Vacation. 1-days vs weeks

[Will_C]

My fiancé works in a bank. She has to take one consecutive week every year. The management reason is that it is to catch anybody that may be involved in financial irregularities-being out a week would not allow anyone to "cook the books" or do anything to cover their tracks

Will

 

[aczlan]

Ok I'll bite on this one. Why would anyone want to take six minutes for vacation?

If you use vacation time for personal time, you could be leaving 6 minutes early to get to an appointment?

Aaron Z

 

[aczlan]

My fiancé works in a bank. She has to take one consecutive week every year. The management reason is that it is to catch anybody that may be involved in financial irregularities-being out a week would not allow anyone to "cook the books" or do anything to cover their tracks

I have heard of that and it makes sense for someone like that. Not so much for the guys in maintenance though...

Aaron Z

 

[brain55]

Interesting, I've taken a full week off for vacation 3 times in my life. Once in 1991 to make some amends, then in 2000 for my honeymoon, and then in 2010 for our 10 year anniversary. All the other times I've either taken single days here and there or long weekends. I even had one employer that would pay me to not take vacation.

Brian

 

[KiotiKowboy]

Never dealt with a lot of silly rules on taking my time off. I had 4 weeks vacation, 12 days sick leave, 3 personal days and about 25 days of holidays and whatnot. Used them pretty much when I felt like it.

 

[caver]

Our sick leave and vacation got lumped together on our last contract. I think we have to take vacation in 1 hour increments or more. We have some stupid
rules about requesting time off. If the rules aren't met then it is called a PTO emergency and you get dinged on it. I take three weeks off every year and do
a camping trip out west. At the end of that run I start to miss my home but not work.
The carry over rules changed this year too. We can only carry over 180 hours of PTO......<<<<boy that will screw up somebody's search for tractor pto...

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Most wouldnt, but they can. If you dont make your 80 hrs in 2 weeks you take vacation time. im not in a factory, so time is very flexible, 10 hrs one day, 6 the next is ok within reason of your work you need to get done. we have core hrs everyone is supposed to be there, but again they are flexible.

 

[JimRB]

Where I work my boss out of the blue said I and others cannot take more than 5 day in a row off. Really screws up my summer vacation as I go bicycle riding in Colorado and used to take a few day in Denver to acclimate and goof off before heading up into the mountains. The south side office manager said "If the person has the hours they can take them." Two weeks in row or 2 days in a row. Granted that I am a one person IT department, sometimes me being out of touch is a challenge. Next year my house will be paid off. I might go visit friends across the Atlantic pond. I suspect I will be out of touch as long as I am away and they will have to make do. I do give them a name of someone to call in case of disaster. Of course someone on call never has the intimate details of the phone system, 3 servers, routers ... They just have to do a wee bit of guessing and assuming. I really do need to update my run over by a bus technology guide.

One person takes Thursdays off. She has been around 10 years and tends to use her vacation time on Thursdays instead of going on a long vacation.

 

[paulharvey]

It sounds odd to mandate a week off. Every where I've worked, if you wanted a week off, you had better let them know At Least 3 months ahead of time, 6 months would be better. I normally try to only use a day or two around holidays to make a 3 or 4 day weekend into a 5 or 6. 3 days off before Thanksgiving and you've got 9 straight days off.

We are warned that every year there is a chance we will shut down from Christmas eve to Jan-2. We get Christmas and new years day paid off, but you have to have PTO to cover the rest.

When if left the county, I had 96 hours of vacation that they had to pay me for; and 400 hours of sick time that just was lost. We got 4 hrs sick and 4 hours vacation per 2 weeks. If you took 5 or more sick days in a year you got wrote up (excluding FLMA)

 

[ustmd]

The minimum 1 week off policy is to force you to use your PTO. In addition to some of the other reasons already mentioned:

1. The company could be truly interested in your well being and wants you to take at least 1 week away from work per year for mental health reasons.

2. Depending on the structure of your company and the state laws, unused PTO time is a liability for a company--like an unpaid bill that could come due at any time. Consequently, the company must hold an accrual (cash in the balance sheet) for the liability. In a large company, this can tie up a lot of cash very quickly (ex 1000 employees, average salary of $1500/week, with 1 week PTO = $1.5 million). By requiring employees to take PTO and limiting carry over PTO, the company can minimize the amount of the accrual.