r/unpopularopinion • u/MichiganCarNut • 1d ago

Unlimited vacations (responsible vacations) is a terrible work benefit for many

My wife and son both have unlimited vacations for their work (not same company). They both brag about it as if it's a great benefit. My wife hasn't taken more than 10 days off in recent years because she thinks it will look bad (she previously got 4 weeks before the switch to unlimited). And when she does, she's still checking emails and attending meetings. My son, who's only been with the company for about 8 months, asked for 1 friday off recently and was grilled by his manager.... he was asked if he was on track to meet all deadlines and his manager reviewed the statuses of all his tasks before approving the day off. They both still like the idea of being able to take more if they need to. lol

I'd much rather know specifically how many paid days I get per year, and just use them up without having to worry about who's analyzing it. Incidentally, I'm self-employed so paid vacations is foreign to me altogether

1.5k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

94% Upvoted

159 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.2k

u/Islander255 1d ago

The sneakiest, scammiest part of unlimited PTO is that they don't have to do any vacation payout when you leave staff. When I do PTO payouts on payroll, outgoing staff are normally getting anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars, depending on how many vacation days they still had left.

9

u/RazberryRanger 1d ago

Legislation for this BS should be 2080 hours of paid time off is required to be paid out against any unused hours every year. 

That would end this nonsense real quick. 

7

u/DevelopmentJumpy5218 1d ago

That's 260 days of vacation a year

4

u/RazberryRanger 1d ago

It's the number of working hours in a year. 

Ever want to know how much a $ per hour is annually, multiply it by 2080.

And yes. If it's truly unlimited, it should be equal to the number of working days in a year. 

4

u/crunchy_toe 22h ago

Sorry, that seems asinine and an over correction.

It should be a standard amount of PTO in a year, let's say 30 days per year.

Something like that should be a starting point for anything else (+10% per unused pto per year or something).

Tbh, the only way to have a truly fair system is for it to be tracked one way or the other. Whether there is a cap or not is different.

But a whole year just because it is unlimited is crazy IMO.

Edit: even with unlimited PTO there isn't, or shouldn't be, an expectation that someone will take a whole year off.

3

u/RazberryRanger 19h ago

That's the entire point. It's as absurd as the idea of unlimited PTO. 

Kind of like when lawmakers introduce ridiculous bills to make a point about the asinine things occurring. 

But to my point, sabbaticals exist, and a year sabbatical for a tenured employee is not unheard of. 

1

u/Redditusero4334950 1d ago

That's even less than unlimited.