Also stop using the acronym, because it’s too easy to forget what those letters mean when just the acronym is being used. Call it “Paid Time Off”.
Most people who get promoted in my company are taking holidays after being hired, are back from maternity/paternity leave, are taking lots of break, some don’t even work the hours they should.
The key is just to be visible.
Those who work a lot silently are not visible because they think they will be noticed, and the management needs them to stay where they are to do the hard work.
Just take your leaves.
If your company can’t function without you, it’s time for a pay rise.
I actually enjoy answering emails when I’m off work but I guess I like my job
If you enjoy it go ahead. The point is it should not be an expectation.
I get both sides of this argument. Some businesses have certain periods where it’s extremely busy followed by an ebb in work. Accountants for example may be balls-to-the-wall at year end, but that period doesn’t justify hiring somebody who might otherwise have their thumb up their ass and nothing to do most of the rest of the year. I’ve also had IT jobs that resolved around projects in this way., and there are always a certain number of SME’s that you kinda need at launch.
At the other side, I’ve known employers who basically ran the bare-minimum amount of staff for a team/project (or less and worked the rest to the bone) and getting them to sign off on holidays for any reasonable length of time was near impossible. Those are the types that would try to call you from the middle of open-heart-surgery if they could, and yeah anyone in this situations should be looking for a new job. The hard part being that getting the time to do proper job hunting was often also similarly difficult because of work, and bills still needed to be paid.
I mean, there are jobs where the first posters advice is relevant. I’m a musician, and there are just rehearsals I cannot miss. When I am working with a high school, I cant take PTO during key production days or performances because I am the only person at the place that can do exactly what I do: that’s why they hired me.
I work on a business communication tool. You know those things you have in your phone that people send messages to and expect you to answer.
When I leave my computer, that’s it, I’m done. I don’t have the application on my phone. I didn’t check email or messages after 5 or 6 and most days I work for a few hours before I check them.
On weekends, I turn off my computer.
I’ve been doing this for years now. No one notices, or if they do they are smart enough to not bring it up.
I came up in a world where we were the ones introducing Yahoo and AOL into the business world, I had a phone on my desk that was essential, and email was king. I rarely had a laptop and they were quite rare. When you left the office, it was expected that you were some for the day.
The grind culture over the last decade or so is insane. It is insane that people will give over half their time to a company that would show them the door in an instant.
Yes, you should do everything possible to set up your team and colleagues for success when you take your PTO, but that should never require a tether to the office.
It’s not just the last decade. Office Space came out 25 years ago! We’re more connected now, but this ridiculous work culture in the US has existed since at least the 1980s.
I’m glad we have some balance here in Europe.
I remind my team about their vacation and floater days on a quarterly basis and all them to be used. All I ask for is time for me to pivot as needed and if you have ongoing projects that you reschedule planned meetings, document as you go, and ensure access is available to the rest of the team if needed.
I’ve had employees in the past who I’ve sat down and directly asked them to take time off (paid) because they were burning out and would otherwise push through it. I’ve even reminded some of available leaves of absence for situations in their personal lives.
If the business can’t continue without any one person, then the business isn’t sustainable as-is and that’s not fair to anyone. Hire more people if it’s coverage or train your people if there’s skill gaps. Documentation of systems and processes is also crucial.
I think managers like you are important for helping cultivate perspectives that are better situated to challenge various bullshit under capitalism. Whilst some workplaces or managers actively make it difficult for people to take their earned vacation days, there are also plenty of places that will apply a passive pressure that causes people being disinclined to take time off. Working in the first kind of place can make you more vulnerable to the insidiousness of the second workplace.
Sometimes, in that second kind of workplace, when you insist on taking your vacation days, the pressure morphs into more overtime coercion, but often, there ends up being no repercussions — often, they don’t want to fight people on it, so they rely on workers effectively oppressing themselves.
The more people that are practiced at taking what they’re entitled to, the easier it is to resist shitty workplaces that try to deny us what few privileges our contracts entitle us.
Take PTO Make sure your absence maximizes disruption that only you can fix Clean everything up right when you get back Job security!
As an immigrant, I thank the god and fates I didn’t end up in America. This level of guilt tripping and toxicity is astounding.
It would be if it weren’t satire.
Poe’s Law. Many, MANY people would unironically agree with Priv’s comment.
majority even if you are on linkedin
Well, I hope so. I heard many stories from other cultures about toxic work environment in their country, and prefer the work culture here in Ireland.
It varies greatly by company. My current company is pretty chill, but my previous was definitely not chill.
Yeah I have been given an almost identical speech about taking PTO at more than one place of work. So if this is satire, all it is doing is just saying something that really happens.
It certainly happens, and I highly doubt it’s unique to the US.
Our policy is to let the team know in advance when you’re taking it if it’s a long leave (a week or more), that’s it. If that’s not possible, whatever, we’ll figure it out.
yeah, you put in for it early enough for your management to have the time to properly prepare for your absence. However what this is saying is that you should shoulder this responsibility at the cost of your entitlements, rather than the company doing the work of preparing for you to use your entitlements.
Yup. As a manager, give me about twice as much notice as you plan to take off, and I’ll figure out the rest.
I don’t think I agree with the second comment. I work in a team. If you just take it and leave them to handle your shit, you are an asshoke. If you say it in advance and sort your stuff, then do whatever you want
Says the guy who has Scrooge Mcduck as an avatar. Sure buddy.
I take the other members of the team into consideration. It does make sense since I work with them fives days a week, don’t want to make shit harder for them, within reason.
Exactly! Not taking your PTO will create pressure for your coworkers to also pass over their PTO or work longer hours.
Don’t set a bad precedent.
I think what the guy above you meant is that he’d take PTO but try to make sure it’s not 1) At the same time as everyone else, or 2) at an anticipated super busy period.
Where I come from, legally, we have to plan our PTO out for the year in Jan/Feb. Good managers will make exceptions and let you take spontaneous PTO with two weeks notice usually.
This means that if you have a team of 8 and each wants to take 2 weeks in the summer, usually max 2-3 people would have overlapping PTO. Everyone gets PTO in the summer, but you don’t leave a single guy doing all the work. Usually anyone who has pre-existing plans would have higher priority over specific dates than anyone else.
The system works most of the time. You’re happy because nobody is going to guilt you about taking PTO, your coworkers are happy because nobody is left alone to deal with the entire team’s workload, and the bosses are happy because work continues at like 70% and if there’s an emergency, there’s someone to handle it.
Not taking it? I’m talking about picking when to use it, not if you are going to use it lol ofc you use the time off
Yea, no. At my last job every project was constantly late because they kept over promising and clearly didn’t have enough people for what they committed to. I couldn’t even get a department meeting once a month for an hour because everyone was always “too busy”.
These projects always need everyone to commit to it like it’s a personal passion project because their goals are unreasonable. If they can’t handle someone being away for a day then the manager clearly cannot plan and/or the enployees need better training(in my case half of them were simply stubborn and ineffective on top of the questionable management). Sure, don’t take a week off right before a reasonably set deadline if the work’s not done but otherwise do whatever.
I had someone call me yelling because I was going to finish the job in exactly the amount of time I said it would take me, but I started a day late due to technical errors which made another project go over by a day(and that day I still stayed late to make sure things were done!). If you can’t take a day off then you also can’t be sick, and if managers don’t account for THAT obvious possibility then they are fucking stupid and awful managers, zero exceptions.
Yes but a good manager will arrange a replacement for you after you inform them that you’re putting in the PTO. It shouldn’t fall on your shoulders.
If they can’t find a replacement then they should hire more people and try to overstaff every single day so that there’s always someone to cover. That’s what my workplace does, and because of that there has never been an issue with me taking PTO whenever the hell I feel like it.
I worked craft beer sales for a hot minute. Place was a disaster, so I was already looking for a new job anyway. Labor day rolls around, and I inform my bosses A MONTH OUT that I will be taking a week off at the end of August to go on vacation. They approve it, all is well, everything’s great, I get back to work. The week I leave, I remind them that I’ll be gone for a week, I won’t be available for work things, and that I’ll see them next week. They say cool, tell me to have a great time, and I clock out for the day.
9:01AM, the day I leave, I get a text. “Hey Dogiedog64, when are you coming back? We need to have a chat about some things.” I don’t bother responding, since I’m on vacation, and moreover, I’m driving on the highway. The day passes, I get where I’m going, but it’s past work hours, and I want to enjoy my vacation. THE NEXT DAY, they call me. 9:01AM. I miss it, they leave a message and another text to the effect of “Call us back. It’s important.” I don’t. I’m on vacation, they KNOW I’m on vacation, and it can wait.
6PM rolls around, and I get a text. “Dogiedog64, since you didn’t call us back today, we’re unfortunately going to have to let you go. Your performance wasn’t cutting it and we’ve gotten numerous customer complaints about you.” I know for a fact this was bullshit, as I had done the rounds before I left, and all my customers loved me and our beer, but hated our managers and distribution scheme.
Now, you may ask “what was the point of that story?” It’s simple: companies will find a reason to fire you for nothing, no matter how well you lay out boundaries or plans, so don’t bother treating them like they’re special. I lost my job, but I did nothing wrong; I set clear boundaries and expectations, with ample documentation, notice, and approval, and they STILL fired my ass.
So yeah. Take your PTO. It’s YOURS. Go on that vacation, leave your work life AT WORK, and have a good time. Your coworkers will be fine without you, and if the company collapses while you’re gone, they deserved to collapse anyway. Life is simply too short to spend it all slaving away for a company that hates you.
also it’s free to contact the local labor bureau or eeoe if you’re fired for taking a vacation, they’ll even help you with lawyers, mediators etc
If it collapses without you, then maybe it should be your company.
Damn, what did your union say?
What’s a union? /s
Is there an ending to that story? If I was in that situation, I would have ignored it all and then came back the day I said I’d come back and act like everything was normal, make up something about how my phone got broken or stolen or something.
At the very least I hope you tried to get unemployment or some such!
What beer company?
A local one, in Baltimore. Won’t get more specific to avoid doxxing myself and others.
Ladies and gentlemen, behold the cowardice that allows shit like this to persist in your country
Its not cowardice to avoid sharing Personal Information on the internet. There’s a real possibility to be doxxed just by sharing which place you worked at, and were fired for what reason. Not everyone is comfortable doing that.
Oh no! Your job! 😒 it’s almost as if you don’t realize you already have nothing to lose.
Maybe, being doxxed is the bigger issue here. Perhaps, take a read in OPSEC and learn how digital fingerprinting and doxxing work.
🤣 yes, I’m sure this white dude in Baltimore who didn’t bother taking any action to fight back against the shitheads who fired him for taking a vacation from his craft beer job is involved in some very serious action requiring OPSEC.
I swear to god as soon as I’m proven wrong I’ll eat an entire tree on video and then delete my account.
The Scrooge McDuck avatar lighting a cigar with a dollar note makes me think this was either satire to begin with, or the original poster has lost any and all contact with reality.
Personally, I’m so sick of people saying “it’s parody/satire!” That’s on the same level as fucking with people, then laughing “it’s just a prank, bro!”
There’s so many garbage takes and smooth-brained people believing the dumbest shit now, despite having all collective human knowledge at our fingertips… If your super funny satire is indistinguishable from these, it adds absolutely nothing.
I have literally been given a nearly identical speech about taking PTO, more than once…
This is why I use /s .
The internet has weirdly forgotten about Poe’s Law. There are enough fucked up people in the world that you just can’t reliably determine if an outlandish opinion is satire or not.
Even when they are obviously satire, some idiots will take them to heart and repeat them everywhere as gospel.
Business Bros love to run a boiler room enterprise that prints decals for the local dollar store and pretend they’re going to be the next Steve Jobs.
Also the name “privilege log”
