Isn’t it insane when companies refuse the smallest requests from their employees?

Imagine working for a company where you can’t extend your paid time off to the next year. If there were no available days when you could use the time off in the current year, would you accept defeat and lose the vacation time or come up with a clever way to get management to change their minds?

This guy shares how his company didn’t let him use his PTO and how he found his way around it!

Check out the full story.

Can’t carry over 1 PTO day? See you in February

I worked for a 24 hour news organization. So someone needs to be in the studio at all times.

As a staff monkey I had things like PTO and vacation time which I usually didn’t use too often but we were allowed to carryover 5 unused day each year, as long as we used those days in the first quarter of the following year.

This is where it gets bad!

However, The end of the year is in high demand for off time because most people needed to burn unused vacation time they couldn’t carry over.

Management, wisely, makes sure everyone knows the policies and schedules December well in advance so there aren’t any last minute converge issues around the holidays.

He knew when and where to use his PTO…

Since I didn’t use a lot of my PTO during the year, due to built up comp time and OT I generally used it the week between Christmas an new years and took about 10 days off around then.

One particular year I had 6 days left – one extra day. But since I already took off the time between Christmas an new years already there literally wasn’t a day left for me to use as a day off as no one was left to cover a shift if I were to take off.

I went to the scheduler and management and asked for either a one-time exception to carry over the extra day and I’d take it on January 2nd, extending off time by one day(no go – I didn’t do it with the required notice) or pay me one day’s wages for the unused time (also a hard no go).

This is where it gets interesting…

Here’s the MC.

Since I had so much built up PTO due to working holidays or comp time for OT work I had a ton of other days banked.

Combining my already booked holiday break with my 5 carryover days and the 10 new ones I got for the new year, plus some holidays that come in the early part of the year, I figured I was able to take enough time off that I would leave for my Christmas break on 12/24 and not return until the last week of February – nearly March.

And since I did it with enough notice, they couldn’t deny me.

UH OH…

They now have to cover about 2 months of my shifts. The next day I put my time off in the system and emailed the scheduler a note saying have a great holiday I will see you in March!

The day following I received a call from the VP of the department asking me what they need to do.

I said simple, let me carry over my extra day, I will use it on Jan second you have almost a month to cover one shift and we’re all good.

I got the carryover day and used it.

YIKES! That was an interesting story!

It’s great that the company backed down and let him carry over the day off.

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

This user shares how things went down with him many years ago.

This user knows the management has their hands tied.

This user shares how his company changed the PTO policy and didn’t give him the leave he deserved.

This user suggests taking that vacation!

This user shares how people at his workplace would use PTO near retirement!

Someone’s being really clever here!

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.