Imagine working for a company where instead of getting paid extra when you work overtime you get to take an equal amount of time off later on, basically giving you more vacation time.

Would you use that vacation time before it expired, or would you be happy to keep working as usual and not worry if you lost of the vacation time you earned?

In today’s story, one employee never seems to take an actual vacation, but after speaking to his manager, he makes a change.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

You want to take my holiday entitlements away?

30 years ago when I was only about 20 I worked for a software company.

It was a pretty rubbish company, their software was rubbish because they’d employ trainees and get them to do the development on it without a senior first checking their work.

Needless to say, the app often had problems.

Overtime was compensated with time off.

Every other month a memo would go out to all programmers asking us to come and work the weekend, and that any time we work won’t be compensated with overtime but instead we can have the same amount of time off work later with pay (time in lieu).

I never used to take holidays, but due to undiagnosed depression I would often have a random day off as a sick day instead.

One month my manager called me in and told me that there were problems with the software that needed fixing urgently, and because we were approaching the end of the year he was talking to everyone who’d had too much time off sick and taking holiday entitlement off them.

The manager was honest about what the company was trying to do.

I don’t recall the number of days entitlement I had, but after deducting my unauthorized illnesses from my holidays I had only about 3 days left.

I was told the aim was to stop people taking holiday they were entitled to (and would have to take before the year ended otherwise they lost it), thus giving them more work hours to fix the software.

I explained to my manager that I had no intentions of booking any of my holiday and would happily work those days + any additional required weekends (as I often did), but he insisted that this is what he had to do.

I explained to him that I don’t book holidays, I don’t claim my time in lieu, and I just have a day off when I am having a bad day. Ultimately the company gains from this because I work more days than I am paid for and I don’t like them treating me like this way.

OP ended up taking time off.

I asked him how many holiday days he was taking away, and how many days in lieu I was owed.

So I let him take my holiday away, leaving me with 3.

I then asked to book those 3 days of holiday off + claimed about 7 days in lieu I otherwise wouldn’t have taken. Because the rules are that I use them or lose them, right?

So now they went from having their lead developer in every day to having to give me 2 weeks off.

I don’t really consider it malicious compliance to take the time off you’re owed instead of working for free. I’m glad OP finally took a break from work.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person thinks OP did the right thing.

Another person comments on mental illness.

This is true.

Here’s the perspective from Canada.

Don’t let your hard earned vacation time go to waste!

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.