There are many ways a corporation can hurt themselves when trying to tighten the purse strings.

Employees talk and find loopholes in policy that will make things better for them.

That’s exactly what the workers in this story did.

Keep reading to see what did as a unit.

Can’t carry over time to the next year? Ok, that works.

Some bean counter at my job figured out that rolling over 45 days of time off was a liability to the company.

So they decided that there would be no carryover from one year to the next.

A key person I worked with had enough vacation days to cover them to Jan 1, and the next years vacation and holidays covered the first two months of the following year.

Then a one-off turned into a movement.

So they were done. I wished them well and they were gone. This was all told to me in strict confidence.

But this person were not as good as I am in keeping secrets.

There were suddenly a number of key people, also with 6 weeks vacation and large vacation bank, that were gone.

HR could not say no to the close out vacations since they had decreed the rollover freeze.

Then the movement turned into a party.

But the department decreed “You must return to work to be able to collect the vacation in the next year.”

Turns out most of the people got jobs in very cool companies, they all scheduled a vacation day so they could “come back to work for a day”.

They came back en masse. It was mostly a party day with an all day food fest.

Co-workers scheduled them all into meetings, so they had things to do on the day.

Here’s what people are saying.

Communication professional here: this is partly why we exist.

No wonder staff dig their heels in!

Wow! I bet he enjoyed that.

But the boss scheduled Salad Wednesdays and that should boost retention, right?

It’s sad. I’m glad I don’t have to deal with that.

Cocktails, anyone?

It’s time for a toast!

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.