I did some business with the a city department at one time. I discovered that from Thanksgiving to New Years, no work was done at that department. Everyone was "out of the office" or will "be back later".
My partner and I ended up sleeping on an air mattress while we waited for the one person at the building department who could sign off on our project to come back from vacation. They were in fact completely unresponsive between thanksgiving and two weeks after new years.
This is only an example of people being bad at their jobs or not caring if you are referring to the management/administration responsible for staffing and scheduling over that time period. The people who are actually out of the office are presumably using approved PTO.
Every place I have worked has had meticulously tracked PTO days that most people delayed taking until the end of the year; there were notably fewer people in the office in December.
