After Racking Up 10 Days Of Time Off Through Overtime, He Was Told He Can’t Use Them All Together
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Imagine having 10 days of vacation time due to working overtime, but the boss tells you not to take all the days off at once and not to take Fridays off.
What would you do? What days would you take off?
In this story, one employee is in that exact situation, and he is pretty sure he knows why his boss set those rules. He thinks about what days he wants to take off and comes up with a plan that works in his favor and annoys his boss without breaking any of his boss’s rules.
Let’s read all about it.
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 beginnig 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 was pretty sure he knew what his boss meant.
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.
He came up with a plan.
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 beginnig after wednesdays.
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.
He followed all the rules his boss set out for him, so there’s really nothing for him to complain about.
Let’s see how Reddit responded.
This person shares what days they would take off.
Another person used to take Mondays off.
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Here’s how it works in Sweden.
This person has a question.
Honestly, I’m asking the same question as that last comment. I feel like OP left out some backstory that was necessary to understand how taking Wednesdays off was malicious compliance. I don’t understand when he takes the field trips or why, but regardless, he seems happy about taking Wednesdays off.
Personally, if I were in that situation, I’d be tempted to take Mondays off to have a 3-day weekend, but I can see how Wednesdays could be nice too. Then it would only be working two days at a time, which would be pretty awesome.
The boss didn’t think through those rules very well.
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