Imagine working for a company where you can’t carry over all of your unused time off at the end of the year. What would you do if you were going to lose a day of time off?

In this story, one person is in this situation, so they come up with a plan to annoy scheduling so much that they’ll have to come to a compromise.

Keep reading for all the details.

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. A

s 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.

However, The end of the year is in high demand for off time because most people needed to burn unused vacation time the 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.

OP had an extra day that wouldn’t carry over.

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).

OP did some math and decided to take a LOT of time off.

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. They now have to cover about 2 months of my shifts.

It’s not like OP really wanted to take so much time off at once.

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.

That was a clever way of handling it! It suddenly doesn’t seem so hard to cover one shift when the alternative is to cover shifts for two months!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person understand both sides.

This person had a LOT of time off to take in a short period of time.

Another person thinks OP should’ve taken the time off.

Here’s how it works at another company.

Whatever you do, don’t let your vacation time expire!

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.