Ugh, soon…once things stop exploding in infascinating ways my coworkers aren’t equipped to handle without leaving a bonfire for my return. Not their fault, I’m just the guy tasked with the oddball stuff that looks nothing like their day-to-day. Fine when things are the normal amount of on fire, less so when actively erupting and (recently) literally on fire.
Take some time off my dude, it’s not worth your health and being that guy will get in the cracks before you realize something is off. After taking two weeks off recently I came back to the world on fire and have started to realize I don’t care that much!
I don’t think I agree with the second comment. I work in a team. If you just take it and leave them to handle your shit, you are an asshoke. If you say it in advance and sort your stuff, then do whatever you want
Isn’t PTO supposed to be approved anyway?
Idk. I’m lucky enough that if I want PTO I can ask, and if I need it I can just notify my boss (I can literally enter his office and say “I need to take Friday for such and such” and he basically just goes “OK” and that is it)
There’s been a misunderstanding here. It seems like you are trying to share a balanced and nuanced opinion. That’s a major faux pas around here, on the internet. Please find yourself an establishment where such vulgar language isn’t frowned upon.
“timeless advice” motherfuckers when PTO stops existing 😯
I worked craft beer sales for a hot minute. Place was a disaster, so I was already looking for a new job anyway. Labor day rolls around, and I inform my bosses A MONTH OUT that I will be taking a week off at the end of August to go on vacation. They approve it, all is well, everything’s great, I get back to work. The week I leave, I remind them that I’ll be gone for a week, I won’t be available for work things, and that I’ll see them next week. They say cool, tell me to have a great time, and I clock out for the day.
9:01AM, the day I leave, I get a text. “Hey Dogiedog64, when are you coming back? We need to have a chat about some things.” I don’t bother responding, since I’m on vacation, and moreover, I’m driving on the highway. The day passes, I get where I’m going, but it’s past work hours, and I want to enjoy my vacation. THE NEXT DAY, they call me. 9:01AM. I miss it, they leave a message and another text to the effect of “Call us back. It’s important.” I don’t. I’m on vacation, they KNOW I’m on vacation, and it can wait.
6PM rolls around, and I get a text. “Dogiedog64, since you didn’t call us back today, we’re unfortunately going to have to let you go. Your performance wasn’t cutting it and we’ve gotten numerous customer complaints about you.” I know for a fact this was bullshit, as I had done the rounds before I left, and all my customers loved me and our beer, but hated our managers and distribution scheme.
Now, you may ask “what was the point of that story?” It’s simple: companies will find a reason to fire you for nothing, no matter how well you lay out boundaries or plans, so don’t bother treating them like they’re special. I lost my job, but I did nothing wrong; I set clear boundaries and expectations, with ample documentation, notice, and approval, and they STILL fired my ass.
So yeah. Take your PTO. It’s YOURS. Go on that vacation, leave your work life AT WORK, and have a good time. Your coworkers will be fine without you, and if the company collapses while you’re gone, they deserved to collapse anyway. Life is simply too short to spend it all slaving away for a company that hates you.
If it collapses without you, then maybe it should be your company.
Is there an ending to that story? If I was in that situation, I would have ignored it all and then came back the day I said I’d come back and act like everything was normal, make up something about how my phone got broken or stolen or something.
At the very least I hope you tried to get unemployment or some such!
The ending was pretty underwhelming. I wasn’t employed long enough to get unemployment, and haven’t been able to get another job since. Now back at school pursuing a new degree.
Now back at school pursuing a new degree.
Careful with this one. Racking up even more debt generally does not make your life easier.
Good thing I’m not in debt then.
Always a good way to live!
also it’s free to contact the local labor bureau or eeoe if you’re fired for taking a vacation, they’ll even help you with lawyers, mediators etc
Damn, what did your union say?
What’s a union? /s
What beer company?
A local one, in Baltimore. Won’t get more specific to avoid doxxing myself and others.
Ladies and gentlemen, behold the cowardice that allows shit like this to persist in your country
Its not cowardice to avoid sharing Personal Information on the internet. There’s a real possibility to be doxxed just by sharing which place you worked at, and were fired for what reason. Not everyone is comfortable doing that.
Oh no! Your job! 😒 it’s almost as if you don’t realize you already have nothing to lose.
Maybe, being doxxed is the bigger issue here. Perhaps, take a read in OPSEC and learn how digital fingerprinting and doxxing work.
🤣 yes, I’m sure this white dude in Baltimore who didn’t bother taking any action to fight back against the shitheads who fired him for taking a vacation from his craft beer job is involved in some very serious action requiring OPSEC.
I swear to god as soon as I’m proven wrong I’ll eat an entire tree on video and then delete my account.
That sounds like cut and dry wrongful termination. You should have sued, if not for rightful compensation then to make sure that they think again before they pull the same shit with other employees.
Pro Tip to youngesters just getting into corporate.
Don’t let the company think they actually care about you. They don’t. HR doesn’t care. Executives doesn’t. Nobody doesn’t. You’re the only person that cares about you.
Also, work is just a business transaction. They need your service. You need their money. Do make friends, but not at your expense.
I get both sides of this argument. Some businesses have certain periods where it’s extremely busy followed by an ebb in work. Accountants for example may be balls-to-the-wall at year end, but that period doesn’t justify hiring somebody who might otherwise have their thumb up their ass and nothing to do most of the rest of the year. I’ve also had IT jobs that resolved around projects in this way., and there are always a certain number of SME’s that you kinda need at launch.
At the other side, I’ve known employers who basically ran the bare-minimum amount of staff for a team/project (or less and worked the rest to the bone) and getting them to sign off on holidays for any reasonable length of time was near impossible. Those are the types that would try to call you from the middle of open-heart-surgery if they could, and yeah anyone in this situations should be looking for a new job. The hard part being that getting the time to do proper job hunting was often also similarly difficult because of work, and bills still needed to be paid.
If you haven’t hired enough people to cover vacations and unexpected absences, you’ve hired poorly.
My department has been complaining to the big boss that we need more people. People have been retiring for years with barely one new hire per two empty positions. And now… I am in long term sick leave (protected) and shit is coming dooooown. Not enough people to cover all the projects. Multiple projects put on hold for the time being, others being roughly merged. People are pissed.
Lol. That’s what happens when those in charge chronically chase short-term profit over long-term sustainability.
What do you mean I can’t get by with a just-in-time workforce? I need a 100% deduction on my taxes (business and personal) or else I might faint!
I mean, having a plan for the work you won’t be there to do is normal, I tell my boss “I will be out on Friday, will you do x, and when I get back I will do Y”.
And sure, would not request a day if the other two people in my department will both be out that same day.
This is in the flexible environment I work in, though. Don’t need to take PTO for appointments, can come in late or leave early, can take a long lunch to go for a walk or run, nobody even blinks. I come in late sometimes because I needed to do gardening before work. I am flexible for them because they are flexible for me.
Heed the wisdom of the ancients.
I am lucky to get the time I do (It’s more than most people I know) but I recently too two full weeks off to spend with my wife for our 20th anniversary, it was amazing. After I got back to work I had hundreds of emails to catch up on and so much extra work that had piled up I started thinking about all the extra work I had taken on over the years to “cover down” for people and then realized that was the most consecutive time I’ve taken off in the past 9 years.
I think it’s time for a change. Not a job change per-se, but time to start taking time for me, my family, and my health.
My job literally forces me to take all my leave by end of FY unless I have a very good reason.
Americans and their attitude to their holiday allowance will never cease to amaze me.
Literally the only consideration I need to make on behalf of my employer is whether my days off will leave less than 75% of my department out. And as that never happens then I never have to think about it.
If you have holiday available to you, take it.
“Hard work” is one of the cultural norms that the Puritans instilled in our society. Our ancestors fought hard to form labor unions and to guarantee that we wouldn’t have to work 80-hour weeks, and yet here we are.
Not to say that people in other countries don’t work hard. They do. Many work harder than their counterparts in the US. But their governments have (very reasonable) limits on the amount of time their employers can expect them to work. (As well as minimums for time off, sick leave, etc.)
It’s a weird holdover of American culture that spending too much time at work and putting the company’s needs before your own is somehow virtuous.
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Also stop using the acronym, because it’s too easy to forget what those letters mean when just the acronym is being used. Call it “Paid Time Off”.
We call it vacation in the rest of the English speaking world.
Vacation ≠ pto and it’s strange to equate them. There’s various non paid ways to take a vacation, such as a(n intended) gap between jobs, unpaid additional leave, or on a 3 day weekend. There’s people working in my job with 6 and 7 weeks of pto that still take unpaid additional vacations.
Where do you live? Where I live, we call it Semester…
Literally, the only place I have ever heard PTO used is in the US.
How are they taking unpaid vacations when they could be using PTO?
They use all of their pto, as well as taking more. Also, management allows people to choose if they want to use pto when taking a day off. All unused pto pays out at the end of the year and raises are in October – wait to use it and it adds a dollar per pto hour
I know people who are off even up to a third of the year
Power Take Off?
If you do it strategic like.
Take PTO Make sure your absence maximizes disruption that only you can fix Clean everything up right when you get back Job security!
I mean, there are jobs where the first posters advice is relevant. I’m a musician, and there are just rehearsals I cannot miss. When I am working with a high school, I cant take PTO during key production days or performances because I am the only person at the place that can do exactly what I do: that’s why they hired me.
