Paid time off is an important part of your overall compensation package for any job.

What would you do if you got your leave approved by your boss, but then upper management denied it and wouldn’t be flexible?

That is what happened to the IT guy in this story, so he looked at the time-away rules and complied with them perfectly.

Check it out.

Leave – no leave – yes leave

A bit of background

I work as the sole IT guy in a firm with about 75 people that is part of a larger nationwide mother-firm.

Our local firm has an ongoing agreement with another local firm that we play backup for each other in case either one needs help/backup/knowledge-sharing/whatever.

He sounds like a very loyal employee.

This has been the case since 2009. I work for this firm since 2002.

Kind of an old hand if you want.

We have this generous leave package that builds the longer we work here.

A starter has 180 hours per year leave, someone with 20+ years has 240 hours.

I have that.

Now because we have this much leave I’m of a mind not to be all too strict with the when and the how.

It is nice that he can be flexible.

I’m single and have no kids so I’m happy to let others with kids take priority to handle school holidays.

As such, the last 15-something years I have always taken the bulk of my leave in september/october and the rest in fridays counting back from newyear if that makes sense.

The only rules we have regarding when and how we take leave is: no more then 6 weeks together, you cant transfer more then 7 days to the next year and leave must be approved (which it almost always is).

Enter my BigBoss

As per usual i put in my leave request for September/October somewhere in May.

This gets approved.

Around August we get news from our hardware vendor that they will be installing our new servercluster in the end of September.

Not cool but waddayagonnado.

I talk it over with BigBoss and agree to move my leave to February/March of the next year.

I dont mind too much. He is happy, I am happy and we go ahead and plan it all in.

Enter my department head

Since I am a one-man department, but corps are gonna be corps I have a department head that oversees my department along with a few others.

Somewhere end of september her walks in to my office and tells me when i am planning to take the bulk of my leave.

I tell him about the servercluster install and that my leave is moves to feb/mar.

Sadly, so many managers are like this.

Now one cannot be a department head or part of manglement and still be reasonable right?

So, he tells me that since i wont be taking my leave in this year it will be forfeit.

I tell him i have an agreement with BigBoss to wich he states that he talked about it with BigBoss and that the arrangement wont work since he didnt approve it.

I take my phone and call BigBoss. He states that, indeed my leave will not be approved and cant be moved to next year.

So I tell him ok.

Enter MC

I was upset.

Not just angry but genuinly ready to hit someone LIVID.

So, I took a half day and went home and mulled things over.

With age comes wisdom and I know not to take decisions when I am that angry.

Next day I go in and ask a leave statement from our HR department that has a counter of all our leave and, more important, overtime.

I had around 700 hours overtime standing (accrued over the years) and 220 hours leave.

Hey, it’s all according to the rules, right?

So I put in 5 weeks leave, 1 week overtime, 5 weeks leave, 1 week overtime and so on till I landed in the first week of January.

Then I put in the remaining overtime and landed in the end of February.

Next to that I sent in my resignation and 3 months notice which I planned exactly on the last day of my leave.

Not half an hour later my BigBoss and Department Head are at my desk asking me what gives.

I told them that since Department Head had told me I couldn’t transfer the leave I would be taking it this year, and since the agreement to move my leave was broken I felt I didn’t have another choice but to look for other work where agreements in fact where honored.

I asked them what rule of the workers manual regarding leave I had broken and if any, could they point it out?

After that talk I went home and the waiting game began.

Oh, I bet he wanted him to come in.

BigBoss called me next morning on my work cell asking me to come in.

Sorry no. I’m on leave.

Happy to make a pot of coffee if you want to drop by. So he drops by.

Things get talked about. Seems his Department Head wasn’t entirely upfront with him (altho he wasn’t innocent either) and he wants to make things right.

My 6 months leave stayed in place and he offered to match the offers I would get from other firms to keep me onboard, within reason.

Conclusion

That is a great raise.

All in all now I still work for the same firm with a 15% wage increase.

I don’t do overtime anymore.

Neither does my laptop come home with and my work phone stays at work too.

I still do my job to the best of my abilities but at the end of the day, if my hours are done I go home.

The building can be on fire, if my clock is out i am out the door.

Now me leave gets planned around my preference too.

No more shifting around other peoples leaves.

This all could have been avoided if Big Boss would have been reasonable.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say.

This is the only unbelievable part of the story.

Yup, never have loyalty to a company.

Sadly, this is true in most companies.

People try to be helpful, and it gets them abused.

This was a real power move.

The Big Boss really ruined a good thing for the company.

And so it goes.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.