Worker bees: how difficult is it for you to schedule vacations?

[DCnDC]

My work doesn’t generally involve deadlines, so I can take off whenever I want.

The only potential snag is there is a public desk that everyone is scheduled to man for a couple hours a day, and you need to get your time covered by someone, but that’s never been a problem; sitting out at the desk is easy and it’s a break from the office. Besides, covering the desk for other people makes it easier to ask them to cover for you; it all evens out in the long run. The only times when it can become a problem is when everyone wants to take off the same day (e.g. Black Friday), but it always gets worked out somehow.

[Chimera]

@bump

The only really stupid and annoying thing that the company does is to lump sick time and vacation time together in one bucket as “Personal Time Off.” (PTO) This is stupid because while the company thinks of it as PTO, employees think of it as “Vacation”. Clearly most people choose to come in sick, because that’s what preserves their own “Vacation” days, as opposed to taking PTO for being sick, which is what the company would like you to do.

I’ve only met a very small number of people who think that way. On the other hand, I’ve had managers who insist that your PTO is for vacation only, and if you use too much of it for sick time, they have cause to start twirling the ‘disciplinary’ pencil.

Back in the early 90’s, one of my managers thought that way. I was the only person who did my job and I had no backup. I also liked to take one day off per month as a ‘personal day’ to recharge. I would always pick a day when I had nothing due, had no meetings, then just call in sick. One day my manager calls me in to her office all bent out of shape about this. “You’re sick one day every month!”. I explained the whole ‘no backup’ thing and how I only called in on days I didn’t need to be there, and then asked if she would rather I take 3-4 solid weeks of vacation per year (we had 21 days PTO) and let her scramble to cover my job.

Nope. Continue doing what you’re doing.

Yeah, thought so…

[Voyager]

@Chimera

Back in the early 90’s, one of my managers thought that way. I was the only person who did my job and I had no backup. I also liked to take one day off per month as a ‘personal day’ to recharge. I would always pick a day when I had nothing due, had no meetings, then just call in sick. One day my manager calls me in to her office all bent out of shape about this. “You’re sick one day every month!”. I explained the whole ‘no backup’ thing and how I only called in on days I didn’t need to be there, and then asked if she would rather I take 3-4 solid weeks of vacation per year (we had 21 days PTO) and let her scramble to cover my job.

I don’t understand. Was there some reason why you couldn’t take the one day as a vacation day instead of a sick day, even if they came out of the same bucket?
At one point I was bumping up against my accrued vacation limit and took a day every 3 weeks to keep below it, but it was always a vacation day.

[AdmiralQ]

I get a theoretically unlimited amount of vacation time, within reason, and just place whatever days I want off on a shared Outlook calendar so people will know I will be gone. I usually only end up using 3-4 weeks of vacation time a year, but a few years back I think I ended up using around 11 or so. Myself and another coworker are critical to responding to any emergency events, so we have an agreement that neither of us will be on vacation outside of the metro area at the same time. We have around 600 employees or so, and each department handles vacation scheduling differently, but as long as the job gets done, no one really cares how much time you take off.

[StGermain]

I get 26 days/yr of PTO. I go online and schedule my time, although I can’t take off the first couple days of each month because I do reporting for month end close. If I was to take more than a week at a time, I’d probably need to arrange for the pther person who knows something about reporting to cover me. Otherwise, people wait until I get back. Everyone tries to be decent about not picking the same weeks to be off, and I’ve been known to voluntarily reschedule my vacation if someone else wanted that time and it might make us shorthanded.

Edited to add: My boss does have to approve my time, but that’s usually a given.

StG

[ctnguy]

I work for a university, but not in a student-related position so my holidays don’t follow the teaching timetable. The unit I work for shuts down for two weeks from before Christmas till after New Year’s, and everyone takes a vacation over that period since it’s the height of summer here (South Africa). On top of that I get another 10 paid leave days which I can use any time during the year.

To take leave (outside that standard summer leave) all I have to do is ask my boss if it’s OK and then fill in a form. There’s no official notice period, though it’s preferred if I ask at least a week before. He’s never yet refused a leave request, though I suppose he might if I asked for leave over a really crucial period - there’s maybe two weeks in the year that there might be an issue.

I also get 10 days paid sick leave every year, and a doctor’s note is only required if I’m out for more than 2 days.

[MeanOldLady]

@Czarcasm

I get five days a year and, providing I don’t have to take any of them for illness or family emergency, I can take them any time I want providing I give one month’s notice.

A month’s notice for a day off? What?

@silenus

You don’t want to know about my vacation days.

One cool thing about my mom working the gig she did was we’d at times spend whole summers in the old country because we could. Then I got too cool for that and wanted to spend those months riding bikes with my friends, but it was always an option. Didn’t stop her from disappearing for weeks on end, though.

Anyway, I’ve never worked anyplace, from small operations with a dozen staff members to ginormous conglomerates with hundreds of thousands of employees, where taking time off required anything more than “Hey, I’m gone Monday and Tuesday.” Well no, that’s not quite true. When working for Giant Soulless Bank X, it was pretty tough getting as many days as you wanted off at year end. When I left it was strange joining the rest of the world who gets a lot of time off during the holidays. Speaking of which, two weeks off at the end of December. Hell yes!

[computergeek]

Federal employee here. If the vacation is less than 3 working days, I just let my boss know verbally or via email and make sure there’s no conflict. More than 3 working days, I fill out a leave slip, give to my boss to sign and make sure there’s no conflict. I don’t ever recall having a problem. I’ve been with the government for more than 26 years, so I earn 8 hours of vacation leave per biweekly paycheck. Once I reach the 240 hours ceiling, any excess leave per year has to be used by the end of the year or lost, so we’re encouraged to take our vacations.

[Iggy]

Planning calendar for the coming year goes out in October of the year prior. Vacation planning is by rank and seniority so I get to pick early.

We have a small staff and must operate 24/7/365 so only two can take off at the same time.

Two months prior to a scheduled vacation I must fill out paperwork formally requesting it. If I delay then someone else could request the same days and I could bet bumped.

We get a vacation allotment (starts at 18 days and goes up with seniority) and a generous sick leave policy. We get zero public holiday benefits and can expect to be working half of all holidays at regular pay - just another day on the job.

Only one person each year gets to take off Christmas. Rotation is purely by seniority but has been screwed up a couple times. I lost out when coworker whose turn it was to take Christmas off quit mid year. I was next in line but had already used my vacation allotment for the year. Too bad for me. I lost my turn. Go to bottom of list.

[Asimovian]

@Iggy

Only one person each year gets to take off Christmas. Rotation is purely by seniority but has been screwed up a couple times. I lost out when coworker whose turn it was to take Christmas off quit mid year. I was next in line but had already used my vacation allotment for the year. Too bad for me. I lost my turn. Go to bottom of list.

OK, that really blows. How many of you are there? In other words, when’s your next time up?

[CanvasShoes]

In my industry (environmental consulting) it’s pretty much governed by workload and field season. Depending on the region you’re working in, field season runs from about mid-March to late fall months, with a few winter field jobs here and there.

For the most part (99% of the time), you can schedule vacations around the field jobs and by making sure any project deadlines are met. Sometimes we might take work with us, or even help finalize certain projects if their deadlines occur while we’re on vacation. I’ve been in the industry for 20plus years, and it’s never been more of a hassle than checking field and project deadline schedules and arranging accordingly. I think maybe once or twice I had to take a few hours out of my vacation to help finalize a bid or report that was due. (gotta love modern times with all the emailing and phone conferencing and such!). And oh, how horrible to sit on a lovely hotel balcony, sipping a margarita, while the sun sets in some exotic locale (like Vegas :D), make the final edits to a document and then email it off to the PM for his/her blessing.

I may have had to have shifted a vacation by a few days in order to make sure a big field event was taken care of, but it was never as if vacations were frowned upon or we were ever made to feel as if we needed to be more "team players’ or whatever. With one exception, all of the companies I’ve worked for have a pretty solid “family first” attitude.

Oh, I guess there’s one more exception, but it’s pretty rare. Because of the gov’t shutdown, a lot of people in the industry (a lot of us are gov’t contractors, so unlike the feds, we don’t get our leavetime back), gave up all of their leavetime plus negative to get through the shutdown. I don’t know about other companies, but ours is working on ways to get us repaid. But it’ll probably be too late for Christmas vacation time.

But as I said, that’s a pretty rare thing, and not on my company that it happened.

Whoops, I forgot to include HOW we schedule it. We just usually tell the key players via email. “hey bossman; lead, fellow coworkers in my same project” I’ll be gone Xdate to Xdate, here’s my cell, I’ll check email occasionally, text me if there’s something you MUST have from me".

That is it. Your company’s system does sound awful.