How to use PTO:
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Text boss I’m not coming in today.
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Go back to bed.
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When I “request” time off, it’s not a request. It’s a notification. I will be gone. The work needed to be done is done or will be done by the deadlines. Any emergencies that arise in the meantime will be dealt with when I’m back. If my request is denied, that’s not my problem, I will still be gone.
Exactly. If I give you sufficient notice, 2 weeks is probably a good minimum, and no one else is taking off at that time, that’s a you problem if you can’t cover it. If your team is not structured such that you can honor PTO with sufficient notice, you are not offering PTO. You are lying about benefits.
As an employer (and thus an evil capitalist pigdog etc.) I’ve always applied the rule of the thumb that “twice the holiday duration as notice” is polite to the employer and your colleagues who will cover for you - so two days notice for a day off, two weeks notice for a week off, a month’s notice for two weeks off, etc.
“Polite” does not mean “mandatory” of course - circumstances can dictate that sometimes you have to break the rule of thumb and that’s fine.
Yeah that’s my approach too. If I want to be available then I will be, but if I’m off, I’m off, the pto is my right to turn off work and do “me” for the day.
You will also be without a job. Requests can be honored if they are timely and follow the rules but everyone can’t be off before forth of July or Christmas. There’s usually a process to be fair to others and the business.
everyone can’t be off before forth of July or Christmas
Why not? I’d argue most work isn’t so important it absolutely must be done on Christmas.
What we do saves lives
They need me more than I need them. I put in a little extra time here and there. I roll with management’s last minute emergencies that arise from their lack of planning and communication, and I course correct with knowledge of real world logistics that they never think of, saving their bacon and making them look better than they should. I am flexible and agreeable and get my work done regularly and efficiently.
If they fire me I’ll happily collect unemployment and watch them implode.
You will also be without a job.
Then I guess they’ll have to find someone to cover when I’m gone. either way, it’s a notice not a request.
It’s always funny to read
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You can’t use your PTO without coverage. You’re too critical to business functions to miss even a single day.
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We’ll fire you for any reason or no reason at all. We don’t even need you. You should be grateful we let you work here.
And folks wonder why 90% of businesses fail.
Attendance is not any reason. You are literally hired for attending. If you cannot be consistent how can you expect to be valuable?
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I don’t find that as a professional attitude. It is not a team attitude as well. I understand there are certain events that cannot be missed and I would work with my employees to accommodate.
However, that attitude never lasts. Anywhere I have ever managed or been an employee. It is a roadblock to promotion or worse. And you can have the attitude “that’s not my problem”. But remember that next time you have an issue you bring to your boss and they say “it’s not my problem”. They are people too that report to supervisors.
Let me make something extremely fucking clear.
There are plenty of places to get a paycheck.
Time with my family is irreplaceable. We’re only on the same team as long as you understand that you will never be as important as home life.
Go ahead. That sounds like a threat and I wouldn’t trust you. My boss wouldn’t trust you either. Go find that other job. I’m not your mother.
The sad part you don’t seem to understand is that you and people like you are the problem. Those insisting on taking days of are fighting for worker rights most of the world already has, the reason the US doesn’t is that there are to many people who betray their colleges like you do
Yup. I’m totally holding up the whole infrastructure of work. It was my idea to work and not have a working system. Hit that nail on the head. Thanks for looking deeper into my soul and giving me insight.
Who gives an actual fuck what your boss thinks?
You speak like someone who has been beaten down so much that lifting your head up seems like treachery to you.
If your work is important to you, good for you, but your boss is not thinking about you when you aren’t around.
Grow up and join the real world.
Wow. You sound really jaded. That cooperative work equates to some kind of negative. In fact you sound like a teenager that has not fully formed their emotions. I’m telling you how it comes off and what are the consequences from an upper management perspective. Since I sit in on meetings from a multi-billion company with them, maybe hear it out. Or don’t. It’s really up to you if you think I’m out to get you from telling you what happens in today’s business world.
Do I wish we could all take every single day we want and not work 50 hours a week and do what my boss says? Yes. But I am not more in control of those strings than anyone else here and just play the game just like everyone else.
You know what a professional attitude would be? Organising your team in a way that doesn’t make everything fall apart because of one person being unavailable.
My team does not. But that’s because I am the one that organized it and has redundancies. However I realize normally businesses do not have that luxury.
It’s not a luxury, it’s a basic prerequisite. What you call normal is a failure.
Well I’m not in charge of them. I wish you the best in finding a leader that helps with your schedule.
fuck the business. they want fair treatment they can provide fair compensation.
Well we offer above market compensation. As well as benefits day one. So we are kind of that company.
benefits
Like not being allowed to take time off?
I never said you never got time off. There is just an order to things.
“There is an order to the world” is a phrase uttered only by those enjoying the current order as applicable to them, to someone whom they clearly see is not enjoying the same. It is the taunt of tyrants, slavers, bigots, strike-breakers, fascists, and genocidal maniacs the world over.
Order alone is not an axiomatic good, and anyone who treats it like it is inherently worth protecting, or like an orderly system is an invalid target for criticism solely for being orderly, is either naïve or is experiencing an unbalanced “order” in their favour. I’ll let other readers decide which they think you are.
Absolutely an NPC comment. Go ahead. Change the sky to green to show you “can change into whatever”. No awareness.
wooow youre only exploiting people slightly less than you could be? color me impressed. and benefits day one? how generous of you not forcing people to wait for health care that they may require to continue living. like i said, fuck the company.
Ooooh. Were you giving benefits before you thought of applying? What kind of criticism is that? And it’s exploitation compensating people more than they will get somewhere else? Did you consider this criticism before typing it?
I imagine this person thinks you’re boasting being #2 on the human centipede proud to not be #3 or #4. You’re eating shit either way.
Does no one on Lemmy work? Is it a bunch of neck beards in their parent’s basements? When does showing up for work become a human centipede? Absolutely dumb analogy.
I too write in the notes “this is a notification, not a request”. It obviously depends on the type of job you have but I’ve never gotten flak for it.
I ALWAYS told any of my employees that if you got PTO denied outside of actual blackout times, it’d be ashame if you happened to be sick for those exact days you requested.
Ive done that. Sucked though because i didn’t have sick time left and ended up losing money that day instead of getting paid like i should have.
The concept of having limited sick days is crazy.
Since they said PTO, ili would expect that sick and vacation come out of the same pool.
Another thing I’m not American enough to understand.
American here, so you have paid time off but greedy American capitalism boss can deny for any reason. Not enough staff, busy company time, favoritism, or simply fuck you I dont like you.
Some companies can give you monies at the end of year for your paid time off, but some don’t and it’s wasted due to greedy capitalism boss and given to the company casue companies have better rights then people.
For example my company and boss I work for is cool about giving time off when requested, however starting next year my company will not pay out unused PTO because reasons.
Hope this helps!
My supervisor always approves of my PTO days. She even tells me about how much I’ve accrued, and encourages me to use them of I’m going to lose them.
An old job of mine would constantly deny my PTO requests. It was weird - I’d always have to call in sick on those days anyway. Funny how the world works.
Yeah, the problem is with the wording. This isn’t a request. It’s a notice. I will not be here these days. Prepare for my absence or don’t, up to you. Again, I won’t be here to deal with the fallout in either case.
I had a greedy capitalist boss once who wanted to deny unpaid time off.
I literally told him, “I’m not going to be here on those days. If I still have a job when I get back, that’s nice. If I don’t, that’s okay too.” I’m not going to work at any job that thinks they own me like a slave. And guess what – when I came back, I did still have a job.
The issue is that they specifically forced us to use a program that calls them requests and clarifies that they can be denied for any reason. Verbal agreements aren’t valid. One time they even accepted my request through the program, then denied it a few days later because one of the managers wanted to take that day off and they didn’t want too few staff members there. You bet your ass I was “sick” that day.
Such a weird thing from a european perspective. Here in Germany, you as a worker are obligated to take your vacation days. It even can happen that your boss asks you to take your vacation if you forget to.
Can you get me a job at your company? Is your boss willing to fill out the paperwork to hire from outside the EU?
I wish it was like that, I even work for a German company, but don’t get treated quite as nice. I guess for American standards, and it’s low unfortunately, it’s a good company to work for.
I guess that’s cause our laws force companies to make their employees take the mandated pto else they’d get into trouble. But they can aparently get away with treating overseas workers worse
In the Netherlands you’re only obligated to take the days that your employer is mandated to give you (20 days per year). But most employers give more, and if you don’t take those up, you can often have them paid out or save them for later years.
I had 30 days for my jobs in Germany and the Netherlands. In some jobs you “earn” more with age or staying a certain amount of years in the company.
American here
It’s “better rights Than people”, not “better rights Then people”
🫡
Depending on the state you live in, that may be illegal. Many states consider accrued PTO as part of your compensation and you must be paid at your hourly rate (or salary equivalent if necessary) upon leaving the company.
That’s one reason why companies started “unlimited” pto. It’s no longer part of your compensation so they no longer have to pay it out since how much is “unlimited” worth? That said it’s still not unlimited because you have responsibilities which if you don’t complete because you were on pto still counts against you.
Thank you for the explanation. But isn’t the phrasing in the meme totally soul-crushing?
You get 40 hours this year - all year - where you don’t have to work for us.
(uttered by some company suit)
seems to be the implication.
In Europe, even part-time workers’ time off is counted in “days off.” Even if the end result were the same, I just think it sounds a lot nicer for the employee. “Hey boss, I won’t be coming in for the next two weeks. Nah, make that three.”Which state do you live in? It’s very illegal to not pay out unused PTO in many states.
Stupid Texas.
Oklahoma?
I think PTO is just like regular vacation in other civilized countries? Just less of it
PTO is just like regular vacation in
othercivilized countriesAmerica bad, upvotes to the left
You’re in .world bud, full of prideful euros who constantly compare their countries to the US in their free time because they choose to constantly consume American media
I wouldn’t necessarily say bad, though the current US government certainly is bad. But a country that cares so little for its working population could not be called civilized in my opinion.
Unironically
Just stands for Paid Time Off.
You aren’t required to use it for vacation, specifically.
Sort of. There is no legal requirement for any time off in the US. But PTO is a very common arrangement.
It is what it sounds like: Paid Time Off. Basically you have some hours available your will be paid for but you don’t have to work. You earn PTO at a certain rate for every hour you do actual work, so you have to earn it.
You don’t have the right to use them whenever you want; that’s up to your boss, usually. You usually have to trade any kind of time off for your PTO: vacation, holidays (even mandatory ones), sick days, etc. There is usually a minimum amount of hours you have to take at a time, so you can’t always take an hour here and there, but sometimes you can agree to make up time with you boss.
For extended time off, like if you have surgery, you can usually work with your employer to use a reduced rate of PTO to make it last longer, like get 40% pay. When it runs out, you don’t get paid. You may still be able to keep your job, within the rules of FMLA (12 weeks), but you have no income. I am not sure what happens to insurance at that point, but I think you’re covered as long as you’re employed and pay premiums.
Of course this is not legally required and it’s rare that it’s even offered if you’re part time or work for a small company, since those aren’t required to offer any benefits.
I don’t work in HR, I’m not a lawyer or doctor, my experience is my own, this is not legal advice, your state laws may be different, etc, etc. YMMV.
I’ve had a couple of jobs where the PTO was issued in one big block once a year in a use-it-or-lose-it system instead of accruing week by week. I’m not sure how common it is; I was kind of surprised by it the first time I encountered it.
In my girlfriend’s current job, all PTO always expires on January 1st, no matter how old it is, no matter how much or how little you have saved up.
Which is just fucking madness.
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If you want to take a vacation in the springtime? Go fuck yourself. Nobody can take a substantial vacation in the early months of the year because nobody has accrued very much PTO yet.
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If you want to take a vacation in the summer (as many people do), you can only ever use about half of your yearly PTO for it, so if she wants to go on a summer vacation, she’s limited to about 1 week instead of the 2 weeks she supposedly gets. A full 2-week vacation could only ever be taken in December.
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Pretty much everybody there will have some PTO wasted, because even if you earned that PTO on December 31st, it sill expires on January 1st. The only way you could theoretically use up all your PTO is if you had one day’s worth left and took December 31st as your day off.
And add to all of that bullshit, they still do the other bullshit of having to pretty-please request PTO, which the bosses will often deny because they’re (deliberately) understaffed and apparently incapable of operating the business at all if they’re missing even one employee. And even worse on top of that, their management structure is very shitty and every manager always wants to pass the buck – there isn’t just one person she needs to get permission from: she needs to ask at least 4 different managers, including the company owner, and they all need to agree on the schedule for time off.
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Yeah I had that in my previous job, but they didn’t call it PTO. Also we didn’t use PTO for our official holidays. It was really stupid: we would get 12 months worth of time off on January 1st and all of it expired December 31st. This naturally caused everyone to basically take December off, which meant our busiest months of December and January were super fun.
In my current job, PTO is earned for each working hour at a rate decided by your seniority, so you gain more PTO per hour the longer you work there, and you can bank up to a certain amount and the excess is lost. It’s a pretty big bank, so I think it’s an okay-ish balance between stealing our PTO and encouraging us to use it. I guess it could be worse.
This is different from when I lived in Norway, where I had “unlimited” sick days, all bank holidays off, and an additional 5 weeks of time off a year + vacation bonus in the summer, plus time and a half for any overtime beyond 37.5hrs/wk with double pay on Sundays and holidays.
Norway’s system sounds like a dream.
The first company that did the all-at-once system was at least smart about having the refresh date be your hire anniversary date. The December effect you described would have wrecked them (retailer).
Yep, it eventually dawned on them that it wasn’t smart to force everyone to take off at the busiest time of year, so they started using the employee’s work anniversary instead. But, by that time I already had one foot out the door.
Paid Time Off, they are supposed to be used for Vacations, they normally get used for medical event coverage (Sick days) and local social outings.
How are there no class riots all over America? Having to use your vacation days for when you’re sick? That sounds stupid even from a capitalist perspective. People will come in sick and make mistakes or infect others. And they won’t be nearly as efficient without at least a few weeks of guaranteed vacation per year
The short version to your question is that American society is structured specifically to prevent that outcome, and to violently crack down whenever it dares spring up.
In Germany you can get your vacation days back if you get sick during your vacation.
Das kommt mir spanisch vor
Ich hab’s auch noch nie gemacht, geht aber rechtlich, wenn du dir von Arzt eine AU holst.
Is 40 hours the entire entitlement for the year? I’ve heard that USians don’t get much leave, but just a week seems ridiculous. Or is that what they’re booking this time, that seems more reasonable. Still shouldn’t be an issue just to book a week off. I’d get it if they were trying to do a three week block or something.
Some jobs have zero pto! Its not required federally, and most states dont have regulations about it afaik.
How does that work? Do you just have to throw a sicky and use your sick pay if you want to go on holiday?
Assuming you get any or have any left, yeah. That or you can take unpaid time off. Though some places frown on that as well.
Someone else explained that PTO is combined paid company sick days and holiday allowance. I assumed it was just the US term for holiday allowance.
Some places do have it split out, so pto and sick days are seperate, just really heavily depends on the company because there aren’t any regulations about it.
It depends on a lot of factors. For software development I’ve had anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks per year. One job was 4 weeks of PTO (includes sick time) and they only had 6 holiday days per year. That job sucked.
So PTO is combined sick pay and holiday? You don’t separate it?
So my holiday entitlement is 35 days, and my sick pay is 10 days so my equivalent PTO would be 9 weeks or 360 hours.
By holiday do you mean strictly vacation or does that include holiday days like Christmas and new years?
It includes public holiday days yeah. It’s about 6 weeks that I can take anytime.
Some employers do PTO others do separate vacation and sick. Generally I just count the combined days off – vacation, sick, and holidays when making a decision on an offer.
Several of the software jobs I had offered “unlimited” PTO, where as long as your shit was done, you could take off as much as you liked. Of course, that meant that they didn’t have to pay out your remaining days when you left, but it was a good reason to stay.
I had one job where they switched to the unlimited PTO scam.
Some don’t get any PTO. Zero.
Yes 40 for the year, and 40 isn’t even guaranteed. It is typically what you could earn over an entire year of full time work. A lot of jobs don’t even give you the hours up front, you earn it as you work.
If you have a shitty employer. 3-4 weeks is more common for an office job
I’ve got 168 hrs of PTO and another 40 hrs sick leave.
A lot of that is from seniority (I’ve been at the company 10 years and was hired as a 5 year due to prior experience). But 40 hrs is on the low end of what you should expect, overall. Unless you’re an entry level hire, you should expect more.
I get 120 and wfh but I think I’ve reached privileged status.
Once you learn that the United States is one massive scam, all of the pieces fit into place.
I used to love when my boss would deny PTO. I told him straight up after a while that my PTO request was a polite notification that I will not be there during that time, and whether he solved that problem now or when it rolled around was up to him.
Unrelated, but I’m going be sick those days. Strange coincidence.
My god damn team has a giant spreadsheet where all planned absences are logged, and shows how many people can still be out per week.
It’s awful and I hate it and literally 2/3rds of the teams have no real reason to not have overlapping holidays.
deleted by creator
There are a lot of things wrong with my company, but we do have unlimited PTO. I’m in a place where I can just tell them I won’t be here, and it’s up to them to figure it out.
I’m about to start a job with unlimited PTO and I’m honestly unsure. I had 3 weeks at my last place. I’d like more, but at least I never felt judged using what I was allotted. They also never denied a request.
“Unlimited” feels like a trap. But I guess I’m doing that to myself? Idk, I’m probably gonna aim for 3ish weeks for my first year and see how it feels.
Damn. Less than 4 weeks/year would be illegal here (it’s also mandatory that an employee can take at least 2 weeks of that as a continuous single block, if they wish.) Employers are also not permitted to buy holiday allowance back (except when an employee leaves) and must roll any unused over year on year - which means employers are strongly motivated to have their staff actually take their holidays.
“Here” is, obviously, not the US…
Honestly it depends on the company.
The meme wasn’t stolen, it was rescued from the shackles of Reddit
Thanks for logging in so we can see this, I guess?
