Do you think we could get close to eliminating the annual vacational pinch points in France by encouraging adults to forget the school calendar and take their annual leave outside of the school holidays?
The result of this tradition to take holidays during the school holidays results in road congestion, accidents, paying a premium in certain months of the year and a general shutting down of industry in August.
I understand people with children still at school, but my bigger gripe is with companies that basically tell their employees to take holidays at certain points in the year. I don’t understand the logic of it, but it certainly is popular.
One problem I can see in the proposition is that so much of it is interwoven. Think how many people go to one parent or the other, some dump the kids there and go somewhere else, others just stay there to be fed by mother for a couple of weeks. The rest who have not got children are in some cases one or the other or both of the grandparents who need to be off for that period and then the great grandparents and a couple of other relatives get pulled in. So families merge and far too many of them do that within 72 hours of les vacances starting for children. In fact, there are two months, give or take 'an inch', of school holiday and I did ask friends why they all shot off at the beginning as they do. No real reasons, except that is what they have always done.
Staggered holidays would be great. People without children could have June if they like long, hot days (well, except this year) and September for people preferring shortr and slightly cooler days. But then France is a little behind elsewhere. I remember when factories, building sites and so on closed for the first two weeks of August in England, not all but many, and my mother was certainly always off then because of the close down. However, it went. Time it went here too.
It always amazes me just how manykids are off school from europe during late June-early July.We brits seems to be too scared to take them off. At that time most have done exams/tests etc so what the problem. Just take them and argue when you get back.