Vacation Days!

[RoJoHen]

Howdy folks!

I have 10 vacation days to use up by the end of the year. I have never had a job with vacation days before, so I am not used to being able to do this. We have a "use them or lose them" policy here, so if I don't use all my vacation days by the end of the year, they go away, and I'll never see them again!

I already get a few 3-day weekends in the next couple months (Columbus Day, Veterans Day, etc), plus Thanksgiving and Christmas. So, in addition to those days, I need to figure out what to do with my time off.

So far, I am planning to take off...

October 18th because "Arkham City" comes out, and I want to spend my entire day playing it.

November 1st because "Uncharted 3" comes out, and I want to spend my entire day playing it.

I think I might take a few random days off in November and use them as writing days when I participate in NaNoWriMo. I am determined to win this year!

Other than that, though, I don't know what to do. That still leaves me with about 5 days to use up!

 

[bluedana]

I work for the government. We have "use or lose" as well; we can only carry over 240 hours (6 weeks) from one calendar year to the next. Last week, I got an email from HR (cc'd to the uberboss) saying that I am projected to have 80 hours of use or lose time, and that I'd better start scheduling some vacation.

I'll end up doing what I did last year: donating a couple of weeks vacation time to the leave bank (for folks who are on extended leave but don't have enough accrued to cover it).

 

[RoJoHen]

You can only carry over 6 weeks? I don't even get that much to start with!

 

[backstept]

I got three days this year . . .


yes you read correctly . . . 3 days




the story is this: I got laid off from my fulltime job of nearly two months before my 3 year anniversary
so laid off in mid december 2009, got a job at walmart in march 2010, brought back part time at my old job in september 2010, and went fulltime again January 2011
due to the way vacation time is distributed (1 day for 10 weeks worked I think) so it worked out I only got 3 days . . . oh, and part timers don't get vacation :P
so those 3 days were pretty much a gift with my previous years taken into account. Jan 1 '12 I get 10 days

 

[Yeoman Randi]

I work for the government. We have "use or lose" as well; we can only carry over 240 hours (6 weeks) from one calendar year to the next. Last week, I got an email from HR (cc'd to the uberboss) saying that I am projected to have 80 hours of use or lose time, and that I'd better start scheduling some vacation.

I'll end up doing what I did last year: donating a couple of weeks vacation time to the leave bank (for folks who are on extended leave but don't have enough accrued to cover it).

That is so awesome and generous for you to do.

 

[RoJoHen]

I got three days this year . . .


yes you read correctly . . . 3 days

That pretty much sucks.

I've never been salaried before now, so any time I needed time off, I would simply sacrifice my hours. Now, though, I can just not go to work, and I still get paid! I almost feel guilty.

 

[nevermore]

Just take the 5 days in a row. you don't need to do anything with it other than not go to work. Or take a road trip, go visit people, etc. Vacation days are part of your salary; if you don't take them, you might as well hand you employer 5 days worth of salary at the end of the year.

My employer doesn't have a use it or lose it policy, but I can only bank up to 30 days at a time; I accrue 1.25 days a month, so if I hit 30 days, I just don't accrue any that month, which means I'm giving them 1.25 days of work for free. So I end up taking random days off to sit on my ass to avoid breaking that line when I haven't take an actual vacation for a while, even if I have nothing in particular I want to do that day. Right now I'm at a point where I have to use one every month just to stay ahead of that .25...

Of course, I get paid out for any unused vacation days whenever I decide to leave my job, so it's not a bad thing to have a nice number banked. Sick days are another matter; I don't get paid out for those if I leave, so I should probably use some of them now and then. I think I've got about 60 now, and I also have long-term disability which kicks in after 60 days, so there's no need to hold on to more than that. Hmmm...

 

[Scout101]

Should look at that, you should be able to carry over SOMETHING, and not have to use it all up every year. I mean, what happens if you need a day off in January? You won't have earned a full day off yet, and won't have any in the bank...

You usually can't take them in advance of earning them, because if you get fired the next day, they paid you for days you won't ever earn.

 

[nevermore]

^I bet that he gets 10 days at the beginning of each year, rather than accruing them monthly. probably because (I think) employers are required to pay you for unused vacation days when you leave, and they don't want you to have a bunch banked.

eta:

(1 day for 10 weeks worked I think)

Wow.

Suddenly, I really, really appreciate my job.

 

[backstept]

I got three days this year . . .


yes you read correctly . . . 3 days

That pretty much sucks.

I've never been salaried before now, so any time I needed time off, I would simply sacrifice my hours. Now, though, I can just not go to work, and I still get paid! I almost feel guilty.

I edited my original post to add the story behind the 3 days

I think the 'guilty' feeling is part of why the US has a really low vacation time average
gotta get things done! gotta justify keeping my job! If I'm gone for a week or two and nobody notices why keep me around? etc

also in the US vacation is completely up to employers
most European countries have a set minimum number of paid vacation days in their labor laws or whatever . . .
http://www.apt11d.com/2010/08/how-much-vacation-time.html
I dunno . . . I'm just parroting a few articles I read two minutes ago :P

 

[RoJoHen]

Should look at that, you should be able to carry over SOMETHING, and not have to use it all up every year. I mean, what happens if you need a day off in January? You won't have earned a full day off yet, and won't have any in the bank...

You usually can't take them in advance of earning them, because if you get fired the next day, they paid you for days you won't ever earn.

Not the way it works. On January 1st, I get all of my vacation days, and I have until December 31st to use them. Whatever I don't use by December 31st goes away, and then I start with a fresh batch of vacation days for the entire following year.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

At the company where I work, you used to be able to carry over your days from year to year, with a set maximum depending on how long you'd been there--seniority let you carry more days, of course.

As of this year, nothing gets carried over anymore. Everyone was allowed to carry over a certain amount from 2010 to 2011, but at the end of 2011 all unused vacation days expire.

We also used to have just a single paid-time off accrual. Now, it's split into vacation days, floating holidays, and sick days. Everyone gets six sick days, and of course you have to be sick (or be taking care of a sick family member) to use them, so it's actually a shitty deal for people who very rarely get sick--it's essentially costing them vacation time.

But one thing they did to make it easier is that you get all of your accrual on January 1st, so you don't have to wait until you've built up enough days off. You can schedule a vacation right away.

The sick day thing really fucks me, though. Under the new system, I get 10 days of vacation, 6 sick days (which I have not used at all this year), and 2 "floating holidays" which must be taken as single days, in advance, and can't be combined with other vacations or adjacent holidays.

Part of why I took a vacation to Europe this summer was to burn off some of my carried-over vacation time, as I will not likely get to do something like that in the future.

I'm glad I get the time off that I do, but the way they overhauled the paid time off structure very obviously favors the company's balance sheet, even though they portrayed it as making the system more "flexible" and "easier to manage."

 

[RoJoHen]

^Do you need a doctor's note or something to prove that you're sick? Can't you just fake it?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

One day, they don't bat an eye at. Two or more consecutive days, they want a note for.

 

[RoJoHen]

Eh, so just spread them out!

 

[Robert Maxwell]

But then I look like a flake. I don't work in the kind of place where I can just be gone on a random day and no one will care. Things don't get done and people will want to know why. Ah well.

 

[RoJoHen]

Just take the 5 days in a row. you don't need to do anything with it other than not go to work. Or take a road trip, go visit people, etc. Vacation days are part of your salary; if you don't take them, you might as well hand you employer 5 days worth of salary at the end of the year.

Oh, I'm going to take them. I just want to make the most of them. As much as I would love to just take a whole week off, I don't have enough to do at home to fill that time, so I would probably just end up spending a lot of money that I simply can't afford to spend right now. I'm far less likely to do that if I spread them out.

My boss actually encouraged me to take off a bunch of Fridays or Mondays to give myself extended weekends.

 

[RoJoHen]

But then I look like a flake. I don't work in the kind of place where I can just be gone on a random day and no one will care. Things don't get done and people will want to know why. Ah well.

I don't think people notice as much as we might think they do. If you have 6 sick days and you spread them out over 12 months, nobody is going to care. People probably won't even remember that you took them.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

But then I look like a flake. I don't work in the kind of place where I can just be gone on a random day and no one will care. Things don't get done and people will want to know why. Ah well.

I don't think people notice as much as we might think they do. If you have 6 sick days and you spread them out over 12 months, nobody is going to care. People probably won't even remember that you took them.

Yeah, but it's almost October and I haven't used any. So at this point I'd be lucky to get away with using one or two of 'em.

 

[RoJoHen]

Ah, well...do it next year!