If you want European pro tips:
- While in internship, slap your employer with “Oh hi, by the way, THIS is my union” and if the response is anything other than “Okay, cool! I’ll check their collective bargaining agreement for our next meeting” maybe start looking for next post, just saying.
- If you are in internship or whatever, and your employer has not asked anything about union details or whatever until last week, yeah, you might as well start preparing for disappointment.
Pro Tip to youngesters just getting into corporate.
Don’t let the company think they actually care about you. They don’t. HR doesn’t care. Executives doesn’t. Nobody doesn’t. You’re the only person that cares about you.
Also, work is just a business transaction. They need your service. You need their money. Do make friends, but not at your expense.
Americans and their attitude to their holiday allowance will never cease to amaze me.
Literally the only consideration I need to make on behalf of my employer is whether my days off will leave less than 75% of my department out. And as that never happens then I never have to think about it.
If you have holiday available to you, take it.
“Hard work” is one of the cultural norms that the Puritans instilled in our society. Our ancestors fought hard to form labor unions and to guarantee that we wouldn’t have to work 80-hour weeks, and yet here we are.
Not to say that people in other countries don’t work hard. They do. Many work harder than their counterparts in the US. But their governments have (very reasonable) limits on the amount of time their employers can expect them to work. (As well as minimums for time off, sick leave, etc.)
It’s a weird holdover of American culture that spending too much time at work and putting the company’s needs before your own is somehow virtuous.
It’s capitalist propaganda pushed across our media and culture. The whole bootstraps myth is tied up in all of American culture. It’s always been bull shit propagated by the owner class.
If your company can’t function without you, it’s time for a pay rise.
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.
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.
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.
Also the name “privilege log”
Tip for managers: anticipate how your staff taking PTO will impact your team and try as hard as possible to minimize any disruption. And realize that there are times when their PTO is going to be inconvenient and you’re going to have to deal with that.
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”.
We call it vacation in the rest of the English speaking world.
Vacation ≠ pto and it’s strange to equate them. There’s various non paid ways to take a vacation, such as a(n intended) gap between jobs, unpaid additional leave, or on a 3 day weekend. There’s people working in my job with 6 and 7 weeks of pto that still take unpaid additional vacations.
How are they taking unpaid vacations when they could be using PTO?
They use all of their pto, as well as taking more. Also, management allows people to choose if they want to use pto when taking a day off. All unused pto pays out at the end of the year and raises are in October – wait to use it and it adds a dollar per pto hour
I know people who are off even up to a third of the year
Where do you live? Where I live, we call it Semester…
Literally, the only place I have ever heard PTO used is in the US.
Power Take Off?
If you do it strategic like.
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.
That sounds like cut and dry wrongful termination. You should have sued, if not for rightful compensation then to make sure that they think again before they pull the same shit with other employees.
This would be a case a law student would be able to win you in Germany, not that companies here don’t try it here anyway.
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!
The ending was pretty underwhelming. I wasn’t employed long enough to get unemployment, and haven’t been able to get another job since. Now back at school pursuing a new degree.
Now back at school pursuing a new degree.
Careful with this one. Racking up even more debt generally does not make your life easier.
Good thing I’m not in debt then.
Always a good way to live!
Damn, what did your union say?
What’s a union? /s
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.
I think both stances need more nuance. Yeah - if your company doesn’t hire someone that can fulfill your essential duties while you’re gone, that’s on them.
But when you do have someone who can cover your duties while you’re gone, it makes sense that you can’t all take off the same day. I work in municipal government for a small city, and my boss and I are each other’s backups. We’ve worked together for years, and we haven’t taken the same day off yet, but both take several weeks a year. Heck - tomorrow there’s an annual conference we both should attend, and we alternate each year who goes because someone has to hold down the fort.
If your company takes care of you and treats you with respect, most people will think of this sort of stuff and reasonably accommodate. Most businesses with this mindset of don’t take PTO are just running skeleton crews to boost profits at the expense of work life balance. They are typically the ones always guilting people about taking the very sparse amount of PTO offered in the US. I am union and my company treats us well, so I always think about my team without being asked. I didn’t when I worked for shitty big chains who took advantage of workers when I was younger.
If your employer doesn’t hire enough bodies to make sure the work gets done when people call in sick or take PTO, that’s on them. Absenteeism can range between 3-5% on any given day, and can be industry dependent. This is something that should be factored into the amount of work that needs to get done per day on average when deciding on appropriate headcount. Companies that want to run skeleton crews because, “muh profits,” can find out when they fuck around. I was always taught that when it comes to things critical for your survival, you should always have them in triplicate. This is why I have an E-bike, analog bike, and bus pass; if one stops working, I have backups. Employers should have this mindset with critical tasks and headcount.
If I am the whole team, does the last bit still apply?
Typically you still have a manager that may not be on your team directly but they may manage you. I was an IT team of one at one point but the lead programmer to the company was the manager of my department " "
Sounds like a job I had once. Left that job after not even a year. Was not worth it for me especially since I was still early in career and was very obviously in over my head with little proper direction/leadership.
Well for me it was actually one of those jobs that helped me grow in my career. It was my first system administration job. And more important than that it was a Linux system administrator job so I learned a ton and grew a ton. It was one of the few jobs that I stayed at for as long as I did. The only reason I left was when they denied my raise to a decent pay rate. The next job I stepped into was the manager of a network operations center so it helped me grow all the way to that point.
I think for me, while I was definitely exposed to a lot of things I never touched in college, I don’t think I ever really got what I needed for me in my career. I really want to avoid any manager type role as much as possible and large part of that is I’m bad at being accountable for things. I don’t have good foresight and was never shown what to expect, for what to many, seems like normal things but I just take things as I get them. I work best when I’m told what to do and if I can do that as a SME who earns the dough, that’s enough for me. After my (so far) one gov job, absolutely do not want any part of being in management or manager/lead type role.
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
What is? That the US has the smallest amount of vacation days available in the developed world?
Look at the account making the statement and tell me it’s actually serious.
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.
“timeless advice” motherfuckers when PTO stops existing 😯
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.
Over here in Germany where everybody has at least 3 weeks paid time off (being ill does not count to this contingent btw), it is common that leaves are planned in the beginning of the year for larger vacations, so there are no collisions.
Also, if you have children you have priority during school breaks for paied leaves.
This concept could be copied by us employers also, I wonder why not? Maybe because this way you can pressure your employees with your vacation as leverage
And in this system, it is common courtesy to make effort to make sure your team has as few problems as possible from your absence. Of course it is also common courtesy that you are not contact for anything work related during your vacation time.
This is exactly what seems to be missing in the US: courtesy.
A system that gives everyone entitled leave means better employees and less downtime due to leave (surprise surprise, courtesy leads to coordination).
Shockingly this leads to people caring about their team mates, and things aren’t zero sum anymore.
In the Netherlands we have laws in place to ensure what is called “good employership” and “good employeeship”. It’s basically the minimum of what you should expect from each other in matters of courtesy. Good employership as a minimum states an employer should be thoroughly, not abuse his powers as an employer, substantiate big decisions regarding employees, live up to expectations, treat all employees equal and provide good insurance.
Good employeeship is seen as being at work at agreed upon times (this includes taking PTO), doing suitable work, being honest, loyalty to a certain degree like not starting a company without consultation and “stealing” work from the employer, and descretion/secrecy regarding company sensitive information.
It’s all very general, and most of the time further explained either in additional laws or in a “CAO”, a collective working conditions agreement which is reviewed periodically with the unions (about 70-75% of employees have such an agreement).
if my compensation includes paid time off, I am taking it. my notifications are not requests when the date is weeks or months out. it is informational only.
i do not and never have accepted blackout day etc.
i’m honest with this during the hiring process and it’s, honestly, worked out just fine. especially if you frame it as a part of forward thinking communication and the manager is trying to pretend they know what they are doing.
“If my compensation includes paid time off”
The “If” is exactly the problem in America. Most countries with mandatory vacation specifically incentivise employees to use it all (little to no carry over, no payout at the end of year).
The entire purpose is that you use it all and are refreshed and more invested in your job.
You’d get looked at funny if you declared you planned on using your PTO, that’s like saying you plan on taking a lunch break EVERY DAY. It’s just expected
If communicated and part of the deal, great. I personally think that an employment benefits both parties. And with the mentioned curtisyz that works well.
For example, I leave early for appointments, in the last weeks we had some troubles, so dinner for the hole family was on the employer, a while week of takeouts.
So, if my employer tells me that my vacation colides with a project, I am certain that he checked every possibility, and we try to find solutions, like interruptijg the vacation for a day and taking part in meetings from my hotel room.
And if I can not trust my employer enough, then I move on. I am in the lucky position that the stuff I do, most people can’t.
This is exactly it. In my country most employers act in good faith. Employees return that favour.
You’ll get dickbags everywhere, but the system ensures people’s incentives are aligned.
Over here in Germany where everybody has at least 3 weeks paid time off (being ill does not count to this contingent btw), it is common that leaves are planned in the beginning of the year for larger vacations, so there are no collisions.
Also, if you have children you have priority during school breaks for paied leaves.
This concept could be copied by us employers also, I wonder why not? Maybe because this way you can pressure your employees with your vacation as leverage
And in this system, it is common courtesy to make effort to make sure your team has as few problems as possible from your absence. Of course it is also common courtesy that you are not contact for anything work related during your vacation time.
All of this is possible in North America, but you need a union job.
My day-job is a unionionized Managed Services gig subsidiary of a larger company. The rest of the company fits a stereotype we see in the deLoittes and IBM Pro Servs of the world, but the union contract gives us a sane bit of breathing room:
- 9x9 ‘compressed’ time so you get one day off each week regardless
- statutory holidays are sacred
- OT for weekend work, but it quickly goes double-time so it’s rare; and holidays are 2.5x quickly
- standby time is paid. Call-outs are paid.
- mandated remote work capability. It’s in the union contract, guys, so we can Work From Home Office or Work From HQ as best suits us
The combo of compressed time, stats and careful placement of my 21 vacation days this year will give me 7 carefully-placed weeks off; it’s not contiguous, but it’s really great.
Can you explain 9x9 to me? That’s confusing. 24x7, 8x5 yeah. But you can’t mean that notation? Or did the US finally change to a 10 day week?
9 working hours, 9 days. you hit 80 hours in nine days, so the tenth day you get off. basically an extra day off every other week
Oh, ok. Well, we have 40 hour weeks per law, and a maximum working time of 10hours per day, so we can do the same l, and my employer is fine with it.
Thanks!
But it’s also known that for example august is a slow month so you are not expecting a full workforce.
Yeah but courtesy is running dry as of late :(
oh in america management requests you plan them early then ignores reality anyway.
My previous employer in the US was pretty liberal with their time off policy. I would just submit a request, and my manager would approve or not approve. 100% of the time when they didn’t approve, it was because the email had gotten lost in their in box, so I just pestered them about it. It was assumed that employees would check with project managers of projects they were on to make sure their vacations wouldn’t cause problems for the projects - which basically just meant that I would tell my PMs that I was planning to take X days off about a month from now, and they would say “thanks for letting me know, I’ll work that into the project schedule!”
That is how I expect it at every company! Great!
it is with ‘skilled’ labor
sadly this pool keeps getting smaller and smaller
I don’t see why this pool should logically get smaller. In the other hand though, the USA avoids the way, other countries are handling job training , like the devil water.
No, skilled labor gets more important from day to day. But it costs more. So let’s hire people that will settle for less, and kick them out if they reach there limit.
In most countries, you have a multi year on the job training + school before you consideres a skilled worker in this job. I for example carry the title of a “Journeyman of Electronics and Communication”. I am not working in this field anymore, but usually, most people stay with that they learned.
Long ramble short: no the pool of skilled jobs is shrinking, capitalism is expanding
mostly because that skilled labor pool has been primarily in tech the last 2 decades in the US and tech bro billionaires are currently doing their best to fuck all these workers over for profits
sadly much of the industry will fallow the FAANG corps lead with pay/benefits
you can pressure your employees with your vacation as leverage
Most places start asking for vacation requests a month or two out before schools do theirs. The US definitely keeps a tighter leash on vacation time than Europe. General US sick-time policy is an abomination.
In my industry, the standard is “unlimited” PTO/Sick for salary. You don’t have a limit of what you can take, but it has to be OK’d by your manager. They expect you to take at least 4 weeks.
But if you leave, or they let you go, they don’t have to pay you for time accrued.
Let me guess - they only approve when it’s a good time, and somehow it’s seldom a good time?
No we’re kind of a unicorn. They’re really good about it.
Couple months ma/pa ternity leave
When I moved, I took most of six weeks off.
I work like hell hour wise normally tho so it’s not sunshine and roses.
Most places start asking for vacation requests a month or two out before schools do theirs.
Sorry, I’m confused. What does this mean? Do schools in other countries not make their annual schedules before the school year begins? Or do “most places” you reference only allow you to ask for vacation during a certain calendar month? Or am I way off with both of those guesses?
Most places I’ve worked ask for people to request vacation by a minimum of one month before said-vacation occurs. Where I live, schools have their entire calendar (including holidays and extended breaks) planned by August. So if somebody wanted to request time off for winter or spring break, they’d probably have plenty of time to coordinate. Does it work differently where you live?
Most salary US businesses realize there is a need for coordinated school vacation schedules.
Every place I’ve worked has managers starting to ask when people are going to take vacation around March or so for the June/July season so that they can try to talk people into moving vacations around for coverage.
One place I worked required PTO requests be submitted two quarters before the time off.
Also, if you have children you have priority during school breaks for paied leaves.
This surprises me actually, it seems to have a built-in discrimination from the outset.
I’ve got little PhobosAnomalies at home, and my jobs over the years have taken me all over the place so school holidays haven’t been a priority for me. That said, I wouldn’t personally consider my need to have a week or two off in the school holidays or summer holidays as a priority, more just the same importance of everyone else. After all, having little’uns is mostly a choice (or sometimes, the choice isn’t even available 😢) so it seems like a world of employment law hurt to grant the parents a higher level of priority than others.
That said, I ain’t in Germany so it’s a moot point really.
It’s not actually a rule or law, just what people are usually doing anyway.
If people have the choice to take their holiday on a school break or not, then most take it not on school breaks. Everywhere you go at that time is packed with people.
But taking it during a school break when you don’t need to, when at the same time your colleague can only take it during that time if they want to spend time with their family - well then it is just basic human decency to let them have that timeslot.
Ah, thanks for the clarification.
I understand though, you make great points. There’s a big rumble of discontent in the UK at the moment as resorts proper take the piss during the school holidays, just to take advantage of families wanting to head off somewhere in the alotted times. There’s more than a handful of folk who just pull their kids out of school during term time - whether it’s a good or bad idea comes down to subjective opinion, but saving four figures on going a week or two earlier is quite a convincing argument!
Back on topic: I’m just looking at it from an angle different to my own is all, I’d be pretty pissed off that I’d have my leave request deprioritised for the sole reason that I hadn’t rawdogged a girl more than four years and nine months prior!
Everywhere i have worked so far (office work) the holiday planning was made just by communicating with your colleagues. You just find a compromise that works for everybody. (Although there is a mentality of “first come, first serve”. If you really need a holiday at a specific time, then better state it early, so the others can plan around it.) The official holiday request afterwards is just a formality, because everything is already planned through and the boss has no reason to decline it.
I am sure there are workplaces where it is handled differently, but that is my personal experience as an office worker.
I was so lucky in the past. Now I am working directly under higher management. Dude, things change up here … First of all: no team. Only multiple managers with projects, timelines and the need of me for those projects.
But, as mentioned, the common base stays the same.
I’ll stay far away from management. :)
In my 24 years in the workforce, I ran into such a situation once. And I moved my vacation 3 days and everything was fine. It is not very common. I just mentioned it because I think that it illustrates some back thought on the whole concept very well: employee and their families are important.
Another thing: legally an employer can only deny vacations if your absence would mean major damage for the company.
And if already approved absences are canceled, the company have to compensate you for flights and other bookings. In full
Awesome. Thanks for helping me see your viewpoint - it’s likely a very minor difference in cultural expectations. It’s super cool to see how our bros (other siblings descriptors are available) from the continent work around things.
I’ve worked for a number of organisations in my time too, and one common theme - very much like yours - is that protections against pre-booked time off are pretty strong. Whether it’s being paid double-time; having three times your cancelled leave days refunded for each day you were recalled; or generally just giving you a bonus payment - it’s gotta be pretty fuckin’ wild for someone to be instructed back to work from pre-booked leave.
As you have alluded to though, communication is key 😊
Yes, no. We have strict school attendece laws (and no homeschooling btw), so you can’t just do some vacation sometimes else this year.
Also, the kids have a right to free time and vacation.
And: traveling outside school breaks is far more convenient anyways… no kids at the pool
It’s just left up to the employers. My employer gives me 4 weeks paid vacation, with sick time being additional to that and they have never given me a hard time for taking time off, even with just a few days notice.
We have a mixture. We have laws mandate minimum to vacation time, that the employer must respect the preferred dates for the free time as stated by its employees and only may deny or cancel vacation if the company would take major damage. And major as in: we have to let people go or even close major.
If the employer cancels your vacation, he must compensate you in full for all financial losses due to bookings for example.
In addition, paid time off and working hours are if course also benefits that could be used to attract employees
30 days vacation/ year , to 38 hour week, working from wherever I want, even in some pool in some hotel, and of course, paid sick leave. That is my current luxury.
And don’t forget: about 10 work free holidays per year ;)
That sounds great. I have 10 days of vacation a year (not required by law) and 3 sick days (required by law in my state). 60-80 hours a week, and this is a “good” job. It’s been 12 years and I can’t keep this up much longer. But I look at other people’s jobs for a living, and I know it could be worse.
