Natter 75: More Than a Million Natters Served
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, butt kicking, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
I get 2 weeks/year vacation + 2 float days and can acquire additional float days in various incentive plans and lotteries. I'll get an additional week next year or the year after, and a 4th week after 10 years, and a 5th week after 15 years which is just unimaginable to me. We can rollover unlimited float days and vacation time up to two years worth (so if I accrue over 4 weeks vacation time without using it I stop accruing, is how I think that's supposed to work), and we can cash out vacation and/or float days back to the company once a year. I know people who do that regularly, but I use up my time just about as quickly as it becomes available to me, really.
I don't know how I'd handle unlimited time off. I'd have to have a lot of discussions with my supervisor, I guess.
I've never been in a job where I've had any time off (on cruise ships, you only get time off if the ship's doctor decides that you are too sick to work), and I will have a "normal" office job soon (hopefully), and I don't know how I'll use vacation time. I can't imagine ever not using all the the time available to me, but I can't say for sure.
One of my brothers works for Twitter, and they offer unlimited vacation, and he really loves it.
I get 25 days per year. Next year I will go up to 27 days because I was hired here in 2000!!! Man I feel old.
I have no idea how I would use them if I didn't take time off for theatre every year. I am also still using up a 5 week glut from a bad boss in 2005! SO I take 3 - 4 weeks for theatre, a week in the summer, a week at Christmas, and other assorted days and I still have a huge balance.
I've got something like 30+ days a year by now (10 years+ here), but I can't use more than five days at a time. I think I could request more at once for a special occasion, but management is thrilled at the idea. Medical leave is separate. The last couple of years I've had unexpected medical things pop up that eat a week, but otherwise I take 3 week-long vacations a year and the occasional day for doctors and whatnot, like car repairs. Another reason to buy a new car.
I've never not used all the paid time off available to me. Unlimited PTO seems to work pretty well at my company (or my part of it anyway). Higher ups generally model taking time off and encourage their staff to as well.
Yeah, I very seldom had any significant PTO to rollover. I'm in favor of vacations.
Unfortunately, the prevailing culture in my area is "How will you know how important I am if I'm not visibly in the office working very visibly in front of important people? Time off is for losers who aren't visibly important! If I take time off, it's obvious someone else can do my job! If you truly cared about this company, you'd be here! You got married so you'd have someone to run the errands and schlep the kids around, if we hire women, we'll need to give them time off to deal with the kids (though I'm not allowed to say that anymore)."
I've had multiple managers who greeted my request for time off with a faint pout of disapproval and a slight tone of "Lazy slacker" in their voice. For a long time, the prevailing business philosophy was "the employee will try to get away with as little as possible, management must keep an eye on them to keep their noses to the grindstone."
That's one of the things that actually scares me the most about going to work in corporate America. I'm a hard worker and I will always get my work done, but this prevailing culture of working long hours and being expected to be on-call and checking emails all the time and not taking any time off seems like it will suck.
I get two weeks plus three floating holidays (though bear in mind I only get two fixed holidays).
Also, current co-worker conversation is on flat-earth theory. Apparently another co-worker believes the world is flat, or at least likes making that argument.