Imagine working on an important project for work, but your approved paid time off is coming up.

Would you be willing to give up your vacation time to finish the project if your boss agreed to pay you extra to make up for it?

In this story, one guy shares how he did just that! But was the money worth skipping his vacation?

Let’s read the whole story.

Boss has no time for my time off.

The company that I worked for had its work year for leave allocation between January 1st and December 31st.

The industry I work in (UK Construction) shuts down over the Christmas break so you have mandatory leave taken out of your allowance, that’s not a problem.

I have 25 days leave to take and the year in question was mad. I never had a chance to take any leave and was managing to recharge on the national holidays through the year with the odd day off here and there to pad it out.

We get to August and I have put a week in for September which has been approved but then I am allocated to a job starting at the beginning of September.

UH OH…

They need me to work that holiday. I am reluctant and I warn the GM that if I don’t get a chance to take some leave that I will be finishing that year at the start of December.

GM says that’s fine.

So I start the project which is programmed to go into the following year.

The project is going well, but every 2 weeks I feel the management out for cover so I can take some time off, no dice, everyone is hammered.

He knew he had to do something about it…

So at the start of November I put my holiday request in to use up my leave… And it gets approved! Bingo.

After that each week I email the Project manager and GM that I will be finishing on the 4th of December and they need to line someone up for a handover and cover the month, ignored, don’t care, we will look at it later…

3rd of December rolls up, I call the GM to wish him a good holiday and I will see him in the New Year.

GM starts panicking. There is no one lined up for cover and no one available to drop in.

They gave in to his requests!

There has been no handover so no one is up to speed on the projects nuances. Long story short he agreed to pay overtime.

Now this firm hates the idea of paying overtime unless it is for weekend work or overnight, the Manager actually wanted me to defer my leave until the next year but the company also had a use it or lose it approach to leave.

I wasn’t going for that so for that month I was being paid for my normal day as paid leave and flat rate overtime for the hours worked, that’s double time for a day shift for a month.

That’s INSANE!

It gets better because on the day before the project shuts down for the Christmas break the GM calls me.

He needs someone to do a night shift with confined space qualification (at the time in the department that was only me) to supervise a contractor carrying out a survey for 6 hours. Convo as follows.

Me- “What is the overtime?”

GM- “What do you want?”

Me- “Double time and a half”

It was a quick conversation!

GM- “Thats fine.”

Me- “Bugger, you agreed to quick.”

So the day after I work the last day that year on the initial project at double time (I left home at 0600), I get home at 1800 for a quick meal and a shower (1/2 hr) and I’m back out the door (1830) arriving at this other location at 1930 (worth noting that travel hours are on the clock, this isn’t commuting).

Finally the cherry on top!

Contractor sets up to do this survey… They finished at 0500 the following day. I got home at 0630 and collapsed onto my bed.

To summarize that day alone, I got my 8hrs paid leave plus 12hours OT plus 12 hours at 2.5 times (30 hours).

In 24.5 hours I took pay for 50 hours. It was a good month. At the time I took about 2 grand a month home, for that month I think I took 7.5 grand.

They actually had a problem with paying the overtime so that it did not show up as a massive breach in hours worked regulation.

It was a ton of extra work but a great payday!

Let’s find out what folks on Reddit think about this one.

This user knows holidays are more important than money!

This user knows the deal!

This user knows what they would have done in this case!

This user thinks this guy’s job sucks!

This user knows the US has weird labor laws!

Working until you’re exhausted isn’t always the best idea.

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.