> After all if you're salaries at a 24x7 operational company, if you want a Saturday off with guaranteed no phone calls, you need to take vacation.

And people put up with this?

> People are reacting rather violently to 15 days is three weeks, although it isn't

That depends on how it's counted, it may be counted the way you are but it also might not be. For instance, the standard holidays that you list do not come out of my PTO pool, which is the number of days that I was told it was when I was hired. The result being I have those days plus those five, plus the day after Thanksgiving, as time off, I just don't get to pick when those last six days are used.

Not necessarily. In my current industry if you don't work for maximum weekly work hours, saturday will be count as a work day if you literally work or not. So a week vacation is counted 6 days. Ps. Non-US

Plus holidays?