Technically I don’t get “vacation.” I get a certain number of hours per year of “Paid Time Off” (PTO). I used a couple of day’s worth for sick time in January, then a week’s worth in January to visit my Dad in the hospital and following my car accident, and two more days last week for his funeral (I get three days of bereavement leave per death). Another week’s worth is tied up for a mandatory week off we each have to take so the company can conduct annual audits on us. Which is going to leave me with less than one day’s worth of PTO for the next ten months.
They just changed our vacation time to PTO, and I absolutely abhor it. Everyone is coming in sick now - me included.
We had people here who abused the system in regards to sick time (there was no stated policy), so the company implemented this, instead of terminating the employment of the people who did the abusing.
Otto, honey, I’m so sorry. You’ve had a rough time of it, and you’re going to need real time off from work just to relax and unwind. I’ve been lurking in your threads and have been thinking of you. ::
Their rationale is that it’s time that I’m not at work but they’re paying me for it. Thus, paid time off. I imagine that if it were unpaid time then the overall amount of PTO given per year would be reduced accordingly. I didn’t really care last year because I had plenty of PTO, in fact even carried some over to this year. But with all this rather unavoidable time off front-loaded in the year it’s tough.
But I can console myself with the thought that I know Kevin Federline’s credit limit.
OK, that sucks. “Oh, we require you to take a week off and take that out of your PTO” is total BS.
From your account, sounds like you get about 8 days a year for both vacation and sick leave (skipping the bogus week). That’s pretty BS too.
My org switched to PTO many years ago. Prior to that, there was a set limit of vacation days and a set limit of sick days. They just (a) got tired of tracking both sets, and (b) got tired of people calling in sick so they wouldn’t use their vacation days.
It works just fine here, but then my employer provides a reasonable amount of PTO, unlike yours.
80 hours per year (I’m a second-year employee), which translates into ten 8-hour days or two weeks of PTO, which includes any time away from the office for any reason. A little more for me because my days are 7.5 hours instead of 8 so my time stretches a bit into just under one extra day’s worth. The mandatory week off comes out of that 80 hours. I’ve used 62 hours so far and will use another 37.5 for the mandatory week (I had some carryover from last year) and will have about 5 hours left after that.
Do you at least generate PTO each pay period? We get about the same amount of PTO as you do but it starts accruing immediately and depends upon how much you work. I’ve already earned (and used) eight hours since January 1st and will have four more this Friday.
I will have an operation in March and will have to take all my sick leave and all my vacation for the recovery. This will be the 5th straight year I have had an operation that took all my sick leave and all my vacation (although my last boss would have let me take a few days under the radar.)
I really don’t know how you guys in the US cope. I would go insane without my 25 days a year, plus statutory bank holidays and as much paid sick time as I need (OK I have never had to use that, but it’s there if i need it)
The full balance for the year is available on January 1. During my first year if I’d left the company for any reason I would have had to pay back any PTO I’d taken, but once I passed my first anniversary that no longer applied. I used to work places that generated time per pay period, but that was only sick time. Vacation and personal time were separate pots.
Yeah, the whole “sick time comes out of your vacation/paid time off” thing leaves me flabbergasted too. I haven’t dared to calculate where I’d have been if that had been the case here.
So, so jealous. In general, I’ve been okay in that the places I’ve worked have been relatively reasonably by US standards (I currently get 18 PTO days, but our holidays suck). I have been offered a job, though, where new employees get a grand total of ZERO days for the first year :dubious:
I am surprised but the surprise here. Why are some of you so shocked about what is a fairly standard policy?
At Otto’s company, they combine sick time with vacation time into one bucket called PTO. It’s the same way where I work. This is a good thing. If you don’t get sick very often, you effectively get extra vacation days. They made this change where I work a couple of years ago. Over 90% of us never used all of our sick time and got more time off for other things.
At most places I have ever worked we have had mandatory shutdowns. This could be the week between Xmas and New Year, or for inventory/auditing, or maintenance or weather related issues. When this happens, you have a choice take it unpaid or use PTO. They can’t pay you not to work. What is so difficult to understand about this? It’s not like they sprung it on him out of the blue.
Otto had a great perk in that he gets all of his PTO at the beginning of the year instead of having to accrue it. Plus, he can use it all at the beginning of the year and then quit and not have to pay it back. Most of us have to earn it throughout the year.
Now only having two weeks of PTO per year is pretty tight. That, as far as I can see, is the only valid complaint. I get six weeks of PTO plus ten paid holidays where I work.
hajario’s right. It was mandatory (and still is, though somewhat reduced in scope) in the banking industry to require 2 weeks off, consecutive. Every bank I’ve worked in has had this charged against PTO/Vacation (though vacation time was always sufficient to cover the 2 weeks, plus some additional time throughout the year). When I was employed by banks covered under these regulations, I hated it, as I was too poor to really do anything with two weeks off, other than sit around the house and play video games (and we’re talking the original Nintendo here, to give you some idea of the time frame).
It may have been part of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, repealed and replaced by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, but wiki doesn’t mention much about the details of the act, and I don’t have the time to do a deeper dive. I welcome correction if I am misremembering which acts made the 2-week vacation mandatory.
Dang. I wish my company would go to PTO. I very rarely use sick time. PTO would allow me to use what used to be considered sick time any way I wanted to.
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