place for that too, and you can be reassured it will be addressed – but you better have a good reason why it had to be handled directly. 

The folks over there do find this frustrating as well (apparently not as much I did though) but to them it’s just the way it is because their priorities are in a different place. They value family and time with love ones over business. Work comes second. They know things will eventually get done and there’s always a tomorrow.

They cherish being out and about, which is what we all hope we can do, even if it’s just for a few days every summer.

- Originally a Â鶹Éç¹ú²úresident, Marcus Monopoli left for the Middle East in 2008 for radio gigs in Egypt and Oman. He moved back last summer.