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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1399 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 28, 2025

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I really dislike the trend of companies playing around with sick and vacation days to force more work out of people - this and unlimited* vacation days are both horrible policies.

*if your supervisor approves them, which they coincidentally will not because more vacation makes them look bad to their supervisors.

"Unlimited" vacation is always a scam. I get why companies do it - e.g. tech workers, unfortunately, under-utilize vacations, and the culture, unfortunately, often encourages it - and with "unlimited" vacation you do not have any monetary liability left to cover. And it doesn't even take the supervisor to explicitly deny vacations - absence of defined benefit already creates an expectation that it's something additional to what you're normally owed, so if you're taking more of it, you're more "greedy" than then next guy who doesn't. If you have X days defined by contract, then you taking X days is normal. But if there's nothing in contract and you take X days and the other guy takes X/2 days then clearly the other guy is a better worker than you. That's not a healthy dynamics to be in.

This. "Unlimited" just means "at the supervisor's discretion", and I'd prefer at-will days off instead. At my current job, I have X weeks of vacation, and they ask us to book two weeks in advance. Some things I had happen were:

  1. On Monday, I learned about something for the coming Friday. I emailed the manager and explained that I wanted that time off, why I couldn't follow the regular procedures, and why it was valuable to me. (It was quickly approved with no issues)
  2. I had a normal vacation that I saw coming a month away. I filled out the request on the employee portal and was approved with no further scrutiny. (I told everyone what was happening via watercooler talk, of course. Community/interpersonal conversations are different than corporate/administrative ones.)
  3. I had an extra week, and they would prefer not to carry the days over to next year, so I took some more time off in December.

Under an "unlimited" scheme, I'd have to justify each day off (like scenario 1), and the reasoning for #3 is probably not strong enough to get approved without pushback.

I agree 100% about "unlimited" vacation, but the single pool doesn't bother me as much as an alternative to being either paid out for unused sick days or having to malinger to get use out of them.

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