I go back Jan. 3rd, I think. Been really busy at work lately, end of the year orders. However, I had a lot of vacation days left to burn and I’ve been taking them around Thanksgiving and now Christmas-New Years. Actually had more vacation days I could have used but will take the payoff on them.
Me too!
Me too!
I have my own company and I always take off a day for my birthday, then 2 weeks at Christmas. Sometimes I have other days off during the year but this year I didn’t take any extra days, and on my birthday I was at a funeral out of town so there was that.
Wish I could bank those extra days for extra money but…boss is a stickler! 
I had a lot of leave to burn so I’ve been off all this week and won’t go back until Jan 2 (though of course someone at my workplace tried to make me feel bad about it. I’d already made sure that there was no operational need for my presence, so suck it. Ha.)
Wow, that’s one thing irritates the hell out of me…I put in for time off and get the stinkeye and something along the lines of “I don’t use my vacation days, I just take the payoff at the end of the year.” I have exceptionally good attendance, don’t give me shit when I want to use my vacation time. That’s part of the deal.
Ayup. It’s required that we be allowed to use vacation time unless there’s some solid operational need for us to be there, and at this time of year there typically isn’t. And unused leave over a certain maximum converts to sick leave. Which of course is fine if one needs it, and it can also be used as extra time toward retirement if not, but I’d like to have some relief from the grind occasionally. It’s not my fault if some things I do don’t have an officially designated backup, take that to who is responsible for it.
I’m delighted to have the time to go visit family, but since neither I nor Mr. Celtic Knot are salaried, it will be a tough January.
When I worked for a bank, we were required to take a block of 40 hours of vacation every year. When I started doing tech support, it quickly became a de facto automatic week off at Christmas, because something always came up to prevent me from taking that much time off until they had to allow me to.