When a company doesn’t back up its data, it can cause all sorts of problems for workers. At least that’s what it looked like for this worker.

See why his employer’s failure led to a wonderful win for him.

Keep winning—let payroll take care of itself

This happened almost 20 years ago. In the country I’m from, almost every worker: blue collar, white collar, manager, director, C-level, whatnot, gets 5 weeks of fully paid holiday each year.

Typically split in two or more parts; predominantly 4 weeks of summer holiday and one week in winter a.k.a skiing holiday.

In addition to that, we get a special “vacation pay” which is 50% of the salary paid during holiday.

This arrangement suited him just fine.

That is, for five weeks of paid holiday you get 2.5 week’s worth additional money to spend on your holiday activities.

It’s your money in a free country.

As for me and my missus, we were moderately well-paid double-income-no-kids couple and didn’t really need all that money.

Instead, we opted to exchange this extra money to equal amount of additional leave and take long trips to other continents especially in winter when it’s very dull and slushy in our neck of woods.

That totals 7.5 weeks of paid leave and if timed wisely adjacent to or around bank holidays, such as Christmas and Easter, you can easily have full eight weeks.

I worked for a company about ten years and eventually was hired to another. Negotiations with the new employer took a while and while waiting to sign my new contract I tried to quietly tie all loose ends in the old place to ensure a hassle free departure.

The ends turned out to be pretty darn loose.

One day I checked if I have any unused leave. It’s not a biggie, it happens often but the company pays all unused days at 1:1 ratio when you leave.

Some companies don’t pay this extra vacation pay or compensate converted time off days, though. But this company did.

So, I checked the system and found out I had ten weeks of unused, converted vacation pay leave in the system. I was like ‘What?’. This is definitely not right, considering all the long-haul trips we had enjoyed during our extended three week winter holidays.

Taking money for this would be unethical and someone would definitely find out and the company would send a bill afterward. Or even worse, sue.

So, I picked up a phone and called payroll. I asked if they are sure I had really forgotten to spend so many of my holiday weeks I had worked so hard for.

It ended up working in his favor.

“Sigh. Well, you know what”, the payroll lady said.

“During your employment we’ve had two if not three payroll IT migrations from old system to an entirely different kind of new system.

I can see on my screen exactly what you see and there are zero additional details. No dates, not anything. Just number of weeks.

There may be some historical data in the archives of the old systems but going through that clutter would be an enormous and time consuming task.

And did I already mention that our insufficient resources are already exhausted because we have to cope with the problems caused by the latest data migration? Are your really, really sure you want us to do this for you?”

“Oh no, dear no,” I said. “I know when I’m defeated and this is not a battle I choose. I wish you strength, goodbye.”

So, when I finally resigned and left the company, I was paid for those 10 weeks and was never questioned.

Here is what folks are saying.

It doesn’t make sense. Ugh.

I find this so appalling.

Wow. That’s rough.

I hope so!

True! I hope that money helped them both out.

What a relief that the worker benefited instead of the other way around.

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