The Graveyard Month

It's July, the beginning of summer holidays in Norway.  During this month many Norwegians often go on leave often up to a month or more.  My entire team is on leave and I'm the only person working throughout this period.  Everyone in my team has children and it's school holidays for them so parents often take this month off to go on vacation with their children.  Right now it feels like I'm working the graveyard shift.

I've never seen a workplace with as few workers as there is right now at any time.  It's amazing.  It's quite different from Australia and completely different from Singapore where people often work on the weekends.  In Australia you work 3 months and get 5 days of leave and in Singapore it's 14 days of leave a year.  In Norway the paid leave is from the previous working year.  So when you first start work you don't get paid at all for the month of June.  You are however still entitled to your leave it's just that if you choose to take it it will be unpaid.

At our workplace we get 6 weeks of leave (30 days) out of which 5 of which are paid by the company and the rest of the days are from your earned holiday pay.

Time for my Norwegian lessons!