When I finished my master’s in communications in 2003, I was excited to create amazing work for the American ad industry. For my entry into what was supposed to be my new and wonderful working world, I accepted a $30,000 salary. I also accepted that it was normal to work holidays and weekends — and for no additional pay. I accepted that work came before anything else.
As one of the creative directors at my ad agency told me, “Creatives don’t take holidays.”
I didn’t mind — at first. After all, I was working in my dream job at my dream agency. Every day I was paid to create witty lines for print advertisements, scripts for television and radio commercials, and conceptual ideas for well-known clients who were depending on my writing to make them even more famous.
But after 10 months, instead of practically skipping to the office, my feet dragged. My once larger-than-life office pod felt as small as I did when I told my new husband, that no, I wouldn’t be coming home for dinner again.
At one point, I was working so much that the company president sent my husband a basket of pears with a note that said: “Sorry we’ve been taking Chantal away from you so much this year. But we’ve got exciting things going on at the agency.”
Most Friday nights, I’d sulk, knowing I’d have to work another weekend. Even when I didn’t have to go to the agency, the lingering possibility that I might get a call meant I was never able to relax. But I convinced myself that I was doing what I needed to do to get ahead.
Two years in, when I was 28, my husband got an offer to work in Switzerland. At first, I balked at the idea of moving. “I finally have my dream job at my dream agency,” I told him, refusing to acknowledge that I was thoroughly burned out. “No one will want an English-speaking copywriter in a German-speaking city.”
My husband didn’t argue. “It’s your decision,” he said.
For some reason, the day of his decision deadline, I closed my eyes and called him.
Continue reading the main story“O.K. I’ll go,” I said.
On my last day of work at the American ad agency, something strange happened: I was smiling. A weight had been lifted, and I felt like a prisoner about to be freed. And despite my fear that no one would hire me, I soon found a job in Zurich doing exactly what I had been doing in the United States: copywriting for an ad agency.
My job title was the same, but I worked part time — and for a higher salary than I had received working full time in the United States. When I was politely asked to work additional days beyond the ones specifically mentioned in my contract, the agency paid me for that extra work.
Not only that, but instead of two weeks of vacation, I had five. And I was encouraged to use every single day of it, guilt-free. Once, when I went to Spain for “only” 10 days, my Swiss colleagues chastised me for not going away long enough.
Instead of worrying about working weekends and holidays the way I had in the United States, I planned trips like the rest of my colleagues: Paris. Prague. Zermatt. For the first time in my working life, I was living, too. Because of this, my creativity flourished. I had both time and money, and because I had real time off, I was more productive when I was at work. In my spare time I wrote blogs and essays and I swam in the lake.
Now, after almost a decade in Switzerland, I’m back in the States to take care of some family issues. I work as a freelance writer and copywriter — and also continue to work for some of my Swiss clients. But as I begin to freelance for more American companies, the desire to return to Switzerland is growing.
Americans live to work — it’s culturally ingrained. If we’re not busy, we’re not worthy. No matter how much I try to challenge American work mores, I don’t seem to make much progress.
A hiring manager at an American company who interviewed me recently for a permanent position asked me how much vacation I wanted. When I said four weeks, which is the legal Swiss minimum, she paused and said O.K., but then informed me that I would need to check my phone and email during this time.
I responded that checking my email on vacation wasn’t my definition of a vacation. She didn’t know what to say. Finally, she grudgingly said they could write it into my contract that I wouldn’t have to check my email during vacation. But the situation made me wonder, once again, if a country that bred this kind of culture was a place where I wanted to spend the rest of my working life.
Later, when I asked a different American company about the possibility of working part time, four days a week, they said they didn’t know how that would work. I tried to explain how I had successfully worked part time in several jobs overseas — even creating television commercials while doing so, but it was no use. I was fighting a culture that was not ready for my “radical” Swiss ideas. The fact that it was my own culture — supposedly so advanced and creative — only made things worse.
My husband is back working full time at an American company. We both miss our yearly week spent in the Alps, which we used to take every summer, exploring nature in the truest sense — without a phone. And even though I still control my time as a freelancer, I become anxious when interacting with American clients who expect responses to emails at 10 p.m. and want me to be available every weekend. I don’t know how much longer I can work like this knowing I could have it another way — if I’m willing to move 5,000 miles away.
Culture is hard to change — careers, slightly easier. So while many American professionals move to different companies or change career paths to find work-life balance, I’ve found that despite some of the bureaucracy involved, another solution is to change countries.
The United States is the only advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee paid vacation. It is also the only high-income country that does not require paid family and medical leave. And it’s one of the only developed countries that still tie health care to employment, despite creating a national system. Whether all of these things reflect our culture or vice versa, I’m not sure if I can handle one more heated discussion of whether Americans deserve paid leave, a “perk” the rest of the Western world views not only as standard policy but also as compassionate treatment of human beings.
Recently, I applied for a copywriting job in Copenhagen, with the knowledge that it would come with a six-week vacation minimum, a culture that expects everyone to leave the office before 5 p.m., and a country where men and women are the most equal in the world (with leave policies that reflect this). Alas, I was turned down since I don’t have the permit required to work in Denmark, but that’s O.K. because luckily I still have the one that’s required to work in Switzerland.
My Swiss residence and work permit is on hold right now, waiting for me until October 2016 in a small state office in the center of a spa town 15 miles west of Zurich. And I’m about one more 3 a.m. email or “Can you work the weekend again?” request away from flying across the ocean to pick it up.
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