That's not strictly true. In the US there is in most states NO requirements for paid leave outside of a few protected types. But not vacation or sick. And we also are largely not unionized. We still have time off albeit MUCH less than Europeans and such.

Though I'd argue the norm of having any paid time off is a byproduct of labor/union battles in the past.

Bullshit, neither are true for most people in the US.

Yeah but the sexual harassment never stops!

Any good office pranks?

I also choose this guy’s boss

I've heard from friends who are self employed that this is a double edged sword. When you have an employer and take vacation, it feels like you've earned it and are taking time off at the expense of your employer. But when you're self employed it feels like you're just not getting paid.

One of my friends didn't take any time off for something like 5 years before realizing how incredibly bad that was for him.

Are these people related? I smell nepotism

I'm currently at my best job, and it's because I have a union who can tell the boss to fuck himself for me.

In my younger days I witnessed this conversation

Guy was basically Brent (if you know you know) for a huge project. So on the 2st of Dec our boss phoned him and said he had 4 weeks to take before jan 1st. Brent's responce was cool see you next year and was told no I can't let you do that

We just looked at eacother in total amused confusion

See, you have morals and empathy.

Most managers and owners don't.

So glad my work has sick days too. Mental health is a good enough reason to use one and you don’t even need to use a reason. I do my best to show up for important things but I am so thankful I can call in sick or use a vacation day any time I want for the most part….

In civilised countries yes. In the US that minimum (federally at least) is 0.

HR wants the liability gone, your boss wants your ass in the seat 24/7. Neither are looking out for you.

Are you allowed to carry over PTO hours? I might just be a pessimist, but my immediate thought is if they ever have to let anybody go, they don't want to pay-out accrued PTO hours.

At my previous place, there was one employee that NEVER took PTO for some insane reason. Had saved up like 2 months of PTO.

He was told by HR he had too many hours and needed to use some PTO time. This specific scenario is not unheard of.

However, a month or so after he came back from a month and a half of PTO, he got laid off for reasons unknown to me.

Rumors are they didn't want to pay-out the PTO.

Honestly it doesn't make sense, they had to pay him for the PTO anyways, but when has HR made sense?

You in Germany? There is some kind of tax thing, so it costs money if people don't take there holidays in the year itself, so companies are mostly quite keen with you raking all holidays.

You should know better than to get sick!

Let be honest, Hollywood is a hell of a good propaganda, I mean, it's where the shit happens

Had one that let you accumulate one sick day per month, but if you didn't use them they rolled over. First few years I didn't use all of them, and then one year I used thirteen sick days in one year (most of them for kids home sick from school) and got lightly scolded for it in a performance review.

I wanted to say "Bitch why do you allow rollover at all if you don't want us using more than we can possibly accumulate in one year?!" Looked it up in the contract and it said nothing at all about maximum sick days usable in a year. Of course if you have sick days left when you leave, they pay out at one third, but FUCK that, I earned that time, I'm not taking a one third payout. And they didn't EVER give merit raises for those years I barely called out sick.

So the next year I took even MORE sick days, and afterwards made sure not to leave any unused, even if I wasn't sick, because fuck them.