Employee makes company pay for the pending PTO before quitting with an ingenious move

Companies try to sneakily get away with many things. Paid time off (PTO) is one area where they almost consistently mess up and employees end up suffering. Reddit user u/AnIdeaMan shared a story about how he used his company's rules about PTO to earn extra money before he quit. The post has gained 3.5K upvotes and 246 comments on the site. The individual kicks off the post by sharing that he had given his notice and thought that his employer would pay him for the 55 hours of PTO that he had remaining.

When he asked about it, they said that he would not get it, unless he used it all up. The man writes, "So, I went ahead and used my PTO for the last 55 hours I was scheduled to work because I wasn't about to waste that." He recalled something that would help from a few weeks back. Specifically, he had taken PTO but ended up working 30 minutes into that time. He ended up getting paid his hourly rate, along with 30 minutes of extra work.

At the time, he did not do any work and slacked off with his coworkers. He sent an email to his manager, Mark, saying, "Hey Mark, I know we are a bit understaffed and I know I took PTO already, but I wouldn't mind working anyway. Is it okay to work?" His manager responded affirmatively. The man was being paid $25 an hour at the time, so that, along with additional time, would give him $37.50, which he was fine with. He went ahead with his plan so he could get increased earnings for his last few shifts.

Soon enough, he received a call from his boss asking him how he ended up clocking so much overtime and that it had put the company over budget. The individual clarified that he had only worked for some of it and used his remaining PTO to fill up the rest. He also mentioned how the manager made it clear that it was okay for him to work. Due of this incident, the company began to instantly pay out PTO to employees who had given their notice.

By the time he quit, he was paid a whopping $2062 in overtime as well as $2000 for the hours that he actually worked. He shares, "So typically 80 hours of work would cost them $2,000, but because they wouldn't pay me out my PTO, they ended up paying double when they could have just cut me a check for $1,375 and saved $700." He basically made them pay for their unnecessary greed. People loved the employee's approach and expressed their opinions in the comments section.

u/nsfwatwork1 said, "I have 24 weeks of paid leave accrued. The owners of the company I work for will be so pissed when I move on to another company." Another individual, u/Wadsworth_McStumpy, commented, "That's great! And you can enjoy the fact that 20 years from now, the employees will be talking about 'That guy who got paid for 200+ hours in one week because they wouldn't pay out his PTO' (Trust me, the story will grow)." u/18k_gold said, "Nice, well done! I hate when a company tries to screw over an employee. Good to see that they got screwed over instead.