Why an Indian man felt ‘embarrassed’ after meeting a Swiss retiree in Vietnam

‘We call it work-life balance’

The couple’s conversation soon turned to their professional lives. The man, a corporate lawyer in Germany, told Garg he retired at 55. What surprised Garg was that the man appeared almost embarrassed by the age at which he had stopped working, describing 55 as “quite late”.

He then spoke about what he considered a demanding career. His typical day involved seven to nine hours of work, with some days stretching beyond 5 pm. “I could only manage golf once a week. Gym three times. Barely seven hours of sleep,” the man told Garg.

For Garg, the description was striking because the same routine would hardly sound extreme to many Indians. “I kept a straight face. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that in India, this hectic, exhausting life he was apologising for – we call it work-life balance,” he wrote.

“We put it on job posters. People switch companies hoping for it.”

The Swiss man said he now spent twice as much time playing golf and going to the gym, slept longer and travelled for about four months every year. The difference in how the two viewed leisure became even clearer when the Swiss man asked Garg how long he and his wife were staying in Vietnam.

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Garg said he was embarrassed to admit that their trip was only four nights, despite having travelled thousands of kilometres for the break. “‘Three weeks,’ I lied. In half shame. It was four nights. I had a job to get back to,” he wrote.

The Swiss man’s response caught him off guard. He described three weeks as “a pretty short break” and encouraged Garg to make the most of his time there.

‘Geographical dividend’

The interaction stayed with Garg even after he left Vietnam. During his flight back, he kept wondering why he had felt the need to hide the length of his holiday. “Because four nights was the truth, and the truth was embarrassing – that I’d flown 3,000 km for a break shorter than his morning routine,” he wrote.

Trying to describe the difference he had experienced, Garg coined his own phrase: the “geographical dividend”.

“Economists should have a term for this. I call it the geographical dividend: the invisible income some countries pay their people – unhurried time, working systems, and evenings that actually end,” he wrote.

Garg stressed that he did not see the difference simply as a matter of wealth. According to him, the Swiss man was not necessarily richer than some millionaires he knew in Delhi and Mumbai. Instead, Garg argued that people in certain countries benefit from systems and workplace norms that give them more time outside work.

“You don’t earn it. You’re born into it, or you’re not,” he wrote.

‘Fine tuned to over optimize for risk mitigation’

The post has since drawn several responses on LinkedIn, with several users relating to Garg’s observations about India’s work culture.

“Quite surprising how easily we considered the struggle of work-life imbalance as our fate, after paying everything out & taking proud we Indians work our a** off, but without realising why humans are born for,” one person commented.

Another user described the difference as the “price of nationality, the invisible wage gap, quality of life arbitrage”, while arguing that some cultures have become better at knowing when to stop prioritising money and start prioritising life.

A third commenter wrote that Indians are “fine tuned to over optimize for risk mitigation”, adding that by the time people feel financially secure, they may already be over 70.

One commenter, meanwhile, focused on Garg’s honesty about feeling embarrassed over his four-night holiday.

“Thanks for sharing some real emotion. Been tired to death reading AI slop Linkedin posts. This was refreshing. And I could very well understand why you were embarassed. I’d have done the same too,” the user wrote.