# Is "unlimited PTO" a joke? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 28, 2018, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-unlimited-pto-a-joke/816925 "2018-06-28T15:51:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![AndyLee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/898d66/32.png) [@AndyLee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AndyLee)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2018, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-unlimited-pto-a-joke/816925/41 "2018-07-02T13:13:39Z")
My own experience with this is people who have unlimited PTO and complain are working for bad companies. A good company isn’t going to make you feel this way. If you did away with unlimited PTO a bad company finds other ways of “screwing” you over. I realize not everyone can up and quit jobs, but if you all think your company is doing this to you, you shouldn’t be here, you should be fixing up your resume and looking for a job which values you as an employee. I’ve worked at both kinds of companies, so I do know. And I also know not everyone has a choice, but you should be trying at least. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2018, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-unlimited-pto-a-joke/816925/42 "2018-07-02T13:51:26Z")
It’s possible to like a lot of things about a company, enough to make it worth staying in the balance, while still disliking how they handle “unlimited PTO”. If that’s the case, mild gritching on the internet is appropriate. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2018, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-unlimited-pto-a-joke/816925/43 "2018-07-02T15:03:35Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > And I thought this was going to be a thread about [tractor PTOs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_take-off). 😛 “Is ‘unleaking’ PTO a joke?” ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2018, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-unlimited-pto-a-joke/816925/44 "2018-07-02T15:38:53Z")
> [@Eonwe](#): > > I work for a software company. > > For the last two years, in the name of “work-life balance”, we’ve all been given a mandatory 2 weeks vacation (with pay) that must be scheduled, and must be taken consecutively. It also helps prevent against key man risk by ensuring that someone knows how to cover for you while you’re gone. On the trading floors of financial institutions, they have similar mandatory vacation policies so that if you’re covering up fraud it’ll hopefully come unravelled while you’re gone. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2018, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-unlimited-pto-a-joke/816925/45 "2018-07-02T16:11:06Z")
> [@AndyLee](#): > > No, it doesn’t. I’ve worked in a lot of companies where PTO is put into buckets. Again for the reason, in some states you have to pay out all PTO but if you have PTO sick and PTO vacation and PTO personal the PTO sick for instance, in my state doesn’t have to be paid. Why? Because sick time is a conditional benefit. You don’t get it unless you’re ill. I don’t know if you misunderstood me, or if you have experienced something I have never seen or heard of but I am _not_ saying there is no employer that has different buckets for different types of leave. Every one of my employers has , with types of leave you have probably never heard of in addition to vacation, personal, sick and holiday leave ( Do you get separate leave for breast cancer screening? All employees here do. And men get leave for prostate cancer screening. And we get separate leave for blood or organ donation - it’s not part of sick leave) What I \*am \*saying that those places don’t call it “PTO”- they simply call it “vacation leave” or “sick time” or “paid sick days”. In my experience, “PTO” is exclusively used by employers who don’t have separate buckets- that’s why you will see articles/blog posts with titles like " Vacation vs PTO- Pros and Cons" or “Switching From Vacation to PTO”. Does your employer actually call it “PTO sick”, “PTO vacation” or does your company call it “sick leave” or “vacation time” ? ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2018, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-unlimited-pto-a-joke/816925/46 "2018-07-02T17:13:52Z")
My niece worked at a place where you HAD to take two consecutigve weeks off. Apparently this was catch embezzlement. Brian ---
**Author:** ![betterlifethroughchemistry](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/betterlifethroughchemistry/32/3094_2.png) [@betterlifethroughchemistry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/betterlifethroughchemistry)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2018, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-unlimited-pto-a-joke/816925/47 "2018-07-03T03:06:14Z")
> [@Weisshund](#): > > We dont have unlimited PTO at least not yet > We also do not have sick days or holidays either > The PTO you do get, you are highly encouraged not to use. > Some people use it all anyways, but then they dont tend to be here long. > They dont pay out on unused PTO either, for any reasons. > > Cant see unlimited being any better Wow, that’s horrible…I have no idea the industry or job you are in, so I can only hope they pay extremely well, otherwise, I don’t see the incentive to stay… I work for an old-fashioned company where you can earn up to 5 weeks vacation (I have 4), everyone gets 5 sick days and 2 personal days…we can rollover 1 week, and any sick and personal time not used at the end of the year is paid out as cash…I’ve worked for two small companies (present one is a small business) as defined by $10-15MM/yr, a large company as defined by \>$2B/yr, and a medium sized company (~$100MM/yr), and my present company is the best…I am presently on a two-week vacation and we are completely encouraged to disconnect and disengage…yes, I still check my e-mail every now and then, text here and there, yes, I’ve had conference calls on vacation, but they are the exception not the rule… Our main customer is a very large company that transitioned to unlimited PTO several years ago and it’s interesting to see how the people I interact with treat it…it seems to be very manager-dependent, if you have a good manager, no problem…it also seems to have a trickle-down effect, as in Chief Engineer sends an e-mail out to his/her direct reports saying, “I will be off from the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, returning January 2”, then his/her direct reports send out an identical e-mail to THEIR direct reports, next thing you know, whole groups are gone for a month…this now happens to us every year, we just laugh and plan around it, it’s not like the customer sales drop, it’s just the engineering support… Coincidentally, my brother happens to work for the same company in a completely different division, he’s been there 30+ years in a director role and he takes off all the time he wants, he knows he’s valuable, he works hard, he probably doesn’t take any more time than he had originally, but he’s told me he won’t cheat himself, he’s too old for their crap…I think it impacts the younger workers more - they fear potentially being viewed as less committed, the older workers who are entrenched welcome it…IMHO and experience… ---
**Author:** ![Athena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2018, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-unlimited-pto-a-joke/816925/48 "2018-07-03T11:48:47Z")
> [@doreen](#): > > In my experience, “PTO” is exclusively used by employers who don’t have separate buckets- that’s why you will see articles/blog posts with titles like " Vacation vs PTO- Pros and Cons" or “Switching From Vacation to PTO”. I swear I posted this earlier, but I don’t see my post. I’ve seen plenty of places, including my current workplace, with PTO along with other types of buckets. My job now has 5 sick days per year, 2 floating holidays, PTO earned based on seniority, and a few other buckets (bonus leave, bereavement leave, etc). So your experience might be that “PTO” means “no buckets”, but that certainly isn’t my experience at all and I would guess different organizations define things however they want to define them. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2018, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-unlimited-pto-a-joke/816925/49 "2018-07-03T18:36:06Z")
> [@doreen](#): > > What I \*am \*saying that those places don’t call it “PTO”- they simply call it “vacation leave” or “sick time” or “paid sick days”. In my experience, “PTO” is exclusively used by employers who don’t have separate buckets- that’s why you will see articles/blog posts with titles like " Vacation vs PTO- Pros and Cons" or “Switching From Vacation to PTO”. Does your employer actually call it “PTO sick”, “PTO vacation” or does your company call it “sick leave” or “vacation time” ? I’ve worked at places that have PTO and other buckets. For example one of them had PTO, unlimited sick time, and a few special types of leave (bereavement leave was the one I used). These were in the late 90s and early 2000s, so the terminology may have shifted since them. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-unlimited-pto-a-joke/816925.md?page=2)