Imagine working for a company where overtime is paid out as time off. If your boss gave you rules about when you could and could not use this time off, would you be happy to comply, or would you think very carefully about which days you were going to take off?

In this story, one person is in that situation, and they choose the second option. While they follow the rules, the find they most annoying way to follow them.

Keep reading for the whole story.

Not allowed to take vacation days from overtime all at once or on fridays? Got you!

So a few years back when I was working for my previous company as a commissioning engineer (about 60% of the year of field service, 40% office), I had accrued about 10 days of not yet planned overtime by beginning of october.

We were allowed to use that overtime as vacation days, which made sense for me because I’d have pay a hefty amount of taxes on that money otherwise, and i didn’t particularly need that money.

So at some point my then boss calls me to his office to tell me I should plan when I’d take those days, with the requirement to not take them all at once and not on fridays for the rest of the year.

He knew why his boss made those rules.

Since I had already planned 3 weeks of vacation from vacation days during christmas, he probably had some things in mind.

His intention about the “not everything at once”-part probably was to not have me missing for 5 weeks at once.

The intention about the “not on fridays”-part probably was to not have me going home from any possible field trips every Tuesday evening.

So I sat at my desk and started thinking about if I should use those days in a way of 2 times a full week of vacation or some extended weekends beginning after Wednesdays.

He decided to use the rules to his advantage.

Looking through my calendar which Wednesdays I would be best to use, I had a brilliant idea.

Wednesdays. 10 weeks in a row. Adding to that 3 weeks during christmas.

So starting the next week, I didn’t go on any field trips for 3 months.

Safe to say, my boss wasn’t particularly happy, but did not say a word since his requirements were fully met.

I reread the story to check, but I don’t think OP made his work schedule clear. It sounds like he must be working out of the office on Wednesdays, and by taking Wednesdays off, he avoided those trips. I’m glad he was able to find a way to take the days off in a way that he found satisfying; although, I probably would’ve taken Mondays off.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This is exactly what I would do.

Here a story about someone who took a lot of Mondays off.

This person rants about taxes.

Here’s a fun fact about Sweden.

The best day to take off work is the day you don’t want to work.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.