Vacation Overflow
Because the pandemic scuppered all of our travel plans for Westercon and Worldcon, especially the three weeks we planned to go to New Zealand, I find myself in the position of having too many vacation days. The limit for someone with my seniority used to be 360 hours (45 days), but XPO "for competitive reasons" reduced that to 300 hours (37.5 days). If you hit the cap, any more vacation accrual simply vanishes. I don't like throwing away vacation days that I've earned (I earn 3.85 hours/week.), so I've advised my manager that later this month I'm going to start taking every alternate Friday off for a while. This is no surprise, and it looks like all of our team are nearing the same situation, so we'll all need to coordinate our schedules.
On top of all that, I have two "floating holidays" that I'd originally intended to use as part of Westercon and Loscon trips this year. That's not going to happen. I'm the "team player" who works on Black Friday and Christmas Eve/Boxing Day (depending on when December 25th falls), but I still don't want to waste time off that vanishes if not used, so I'll need to figure out which days to take off between now and the end of the year. I might throw in a four-day weekend a couple of times between now and then.
I have never, in my entire working life, ever faced a situation where I was approaching too much vacation. I wish they'd lift the vacation cap, but I understand why they do it, even as I hate it. My high school's contract with their teachers' union had no cap, and there was one teacher who never used any of his vacation days, so he effectively retired one year early by taking an entire year of vacation. Thus his classes that year were taught by a nominal "substitute" teacher who was the same person for the entire year. None of the places I've worked want anyone to be able to do that, so they cap accrued vacation.
I don't intend to draw down the vacation bank very much, but rather just keep it from overflowing. When we ever get to travel again, having that much time in the bank could prove to be very useful.
On top of all that, I have two "floating holidays" that I'd originally intended to use as part of Westercon and Loscon trips this year. That's not going to happen. I'm the "team player" who works on Black Friday and Christmas Eve/Boxing Day (depending on when December 25th falls), but I still don't want to waste time off that vanishes if not used, so I'll need to figure out which days to take off between now and the end of the year. I might throw in a four-day weekend a couple of times between now and then.
I have never, in my entire working life, ever faced a situation where I was approaching too much vacation. I wish they'd lift the vacation cap, but I understand why they do it, even as I hate it. My high school's contract with their teachers' union had no cap, and there was one teacher who never used any of his vacation days, so he effectively retired one year early by taking an entire year of vacation. Thus his classes that year were taught by a nominal "substitute" teacher who was the same person for the entire year. None of the places I've worked want anyone to be able to do that, so they cap accrued vacation.
I don't intend to draw down the vacation bank very much, but rather just keep it from overflowing. When we ever get to travel again, having that much time in the bank could prove to be very useful.