I think that some companies make things WAY too complicated when it comes to the vacation policies they enforce on their employees.

Am I right, or am I right?

I’m right, as usual!

And this story brilliantly illustrates what I’m yammering on about.

Take a look at what happened!

Want me to use my vacations? Fine!

“All these stories about vacations and/or annual leave reminded me of something that happened to one of my workmates a few years ago.

A new manager was hired for our team and quickly he wanted to impose his way of doing things (daily stand up meetings, people having lunch at different times, etc) so he didn’t start off well with most people in our team.

This guy was a pain in the rear.

Then he started going after people who had accumulated annual leave (here in Australia you get 20 days annual leave per year), I had none left so no problem with me but this friend of mine had been working there for nearly 8 years and never took a day off, he had months worth of annual leave.

This manager wanted to make an example of him and ordered him to plan out vacations and/or sell back to the company some of that time (perfectly legal but with tons of conditions), my friend didn’t want to take any time off but was being pressured constantly by our manager, every day at our stand up meetings, the first item would always be pending annual leave and would just fixate on my friend.

One day my friend just had enough of this guy and gave him 2 options, he told him he wanted to go for extended holidays back to his country and take it all at once… or sell the whole thing back to the company, the manager accepted the first option.

Only to come back next day after checking with his manager to say that wasnt possible as he would have to go for nearly 6 months and we had plenty of projects in the pipeline, then he said you’ll have to sell the whole thing back to the company.

Only to come back the next day after checking with HR, one of the conditions says that you can only sell a maximum of 20 days.

Cue malicious compliance.

Still waiting…

From that day onwards, every morning my friend started emailing our manager copying HR and the head of our department, asking him for an update on his annual leave arrangements, stating he had given him the options he was looking for and was waiting for his response.

He would also bring it up and push for an answer every day at our stand up meetings, he never got a reply from our manager but weeks later got a reply from the head of our department indicating they will review other options and let him know, they never did.

The following year my friend had his first daughter and ended up taking extended leave then (3 months), the pushy manager had already resigned as he never felt comfortable in the team and found another job somewhere else.”

Here’s how people reacted to this story.

This reader chimed in.

Another individual shared how it works in Germany.

This Reddit user shared their thoughts.

Another person spoke up.

Persistence pays off!

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.