In Paris last week, I found the city refreshingly quiet. Over dinner, my American visitors asked whether, as rumor has it, there was a mass exodus of vacationers in August, and how French society could function during peak vacation season.

Some organizations –courts, schools, some factories– and some small businesses –bakeries, butcher shops– do close for about a month, with all employees vacationing at the same time.

But at most organizations, employees leave on vacation on a staggered schedule, leaving behind a skeleton crew to carry on business. (Paradoxically, if you’re around Paris in the Summer and are working with someone else who is, too, you can accomplish an extraordinary amount of work.)

Who leaves when? Keeping a vacation schedule is a discipline and art unto itself in France. In some organizations, human resources staff are dedicated just to vacation scheduling.

One key moment in the process is when an employee will “poser ses vacances”. To my ears, the language is stronger than “requesting” or “putting in for” vacation. It’s more like “claiming”, much like a Wild West miner would put in a claim to look for gold under a patch of dusty scrub. There’s at least a possibility of negotiation; the claim isn’t a demand.

In some organizations, higher-ups pull rank: the boss decides when he’s going, assigns his secretary time off based on his schedule, and allows other subordinates to be off only when he’s back.

But in most settings, there’s discussion over coffee or around the water cooler to work out who leaves when. In the economy of vacation planning, there’s a hierarchy to the arguments that can be used. The strongest currency is suffering, usually described operatically. There’s usually at least one colleague who hasn’t been on vacation for decades and who’s been worn down by work (single-handedly saving the company, several times) and personal circumstances (death of pet cat and pet dog, in the same month that car keys were lost). Down a tier from suffering, parents have first dibs over the childless, by reason of school vacations (that stretch from the beginning of July through the end of August, making this claim comparatively weak). Finally, couples have priority over single people, on the grounds that both partners need to coordinate their schedules. So single people take advantage of lower, off-season rates and make their colleagues jealous with tales of exotic travel for a pittance.