In many parts of Europe, it’s common for workers to take off weeks at a time, especially during the summer. Envious Americans say it’s time for the U.S. to follow suit.
Some 66% of U.S. workers say companies should adopt extended vacation policies, like a month off in August, in their workplaces, according to a Morning Consult survey of 1,047 U.S. adults.
Three weeks is easy too, especially over Christmas (I do 3 weeks every year and have done so in 5 different companies so far).
I also had a colleague once who built up too much vacation days (we get pestered about using them by management), so he took a whole month off and went to Australia.
The thing is: Every day you don’t take goes over into the next year, but the company has to build reserves for this. Because if you leave the company they have to pay you out that vacation day (if you don’t use it up before leaving). So if you have 300 employees and each one has 5 days over at the end of the year, that’s around 12000 hours you have to be prepared to pay out.
So HR and your manager usually pushes you to actually use up your vacation days each year (which is a good thing) :)