Good lord, that’s ridiculous. I graduate this spring and I already have a job lined up, and I’m getting three weeks vacation to start(plus statutory holidays). One week? That’d be completely out of the question.
Good for you. Just out of curiousity, did they offer double time pay for the holidays they wouldn’t let you take? Anyone know the labor laws - I thought holidays were mandated, with extra pay for those having to work over them.
Not a chance.
Every time you take a day off, for whatever reason, it’s money out of your pocket. Bad enough if you’re single, but with kids??? No fucking way. There’s too many things that come up with kids, you can’t help but need days off.
I work to live, not the other way around. Some employers don’t get that. This sounds like one of them, and you’re better of for having turned them down.
What would concern me about the offer is not the lack of days off - well, that would concern me, but a lot of extra money would in theory make up for that.
What concerns me about it is that it’s been offered at all, and by a “Small firm.” The offer strongly suggests that the business owners/managers simply don’t have a lot of care or concern for the health, safety, and welfare of their employees. They’re either young, and just don’t know what the hell they’re doing, or don’t care, or possibly both. Vacation and time off is a significant health issue, and any experienced and competent manager knows that employees who get a decent amount of time off are more productive and less prone to burnout, on-the-job injuries, and performance sags than poorly rested employees.
I would strongly suspect - actually, I would be willing to bet a fair amount of money on it - that an employer who would offer such absurdly low vacation totals will also put no effort into things like workplace health and safety. If the workplace is not already large enough to be affected by OSHA/MOL/government agency in your country rules, when it grows to that numkber of employees they’ll probably either ignore the law or skip by with only the most basic requirements. The risk of injury will be unnecessarily high. The managers will probably handle their employees unprofessionally; HR issues will be poorly handled or allowed to slide, employee needs will be attended to either grudgingly or erratically, and if a full blown crisis crops up they won’t know how to handle it at all. Ethical standards of employee/employer relations will be bent or broken.
No, no, no. Even if you were single and had no kids and loved working 52 weeks a year, this offer has whirling red lights and ear-splitting klaxon alarms going off all around it. It’s not the one week of vacation, it’s what that tells us about the OTHER “conditions” you’ll soon find out about.
Stay away.
You must not have worked retail at any point in your life.
Part-time WalMart employees don’t get sick pay nor do they get vacation pay. That’s the norm in the retail environment for part-time employees. I don’t work at WalMart so I can’t comment on specifics, but I know that they get no paid time off.
My (retail) company gives profit-sharing and Christmas bonuses to all employees and provides health insurance and enrollment in the 401(k) to every employee who works at least 1000 hours a year, but only full-timers get sick pay, vacation, and paid time off. We also get 4 additional days we can either take as paid time off or add to our paychecks when they occur or at the end of the year.
One week of PTO for your first year of full-time employment is the accepted norm on the retail side of things, but I’d be leery of that sort of arrangement in an office environment.
I think you made the right decision.
Perhaps it would have been good to mention to them why you turned it down. If enough people would tell them their terms are unattractive to qualified potential employees, maybe they’d come out of the Dark Ages.
Hell no…I know people working in sweatshops with more days off than that…
Whoa nelly. Just in those circumstances? Hell, I’ve worked for plenty of larger corporations where the bit quoted above was true. I’m currently working for a University where this is the daily standard of professional conduct for our department management.
Not their job to deal with personnel issues. When they arise, they ignore until it blows up. Then they deal with them in an unprofessional manner. Ethics (and these are former cops) have nothing to do with anything. It’s all about the use and abuse of Power in order to beat down the problem.
Who knows, maybe the employer in the OP is the greatest boss on Earth, but just thinks that the job (payroll) is too important to allow much time off, because that would mean that someone else has to step in. But most people, myself included, will never know, because we wouldn’t take the job.
Being in my 20’s and single, I’d at least consider the job with little/no time off, since I don’t have a lot of other obligations. If I were in the OP’s situation though, I would be a lot more hard pressed to do it, considering the family and kids. From my perspective, there would have to be a lot of other offsetting perks or a significantly higher salary to make up for the below average time off.
Having no holidays seems odd to me for an “office job” (that’s what payroll servicing woud be right?). Does that really mean you’d work Christmas Day just as if it were a regular day? Or, would the office be closed, but you wouldn’t be paid for that day?
Bottom line is that this policy wouldn’t be a dealbreaker for me, but I’d really need to be impressed by the other aspects of the company/job for me to take it. For someone with a family, I could see this as a real dealbreaker, unless the rest of the job was absolutely amazing. I don’t really imagine a lot of qualified potential employees would accept this either, so I wonder what kind of pool they are hiring out of or what kind of workers actually take this job with these terms.
I’m one of those people who never takes time off and then has a whole pile of it at the end of the year, which is why I haven’t worked a full day since Thanksgiving. Lord, it’s going to be a shock in January actually having to be at work all day.
In any case, time off is important. If you can afford to look for a better job, do so.
Well, I only get three months or so off each year, plus a slew of holidays, plus 12 discretionary days that roll over year to year (I’m up to about 120) that I can cash in if I feel like it…
So I suppose the answer is HELL NO.
Even if I wasn’t spoiled all to hell, I can’t even begin to imagine how that kind of package would be desirable.
Wal-Mart doesn’t even accept a doctor’s note anymore. If you call in, it’s unexcused, period. I left them just over a year ago, and was part-time, and got no vacation or personal time at all that I am aware of. I think after two years I’d have gotten a week’s vacation, but since I’ve long since tossed any paperwork I had from them I can’t confirm that.
There is no way I would accept a full-time professional-type job on those terms. Part-time, even in an office, is different, but full-time? Hell no.
With my current job I have a 2 hour commute each way which includes riding 3 different trains to get to work. If I am injured I can’t just hobble in and out of the car on my way to and from work, I have 10 blocks worth of walking each way on my commute. A sprained ankle or cold which wouldn’t normally prevent me from going to work become major incidents that prevent me from being able to make the commute and stop me from being able to come to work. Lack of days off to account for that would have been a deal breaker for me. Besides that, if you have kids you know you are going to have to use at least 3 or 4 days staying home with sick children so essentially you get no time for yourself at all with that offer. Nuts to that.
I’d do it if I needed the job. You don’t have to stay forever. When something else comes along, go for it! If it’s honest work and it keeps the wolf away, it won’t kill you to use it as a stepping stone to the better gig.
To answer your question, it would be pretty hard to picture myself doing that for more than about a year.