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.

Flat earth?!? Seriously??? Who ARE these people??

Do you work with Shaq or something?

Flat earth?!? Seriously??? Who ARE these people??

Yeah. That's really weird. I mean, aside from everything else, you can, you know, fly around it.