Paid Time Off

[sam_gordon]

Former employer:
When first hired, you got six sick days that could be banked if unused with a max of 30. After a number of years, I had 30, but they changed the policy to a "use it or lose" and anyone that had any banked lost them.
"Vacation" started at two weeks, and the longer you were there, the more you got, maxed out at 4 weeks, use it or lose it. RARE exceptions were made if someone was ASKED (stressed because someone will challenge) to give up already scheduled vacation at the end the of year.
Personal Day, use it or lose it.

I made sure to use up my Personal Day & all of my vacation.

Current employer:
Six sick days per year, two days of which can be rolled over into vacation time for the following year.
Personal Day, use it or lose it.
Vacation starts at two weeks, but can roll over, the longer you've been there, the more you can roll over. I've only been employeed here three years, but I have two weeks "banked. There's supposedly a limit on how much can be "held", but a long time employee says he's never been asked to use up all he has banked.

I like keeping time banked because A) at some point I want to take a multi week vacation and B) it can be used if there is some kind of emergency.

What I don't like about our current system is you accrue 'x' hours/month. If you haven't accrued enough hours though, you can't formally request the time off. For example, you accrue 6.67 hours a month. You start in January, and want to take a week off in July. You can't request the time until June (6.67 * 6 = 40). Now of course, you message/talk to your supervisor to get the time on the schedule, but it can't be "requested" until you have the available hours.

 

[LoveDaisy]

Interesting to see how much time off policies vary.

I get 25 vacation days, 10 sick days, 4 floating holiday days, plus MLK, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, 4th of July, Labor Day, half day the Wednesday before thanksgiving, thanksgiving, Friday after thanksgiving, half day on Christmas Eve, Christmas, 1/2 day on NYE, and New Year Day. We also get a half day the Friday of the week that has employee appreciation day. Every Friday we can leave at 2.

I can carry 3 vacation days over a year.

 

[Kathryn Merteuil]

I am at like 4 weeks of vacation time. I can carryover 5 days of vacay, but I have always just used it all every year. As far as sick time, they have this weird thing where you roll over sick time into something they called "banked". I think that is French for you are losing it. I have A LOT of "banked" time, but it is something you can only use for some kind of major illness or something, I am no even sure how that works.

 

[OrangeBirdGirl]

Dh's employer offered to let people cash out sick time at retirement. So after 23 years of saving his sick hours (800+ hours in his bank) they decided they won't be doing that anymore. So now he's just burning up time calling out as much as he can. He is already past full retirement age but doesn't have any active hobbies and he's afraid he'll end up sitting too much, watching too much tv, etc.
So he keeps working and burning up sick time. He's down to around 400 hours. Maybe less. He donated a week to a sick coworker with cancer.

Wow, that is really crappy of his employer, I wonder if that's even legal. Our changed in 2014 for new hires where they had a tiered system based on how long you were there, but people employed prior to 2014 were grandfathered in.