CEO asks workers to donate their 'Paid Time Off' to hospitalized long-term employee, sparking debate

Most companies are not supportive of employees when they take paid time off or PTO. But companies do give it to them when their employees are sick or have been admitted to the hospital. However, when it comes to doing more than required for an employee, many companies still find ways to get away with their responsibility. In one such scenario, the CEO of a company, instead of extending a long-term employee's PTO as she was undergoing treatment, asked other employees to sacrifice their PTOs for her. In a Reddit post by u/deleted, the CEO's note read, "We have a long-term employee of 17 years from our Dietary Department who has been in the hospital and rehab for several months. She has exhausted all her PTO days and her benefits are running out. As you can imagine this has been quite a drain on her family's income."

The CEO said that if anyone would like to "donate one or more days of their PTO, please let the VP of Financial Services know "in writing of your intent. Thank you for your consideration."

The note soon went viral with more than 69,000 upvotes. It is captioned, "I am at a loss for words. This is pathetic…. " Many on Reddit were upset with the note. u/bippityboppityzopp commented, "Translation: 'Dear Dunces, Allow me to guilt trip you into doing something that would be cheaper for me in the end." u/baron-von-buddah commented, "Or, you know, you as president and CEO can waive your magic wand for your 17-year employee." u/Thanaterus commented, "The sad thing is that whoever wrote this wakes up each morning thinking they're a good person." u/[deleted] commented, "Let’s not forget that the employee has been working 50-60 hour weeks for MONTHS, until their hospitalization, which I’m not convinced wasn’t a contribution to the illness, to begin with. And this is the thanks our workplace has for her…"

Many in the comments also shared their own experiences. u/itachiman95 commented, "My kfc job did something similar, I got hired and was asked if I’d be willing to donate part of my check to some company fund to help “those who can’t work” like bruh I was only being paid 12$ an hour at part-time hours. The f-k do you think you’re asking me for?" u/TheRealDreaK commented, "I worked at a law firm that did this; they asked all of us to give up PTO so they could keep paying a coworker who had cancer. The kicker? They didn’t hire in a temp to fill in for her, they just had the rest of us do her work. It literally cost them nothing more to just keep paying her like decent human beings."

In another story, a person on Reddit with the username u/This_Manner_ wrote that three years ago, he was working as a videographer doing social media content for a seven-figure company. He wrote, "I was paid roughly just better than minimum wage and was cranking out (at one point) 50 videos a day. I was freelancing and was on a loose contract. I was desperate for the money." 

He worked there for six months and then spoke to his "higher-ups" that his videos were making a positive difference in their sales and asked for a raise. A few hours later, he was fired and the reason they gave was that he was not pulling his weight and his videos were not having the desired effect they wanted on social media. But years later, he found a way to get back at them. He said that "whilst browsing a very old Google Drive account, I found that said company was still using a folder I created and owned. And the worst part was that this was a cloud service that he was paying for monthly as he wanted extra space for his work, he wrote.