While sending out notices about our Language Services Salary Survey, we received innumerable out-of-office messages from around the world. None impressed us more than this one from a firm in Italy:

“PLEASE NOTE THAT AFTER AUG. 1ST WE CANNOT ACCEPT ANY NEW ORDERS EXCEPT BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENTJuly 31st - August 4th open 9-16SUMMER CLOSURE August 7th - 25th”

The idea of telling customers to “GO AWAY” or “We don’t want your business” is anathema to most American entrepreneurs, however weary they might be. We applaud these efforts to cut the cord, although we admit it’s partly with envy. But this auto-response e-mail got us wondering about the LSP executives who frequently complain how hard it is to find new customers in the first place…Preliminary results from our survey indicate that over 25% of the respondents are entitled to 4 weeks of vacations per year. Americans as a rule enjoy just 2 weeks. Although France gets a bad reputation in the U.S. for “too many holidays” (and too few hours in the work week), the best place to work from a vacation point of view is Italy. And it’s exactly those 2 weeks of vacation why German automakers now build many BMWs and Mercedes for the American market in the U.S. rather than back home. Take a look at the average number of vacations days in various countries, in the following table from the World Tourism Organization.

Source: World Tourism Organization (WTO). On a somewhat related note, we often find ourselves explaining differences in employment law and health insurance to executives of American and European language service providers. For example, recently we were involved in the negotiations for a European company to acquire an American firm. The European executives were unclear on concepts like at-will employment and the virtual non-existence of a public health care system in the U.S. On the other side of the table, we found that nothing scares American entrepreneurs looking to buy a foothold outside the U.S. more than the labor practices of what some call “socialist countries” (basically any country with a national health care system) and employment laws that favor employees. Maybe Dr. Z as the CEO of the successful German-American integration at DaimlerChrysler has the answer.