A year ago as part of 2 weeks of training to be a supervisor I had to drive an hour away to the main training facility, do 4 hours of training, take an hour long lunch, and then drive an hour and a half back to my original workplace, work for effectively an hour and a half at my normal job, then drive home. I was being paid the entire time but it felt bizarre they made it mandatory for me to get my whole 8 hours in and require me to end my day at main place work instead of just sending me home after training.
My first job out of college was a rotational program for young engineers to train them up in operations management. It was very competitive in a way I was not expected. About 6 months into my first rotation, I had to fill out a self-evaluation form for my annual review where I had to rate myself on some 200+ different specific behaviors, provide examples for each and basically just write a multi-page document why they shouldn’t fire me.
It didn’t work out. I ended up leaving once it was clear that I “couldn’t improve” and that I wouldn’t be getting a second rotation. My life got so much better after that.
That sound like a lot of work. Who could be expected to remember examples for each type of behavior.
I once temped at a place where microwaving popcorn was a firing offense. You could bring in pre-popped corn, that was OK, but not pop it there.
I’d be so tempted to see if she could do a 7-1/2 mile hike even once, never mind twice in 99-degree heat.
There are people who don’t have a spatial sense and can’t read maps. So it’s possible she really couldn’t imagine that distance as 8 miles in her mind and what it would be like to walk that far.
Yep, that was her. It was only 1/4 inch on the map, how could that possibly be far?
You should have found a similarly scaled map for your location, found a restaurant on it 1/4 inch away, and invited her to lunch and suggested you walk there.
As an aside to the topic, how far would you be willing to walk from a residence to a work/class site? One of my latest trips had my team staying at a hotel about a half mile from the job site and many of us would walk it to get some extra exercise in that day. Granted, the weather and temperature were reasonable.
A couple of times I’ve paid extra to stay in the hotel where the event’s being held. So many attendees were staying there that it was well worth it for the random conversations that popped up.
College summer job with a Landscaping/Snow Plow/Commercial cleaning company. I managed some of the commercial cleaning accounts, did not do any landscaping. The owner bought dump trucks from the municipality where the business was located. I had finished my accounts, went back to the shop, put my stuff away, prepped for the next day and then went to see the owner to see if he had anything for me to do. Well, he was on a step ladder, almost his entire torso in the engine well of one of these dump trucks. I did not want to startle him, so I said nothing waiting for him to look up. Well, when he did look up he scowled at my, “What the hell are you doing just standing there watching me work. I’m paying you to work, go sweep the floors.” So, after that when I returned to the shop, I would just push a broom around his clean shop floor until the end of my shift.
I worked at a large corporate convention hotel in the 90’s. One woman, a mid level manager that had worked there for decades had accumulated a pile of vacations days. Somebody in HR finally noticed and they made her take a 6 month vacation and several weeks every year after that.
People who wont take vacation is a danger sign. They are running some sort of fraud and they cant take the risk that somebody will notice while they are gone. For that reason they are required to take their vacation time off.
Used to be this only applied to Accounting and Finance folks at our company.
Then we had an HR (!) Director who didn’t take a vacation for seven or eight years. One day he had a heart attack and had to be hospitalized. Sure enough it was discovered that he had embezzled at least $1M and probably much more by signing contracts with shell companies controlled by his girlfriend and her relatives.
I’m skeptical that the reason for requiring employees to take earned vacation is to prevent or root out fraud or embezzlement.
I’m skeptical too (about accrued vacation time being an indicator for fraud). At my previous company, I was told that accrued vacation time is somehow considered a debt on the company’s books; so requiring employees to take their vacation is simply better for the company’s balance sheet.
In my accounting courses, I was told both applied (accrued liability, get a different set of eyes on goings-on to catch anything scammy/dishonest going on)
I know that most teachers don’t take all of the personal days we’re entitled to, because if we’re not there, the job probably won’t get done (you might get a sub who follows the plans you leave, but you can never be sure). And I imagine that the same is true of plenty of other jobs.
“Use it or lose it” policies and variants of that ( once you have X hours in the bank you stop accruing vacation and such ) take care of limiting the company’s liability for accrued vacation - if the company sets the vacation balance to zero every Jan 1 or if you stop earning vacation once you have 160 hours banked, the company will never owe someone ten months of vacation when they leave.
Policies that require people to take at least one vacation of X consecutive days each year are to detect fraud and/or misconduct. It’s very common in jobs that deal with money like accounting and finance , but it’s also useful in other type of jobs. My former job did not have such a policy - but if I were running things it would. The agency supervised people after they were released from prison - and at least 50% of the times when we found out someone was falsifying records regarding visits , it was because that person was unexpectedly out for long enough that someone had to cover their caseload.
I think the scam she was running, she wanted to tell the hotel I’m retiring in a year/year and a half, and oh I happen to have a year plus in vacation days, so see ya.
Growing up, our family always took lonnnnng trips in the family station wagon. We found out later that Dad, being a VP of a bank, had to take at least two weeks consecutively. We were excited to hear his tales of why this had become a policy, and we got juicy tales of embezzlement and cons we’d never heard of. Many of those examples had been told to him by his friends in other banks, and the details were like pirate stories to us kids.