We have spent the past few days in Milano. It is a beautiful city in Northern Italy and we have enjoyed our time here – especially the free wifi in the hotel and the quiet room for the down time we needed. We visited the Duomo which was built over the course of six centuries, beginning in the 1300s and ending with final touches in 1965 – so long that it’s struggle for completion coined an Italian phrase describing something so difficult that it is nearly impossible to achieve “like building a duomo” – “Fabbrica del Duomo”. The marble front had recently been cleaned and was beautiful pastel shades.
The apse in the rear of the cathedral (the 4th largest in Europe), was amazing with huge stained glass windows – one of them basically recounting all of the allegories in the Bible.
There was also a haunting statue of Saint Bartolemew who was skinned alive and now holds his shell draped around him like a shawl.
We spent quite a bit of time at the indoor/outdoor mall right next to the Duomo.
It has an impressive collection of fancy stores that I would never want to spend money in, you know, like Prada and Louis Vuitton. Although we saw examples all over the city, it was there that we were most struck by the completely different attitudes toward commerce in Italy vs. the US.
One thing we knew heading into this trip was that we ran a strong risk of half of a city being shut-down for summer holiday. We definitely hit that in Milan – where many stores are actually closed for the entire month of August. The wheels of commerce grind to a halt in Italy so that families can enjoy some down time together. I even took pictures of the two shops we saw closed and barred in the high-traffic, expensive rent locations in the mall right next to the main tourist attraction of Milan.
It’s really a strange phenomenon for a (former/current/future) HR Manager to witness.
In many ways, I find this a healthy way to manage human relations and the overall health and sanity of a nation. However, it does take some effort to get beyond the idea of the overarching importance of commerce at all cost that we see in the US. If anyone’s reading out there, I’d love to hear your opinion on this practice. Does it create more loyal employees, refreshed and ready to return to work? Is it helpful to have all the vacations taken at once rather than spread out over the year? What do you think?
Hmm, interesting question you ponder Charity. After some thought I think the ideal would be to have a mixture of both. Give employees several days to schedule flexibly and then also have say a week where all is shut down at the same time.