I've posted this before but just to add some full to the fire-------I have a friend whos Dad retired from the iron mines. He was getting 17 weeks a year paid vacation at the time. Another friend says his Dad got 12 weeks a year working for the railroad. If you listened to my wife I was the lucky one who had more vacation time off workin for UPS than she did working for the state. My 7 weeks to her 4. One year I kept track of actual paid time off between the 2 of us and she beat me by a long shot when you figured in her vacation time, paid sick days and what the state called comp time (they gave you one and a half times paid hours off for overtime worked. She also could take as little as 15 minutes of paid vacation time if she needed to get off work early.