Use it or lose it.Follow

It's nearing the end of the vacation year for me (June 1st to May 31st).

My employer has a "Use it or lose it" policy when it comes to accumulated vacation time. I can roll over up to five days, but anything over that is forfeited if not used by the end of the year. Vacation days cannot be turned in for cash value, true for both salaried and hourly employees. Their reasoning is always "We want you to take time off" but I'm pretty sure it's really "We don't want to pay you more".

Being the lifeless single man I am, I never really think about time off until the end of the year then I have to quickly fit as many days as I can without leaving my projects and coworkers high and dry. This usually takes the form of me taking off every Friday for a few months. I'm sitting on 20 vacation days right now. And am going to be using 12 of them up to take off every Friday between now and the week of memorial day (Good Friday is already a day off). That leaves me with 8 days left. Probably going to ask for the week of memorial day off too, which will bring me down to 4 days to roll over.

Work is just such an ingrained thing in my schedule, I don't really ever think about ever NOT working. Projects that are multiple months long lead to time flying by. I mention to a coworker back in August that I need to make sure to use up my vacation time before the end of the year, and suddenly I wake up one day and it's the end of February.

My employer just allows you to accumulate hours until you hit a cap. Then you don't accumulate any more until you spend some. No set dates with limited rollovers, so no rush to spend them by some set date. Just have to keep an eye on it so you don't max out. It's ironic you posted this today, since I just (as in an hour or so ago) mentioned to my boss that I'll need to take time off cause I'm nearing the cap. I'm sitting at 378 hours right now (yes, that's me saying my vacation time is bigger than yours. Nyah nyah!).

I'm the same with vacations though. It doesn't really occur to me to take time off and go places or anything.

Wait? You get 8 hours of vacation time a year? That's one day. That can't be right.

My job we have 3 different times we can use for vacation, Actual vacation, start off at 80 hours a year, then 120 after 5 years then 160 after 10. Those are use or lose. then we get 60-80 hours of one we can use for sick time or vacation, that one increases after 10 years, it also doesn't pay out, and then one that we get 64 hours of time that pays out if we don't use but caps at like $1500. 304 hours is more than enough for time off I want for the year.

Sometimes, it's best for them not to realize that.

When I left my last job, I had accrued... oh, some 120-140 hours of sick leave? I was simply never, ever sick. I also had around 160 hours of vacation time (we have a 200 hour cap for each category). I found out I could cash in my vacation time (which I did, and ate a 30% tax rate ), but I lost ALL of my sick leave, despite moving from one Florida public university to another. Some 120-140 hours... gone.

I now I use sick leave quite often. Never going to lose out on my leave again!

And what the heck is with the 06/01-05/31 year? We're 07/01-06/30, which already threw me off (why not New Years for a new year, amirite?).

Edit: Threw, not through. It was early!

Edited, Feb 27th 2013 9:09am by LockeColeMA

I'm not 100% sure, but back in the day, I believe that the end of May was when the shop pretty much shutdown and inventory began because the big car companies shutdown and all orders dropped to almost nothing.

These days we do business with so many different car companies, and of course I don't think Ford, GM, etc. have the large summer shutdowns anymore (or if they do they haven't been as noticeable), that we stay busy throughout the year.

Edited, Feb 27th 2013 7:33am by TirithRR

Go wherever as long as you don't spend it here.

Wow they let you guys accrue a lot. We got the same kind of program but cap at 256 hours. I was there once, then had kids, and that did a good job of eating up the vacation time.

Vacation...haha. I get 20 days and can roll over 10. But I can't manage to get 20 days in in one year unless I want to just work from home, so I always lose some days and still have 10 more days to roll over.

I tend to use a few days over summer to get 4 day long weekends, but aside from that I don't do much. I tend to save up time and take longer trips. It works better with my job to, it's not really worth it to transition off of projects for one week, but you can't just ignore clients either.

I usually can take off enough extra days in summer for canoe trips that I can keep my overall balance low if it starts building up. That being said I'm still at the intro rate at my company, (3 weeks) so when I move up to four, it might build up a bit more.

Vacation? What is that? Is that when the undergrads leave so campus is nice and quiet and you feel even better about being in the lab late?