Oh sure, they slept with sheep and a donkey in the house, toiled from sunrise to sunset for the Lordship and drank fetid water most days, but there were advantages to being a peasant in medieval Europe.
They had better vacation packages than you do.
The average American takes less vacation time each year than your average 14th century toothless bricklayer.
Economist Juliet Shor examined the life of medieval peasants and makes the argument that when times were good, for example when people weren’t dying in the street of the Black Plague, the average worker put in no more than 150 days a year on the job.
As we have reported many times, the average American worker today takes less than eight vacation days a year, and even if they took all of the standard two weeks, that comes out to 226 days a year at the office.
On the bright side, you have air-conditioning, coffee and shoes.