His company refused to let him carry over one extra PTO day — so he scheduled himself off for 2 months and waited for the VP to call

When you give your job your absolute all, working on grueling holidays, banking endless overtime, and keeping the gears turning, you expect a little bit of respect in return. But corporate bureaucracy rarely works that way. In a relentless, high-pressure world of a 24-hour newsroom, one employee (u/Go-Nuts-27) learned this the hard way when his management tried to shortchange them out of a single hard-earned vacation. But instead of arguing, this man decided to teach his employers a lesson by playing by the rules. He revealed the entire story on Reddit in a post that has since gained over 4,400 upvotes.

The newsroom grind

Posted on July 19, 2024, the entire issue arose with the man's working environment. Given that he worked in a 24-hour news organization, it meant someone had to be in the studio at all times. So, curating a holiday schedule was nothing short of a high-stakes logistical puzzle, so much so that the management had their employees lock in their December time off well in advance to prevent any last-minute coverage gaps. Nonetheless, as a dedicated worker, the employee rarely took time off. He routinely relied on built-up comp time, saving his actual vacation days to secure a coveted week between Christmas and New Year's.

The policy deadline traps

Company rules permitted staff to carry over a maximum of five unused vacation days into the new year, provided they were used within the first quarter. However, one particular year, the employee found themselves with six days remaining, leaving one day extra on the table. Since the studio was already running on a skeleton crew for the holidays, there was no one to cover his shift if he tried to use it before the December 31 deadline. However, as it was just one day, the man hoped the management could help him out.

The denial

The employee headed to the management with two pretty straightforward options. The first was the company allowing him to carry the single day to January 2, which would extend their current break, while the other was to be simply paid for the extra day. However, he was left disappointed when the scheduler and the management stated a "hard no-go" for both. That was that for this man, who walked out of that conversation thinking about all the times he had worked extra hard, not taking any leave, prompting him to do something unexpected.

The malicious pivot

Realizing that corporate flexibility only worked one way, this man decided to fight policy with policy. He calculated his entire inventory, from booked holidays to carryover days to ten new holidays and various other days off. Since he had banked so much time, he soon clocked that he could legally request a massive, uninterrupted leave starting Christmas Eve and going all the way up to the last week of February. "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 frantic phone call

After submitting the request, while the employee was chill, the management was in a panic, thinking about who would cover for him for the next couple of months. It was then that this man received a direct phone call, and on the other end was the VP, who asked him "what they need to do." He simply stated that all they had to do was let him carry over that extra day, and they were good. Alas, the VP complied, and the man finally got his wish granted.

Employees don't take their paid time off

Regardless, this highlights the fact that workers with paid leave take less time than they are offered. Almost 46% of workers across the U.S. who have paid time off take less time off than they have. Out of these employees who do so, about 52% don't take the leave because they don't feel like it. Meanwhile, 49% fear that taking time off might lead them to fall behind at work, so they avoid it. Additionally, 43% don't take it because they feel it might add to the workload of their coworkers, according to a recent study conducted by Pew Research Center. 

Take the vacation

Nonetheless, the people felt that this man should've taken the two months off and taught his company a lesson. u/ttlanhil wrote, "You then threatened to take the leave you'd accumulated, in order to force them to let you take less leave? Actually take your vacation! (and I don't think it's MC to follow the rules; there was no weird request that you didn't follow the spirit of)." Meanwhile, u/Daconse suggested, "I'll blame the scheduler. They ought to have had the brains to send the request up the ladder and get permission to approve it."

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