If you live in America, you probably know the work-life balance isn’t great.

In this story, one employee’s attempt to use PTO was particularly off-kilter.

Will they or won’t they… get vacation?

Read on and find out!

I’m using too much of my PTO?

I work at a massive company in corporate.

Great place but unfortunately was stuck under a micromanaging director (Mr. Director) who had random neurotic episodes

Our team was always burnt out because of Mr. Director.

Mr. Director sounds like he’s gonna be a corporate Bond villain. Let’s see how.

Mr. Director saw you leave your desk for any reason – like to go to the bathroom, get water, or take a lunch break – he took that as you not being busy enough and would pile on even more useless work.

And if you left a minute before 5:05 he got really upset.

Oh, and forget about working from home (everyone else did).

Finally the time came for the big international trip I had been planning for years that was now possible after covid.

I hardly took time off and slaved away the whole year while my friends on other teams enjoyed life.

Bummer. But Mr. Director probably doesn’t like people taking time off…

We were more pressured this year to always be working and not take time off.

We had so much work we couldn’t even take time off.

I ensure everything is wrapped up first, plus it’s December so most people are out anyway.

Take my 1.5 week trip and had an amazing time.

Enjoy it while it lasts, OP.

Fast forward a month and my manager (who reports to Mr. Director) tells me that I need to watch out and not take so much vacation.

He states matter-of-factly that I need to be more careful about using my days and I’ve actually run out of time to take off.

What? We’re checking vacation days?

Hm, Mr. Director more like… Mr. Dictator?

I was shocked as we were repeatedly told that we should not log our days in the system because they aren’t checking.

It’s an “honor system.” And nobody cares how many days you take if it’s reasonable.

I ask what should I do differently?

I always check well in advance and add it on your calendar.

Should I start logging my days in the system?

How is that possible if I have at least a week left? (I keep track myself)

Harder to follow the rules if the rules are always changing.

He won’t give me a straight answer and is super vague.

Okay. Since we’re now tracking vacation days, I’ll make sure I log everything in the system.

I went in and backlogged all of the days I had ever taken off prior years.

Weeks upon weeks of PTO.

Even needed HR approval since some were so long ago.

MC to the max. How’s management gonna respond to this?

Manager had to go in and approve every single request since it notifies you and requires you to respond.

Going forward I submitted everything.

And yes, I had plenty of PTO left

Manager starts getting annoyed.

Says that I really don’t need to log time off.

I stop him right there, “But I thought I was taking too much vacation? We all need to be sure that we’re being truthful about the honor system.”

He doesn’t know what to say.

Left him speechless. But what about big, bad Mr. Director?

Later a teammate tells me what really went down.

Turns out one day, Mr. Director decided that his team was taking too much time off.

That all the useless work he assigned was “not getting done.”

He had one of his tantrums and started freaking out and tracked down every day off, doctor’s appointment, sick day, etc. that our team of 8 people had taken going back at least a year.

He was checking calendars, digging up emails, asking other people if they saw us this day or that.

Even though he had told us time and time again: “You don’t need to log your days, we’re not checking.”

Woof. This guy is a dog with a bone… Will he leave everybody alone?

But because Mr. Director was a B-cluster narcissist, he was much too busy and important to take up his concerns with us lowly employees directly.

Or to talk things through like an adult and get all the facts first… but not too busy to account for every hour I wasn’t at work.

This would be one of many “infractions” that came out of nowhere.

Mr. Director was also an extremely difficult person to work with.

Other teams did not want to work with our team.

He treated people poorly and I can’t tell you how many people flat out hated him.

And guess what?

What?

Nobody had used anywhere near all their PTO. There were zero performance concerns and we were an extremely high performing team due to the constant fear of setting him off.

I always asked for feedback and got nothing.

Yet coworkers with planned family trips were getting pressured into pushing them back again, and again, and again, because mr director needed them there sitting at their desk in case something important came up!

Classic case of poor work culture.

Meanwhile Mr. Director made sure to use more than his allotted PTO days and frequently took week-long trips

I made sure to use the rest of my PTO days since they were now being tracked.

Mr. Director actually tried to stop it, but I threatened to take it up with HR since I had plenty of time left and he backed off.

Thankfully I escaped that team and moved internally. I was doing so much work, much of it technical for a non-technical team, that nobody knew how to do it.

Way to get paid… and paid time off!

Mr. Director was frantically reaching out to me and demanding me to fix stuff.

Even though I spent my last 2 weeks documenting and transitioning over everything.

I chose to ignore him, and it felt great.

My old teammates still there are miserable.

The people that replaced us are already trying to leave.

One guy, who’d been with the company for years, completely left the company a month after joining this team when realizing his mistake.

Sounds like they jumped ship at just the right time.

What do the comments think?

First poster reminds us that being American is a trade-off.

This person says, people SHOULD use their PTO…

Someone else says, that time better be paid one way or another…

Another poster is like… the math isn’t mathing.

This user has a book club suggestion…

Fighting to take your vacation days is no vacation.

Bosses need to get with the program.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.