Hustle culture is all about working hard for success, but it can look entirely different depending on where you are in the world.
In Europe, for example, employees are encouraged to take personal time, avoid working after hours, and get 28 days of paid leave. Whereas, in the US, people skip breaks, leave late, are stressed, and only get 10 days of vacation.
American-born TikTok user Kayleigh Donahue (@kayshaynee) has experienced this difference firsthand. After living and working in Ireland for four years, she was enticed to go back to the US for better-paying job opportunities.
Since coming back home, she has learned that the “American Dream” is no longer what it used to be. Realizing that what she left behind was better, she hopped on her TikTok account to vent her frustrations and share how living and working in Ireland is entirely different from the US.
The "American Dream" isn't all glamour, as some movies portray it to be
Image credits: Vlada Karpovich (not the actual photo)
Since coming home, Kayleigh quickly realized that the work she left abroad was much better
Image credits: kayshaynee
“I am an American who lived and worked in Ireland for four years, and I recently moved back to America. And I have been bamboozled. Living abroad for so long, you obviously start to miss home, you think about all of the positives. I was thinking, ‘Hmmm, maybe I should go back to America. You make more money there. Yeah, I’d get less time off, but I’d still get time off and it’d be okay. I could save a lot more money. And then if I wanted to move back to Europe in the future, because my boyfriend is European, I could do that. And I’d have a fatter bank account. Plus, there’s more job opportunities there. It’d be great for my career, propel myself forward.’ So I moved back.”
Image credits: kayshaynee
“When I tell you my bank account has gone down since I moved back here — I literally have lost money by moving back here. Thing is, I got a job where I made more money in America than I was making in Ireland. But I still can’t save. The cost of living here is exponentially higher, it’s… no words. And the job market sucks. On top of that, yes, I do have way less time off. I have less than half of what I was getting in Ireland. I was getting 29 paid days off a year, plus holidays. So about 40 days off a year. And here I’m getting like 10 days off a year.”
Image credits: kayshaynee
“Basically, I really got sucked into like the American Dream way of living when I was abroad, which is funny because I loved living abroad. But you know, making more money, that’s enticing. Good job, that’s enticing. It’s not true. It used to be, it definitely used to be. You could come here and make a ton of money, make a great life for yourself. But the younger generation today, in this country — screwed. It’s literally all a lie that is sold to you. It’s such a struggle, and the older generation doesn’t seem to see how much of a struggle it is for the younger generation here.”
Image credits: kayshaynee
“So yes, what I thought would be a good decision of me moving back to make money and spring forward my career led me to being more poor, and I quit my career job because I was so burnt out. So now I’m doing a totally different job. Needless to say, I will most likely be moving back to Europe where 20-plus days of paid vacation a year is literally the law and I will make less money, but somehow, you know, the cost of living is lower there and I can save more.”
Image credits: kayshaynee
“So don’t listen to people when they say that if you move, you’ll make less, you’ll have less money, and call you lazy because you want time off. Let me tell you, I was living life lavishly over there compared to here.”
Image credits: kayshaynee
Realizing American hustle culture isn't healthy
In reality, hustle culture in America isn’t as glorious as movies like “The Wolf of Wall Street" or “The Social Network” make it out to be, which Kayleigh Donahue quickly realized coming back home after spending four years in Ireland.
Kayleigh is originally from Rhode Island in the US and first moved to Dublin for a semester in college. She told Business Insider that she chose Ireland because their family vacationed there in 2015 and it left a fond impression on her. “The people there were so kind, and there was just a good vibe in the air.”
She loved her semester abroad so much that she went back to do an internship in 2017, and returned a year after she finished college. Afterward, she stayed there for four years as a social worker. It was her full-time job abroad that made her realize that it’s possible to refuse the constant and draining hustle culture many Americans buy into. Now, she’s sharing this message with over 100k people on TikTok to encourage them to experience life abroad.
While working in the US, she would sit at her desk through lunch because she felt like it was expected of her, but in Ireland, it was completely different. Her coworkers would ask, “What are you doing? You need to leave the office. That's so unhealthy.” At first, she didn’t understand what they meant. But after some time, she began to realize that taking a paid vacation or taking daily breaks is considered normal there.
She was shocked at how laidback the working environment was compared to the US and fell in love with the lifestyle. In the long run, she started to feel like she was a better worker, and even though she was taking more time off, she was more productive because she was rested.
Indeed, buying into hustle culture and overworking can have negative effects on a worker’s mental and physical health. In the post-pandemic era, many people are re-evaluating what they want out of work and life. They are quitting toxic workplaces, setting boundaries, and devoting more time to their personal lives and hobbies.
Image credits: Brett Sayles (not the actual photo)
American vs European hustle culture
Experts say the entrepreneurship boom in the 1990s and early 2000s was the foundation for the hustle culture that many negatively experience now. After deciding to move back to the US to be closer to her family and friends, Kayleigh has found it hard to adjust to this kind of work. In Ireland, she had 29 paid vacation days, and back home, she only had four paid days off in the past year.
Her boyfriend, who was able to come with her, also experienced a similar shock. He told her that Americans do things just to be busy when they could get the work done in half the time. And it seems to be true, as a past study has shown that Luxembourg, Ireland, Norway, and Belgium have topped the US in productivity.
Aside from taking days off, countries like Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain, and Italy have set into place a “right to disconnect” law that allows employees to ignore emails outside of working hours. The European Commission also has a set of rules for what a workday should look like. Therefore, workers aren’t allowed to put in more than 48 hours a day, and a rest break is required every six hours.
In America, the Fair Labor Standards Act doesn’t call for meal or break periods. And if lunch breaks are given, people aren’t paid during them. So it’s no wonder why many people eat their meals at their desks. Besides, those who get paid days off usually don’t even take them, with 46% of Americans not using the time off they’re given. They don’t want a vacation, as more than half of them feel like they’ll fall behind or feel guilty for having their colleagues cover for them.
Rachel Chang, a writer from “The Zoe Report,” pointed out that Americans sip their Italian coffee, wear Parisian fashion, and buy Swedish furniture, and yet they can’t borrow the easiest European import that would actually better their lives.
Image credits: Alexey Larionov (not the actual photo)
Commenters were all for staying abroad
