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.

 

[tvguy]

Interesting to see how much time off policies vary.

It is interesting. A friend works for a small family run business, 12 full time employees. The owner offered no paid time off for any reason, and no health insurance. You could take as much time off as you wanted, without pay. What he did was give each employee $1,000 a month in lieu of benefits. He didn't want to hassle with tracking sick and vacation time and dealing with getting group insurance. The employees apparently loved it. However, 10 years ago California began requiring that employers give full time employees 3 paid sick days a year. That increased to 5 days this year. So he has to track that, but still gives the $1,000 in lieu of payments. $1,000 doesn't go as far as it did 25 years ago when he started that, but employees still seem happy. Well, other than my friend who is the one who has to track everyone's sick leave usage. LOL.

 

[hardcorestitch]

It is interesting. A friend works for a small family run business, 12 full time employees. The owner offered no paid time off for any reason, and no health insurance. You could take as much time off as you wanted, without pay. What he did was give each employee $1,000 a month in lieu of benefits. He didn't want to hassle with tracking sick and vacation time and dealing with getting group insurance. The employees apparently loved it. However, 10 years ago California began requiring that employers give full time employees 3 paid sick days a year. That increased to 5 days this year. So he has to track that, but still gives the $1,000 in lieu of payments. $1,000 doesn't go as far as it did 25 years ago when he started that, but employees still seem happy. Well, other than my friend who is the one who has to track everyone's sick leave usage. LOL.

Better than nothing…

 

[design_mom]

In my current company, you earn per pay period. It starts at 2 weeks and goes up to a max of 4 weeks (or maybe 5.)

There's no formal vacation request policy, so you can take time off prior to actually earning it if you work it out with your manager. (So technically, you could take your entire year's worth in January, but if you left before you earn it all back, I believe what you "owe" would be deducted from your final check.)

You can roll over vacation time, but there is a limit. I think the limit is that you can't roll over more than you earn in a year (so you could have "double" the normal vacation time by banking from one year to the next, but not more than double. Any above that would be use-or-lose.)

I am carrying over about half of last year's vacation because we're planning an extra long vacation this year. However, I don't anticipate ever rolling over the max amount of vacation.

 

[Luv Bunnies]

I work for a public school district and get 10 PTO days per year. They can be used for sick or personal necessity days. You can use two days a year as "discretionary days" which means you can take them off without giving a reason. My position is part time and since I'm paid by the hour, my PTO is counted in hours. There's no limit to how much we can accrue. After 23 years, I currently have 330 hours or about 60 days accrued. I'm planning to retire in June 2027 and I can add any unused time to my retirement pay.

 

[amcnj]

Where I worked for the bulk of my career you could carry over one year’s allotment of vacation time, which increased to a max of five weeks. Sick time was 15 days a year and could be carried over forever. 3 AL days had to be used or vanished at the end of the year.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

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.

Many companies change their policies over the years. It's not illegal to do so (the aspect of changing policies). Both of my husband's companies he's worked for has changed their policies. In fact that's why my husband is presently off work because he needed to burn 50 hours of PTO as his company changed policies last year to reduce in a stairstep way how many weeks you can carry over, additionally just prior to him getting hired they started the process of allowing people to get paid out for the PTO. At my husband's prior company they changed sick time where it used to be sick time and PTO then it merged together and they grandfathered in prior built up sick time and any future was PTO. Sick time was incredibly hard to use and very specific in the reasons you could use it so few tended to use it and most especially after they merged I don't think my husband ever really used his stored up sick time actually.

 

[mjkacmom]

My husband used to get 6 weeks, unlimited sick days. He never used it all. A few years ago it went to unlimited, he still takes about 3 to 4 weeks. He usually works a bit on vacation.

 

[barkley]

I'm in California and the law here is you can NEVER lose vacation or PTO time. Your employer had to either let you carry it over, take it off or pay you for it. Never had an employer willing to buy back vacation. You could have up to 1.5 times your annual accrual on the books, so six weeks.

that law came into effect after I left my former civil service employer there but they were set up-

upon hire you began earning your vacation (a portion a month) for a total of 3 weeks per year, once you hit 10 years of service it increased by 1 day per year each subsequent year (I think the max was 6 weeks). you could keep up to 3x whatever your annual amounts were banked before you hit 'use it or lose it'. in some classifications you were eligible for selling back up to one year's worth of vacation-one time per year. it was VERY common for people planning retirement to hoard vacation b/c our pensions were based on highest year's of earnings so they timed it out so that the calendar year December before the year they were retiring they put in their request for their max (which could be up to 6 weeks pay)-it would show on the January stubb. they put in a new request (another 6 weeks) in January of the new year. when their pension was calculated it was based on whatever salary they were earning PLUS 12 weeks extra.