'In the first week alone, the local facility lost 3 jobs': Longtime electrical engineer loses vacation privileges, HR absentmindedly agrees to his drastic new schedule changes

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Aug 18, 2024 11:00 AM EDT

Serious workers don't play about their vacation time. It's not like most of us just love working ourselves to the bone. To be fair, a lot of people love their jobs, and many will stay at the same company for decades. It's great to get into a rhythm of working until you start to feel those signs of burnout, and then having the luxury of taking a week or two off. Those two weeks can make a huge difference: spending time with family and friends, traveling, or even just relaxing and sleeping in can make all that hard work feel worth it. And when you get back from your vacation, you feel revived and ready to work hard once again. 

That's why it can feel especially sinister when a company starts limiting or changing how their employees can use vacation time. Some places have "use it or lose it" policies. This is kind of a good idea, because it does force employees to take breaks instead of hoarding their time off. But companies who do that will usually tell their employees on day one. This company decided to implement that after one of their workers had been there for ages, and he was unamused by their shenanigans. You can check out this satisfying malicious compliance story below. 

Up next, these workers did so poorly on their first days at the job that they were asked not to return the next day. 

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    Cheezburger Image 10390693888
    via Annie Spratt on Unsplash
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    Vacation- use it or lose it? Fine. MC coming right up. This is not mine, but my late dad's. He loved telling this story. I've tried typing this story a few times here in the last few months, but couldn't get through it. I am a daddy's girl and miss him terribly. He was a brilliant and wickedly clever sob and
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    I hope you all enjoy. TLDR at bottom. Backstory: Gary was an electrical engineer currently working for Company AW. A good one. He was also an extremely dedicated and hard-working employee. He was hired onto an oil and gas company out of college and worked for the same company all his career. He
    via u/-S-I-R-E-N-
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    was still employed there when he passed away 7 months ago. The oil and gas industry has ups and downs. And big ones. For the major oilfield crash (in the US) back in the 80's, Gary was never one of the employees who was laid off. (Though 90% of the workforce was.) Even when he became sick in the months before his death, he was still getting calls at
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    home and in the hospital from around the world from various company locations asking for his help and expertise. Gary's company was bought out several times in the numerous decades he worked there. As could be expected, every time the company had new ownership, many of the benefits and company
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    policies changed. This particular MC concerns vacation and PTO benefits. Gary usually worked at his local company facility, although he did travel as needed. About 20 years ago, his company, AW, was once again bought out. This time by an extremely large energy company, DC. The new company started a project almost immediately,
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    and they needed a representative from the AW to help create a customized computer system to integrate AW more seamlessly into DC. Gary was chosen for this project. It required him to work on the project team at corporate which was in a different state and 4 hours away every Thursday and Friday. This 15 month
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    project was critical and at the request of the execs with DC, Gary postponed some travel plans he had for the year and moved them to the following year to accommodate the project schedule. Being a hard worker and genuinely good guy, Gary drove to corporate extremely early every Thursday, put in a full 10
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    hours of work with the team, stayed in a company apartment, worked another 10 hours or more on Friday and would get back home extremely late Friday night after the 4 hour drive. He did not consider the driving as part of his work time, and was willing to be a team player. (He did have a company car and fuel card and was also a salary employee in upper
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    management by this point.) A few months into the project, DC decided to change the vacation policies for all AW employees. They did not allow any vacation to roll over and therefore any vacation accrued had to be used or it would be forfeited. Gary had some major worldwide travel plans with his wife scheduled over the next
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    year, some of which he postponed as a favor to DC to help with the project. This had all been pre- approved and signed off by his boss. The change in vacation policy would require him to cancel 2 of the 3 vacations that he had planned because the new vacation accrual policy meant that he would not have enough vacation time to take them. (He currently
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    received 6 weeks of paid vacation a year and roll over for 2 years was allowed with AW.) Gary contacted his boss. His boss contacted HR and asked for an exception. Denied. Gary contacted the project team lead and explained the situation. The lead then contacted the cooperate HR and pleaded Gary's case and asked for an exception due to the
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    circumstances. This was also denied. And here comes the MC: So Gary then planned out a schedule to use his vacation before the end of the year as dictated by the new DC policy. It was in June, and his weekly schedule for the rest of the year went like this:
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    Monday - Vacation Tuesday - Vacation Wednesday - Work at local facility Thursday - Drive 4 hours to corporate, arrive at noon. Work 30 minutes. Take hour lunch. Work 30 minutes. Drive 4 hours home. Friday - Vacation
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    Gary turned in the vacation requests. His boss, who was 1 that DC was already taking his most valuable employee 2 days a week and now him out of his earned vacation, promptly approved. The following week, Gary started his new work schedule. The local facility immediately began to feel the strain. Jobs began to fall
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    behind schedule without Gary there to support their end. In the first week alone, the local facility lost 3 jobs due to late delivery of services. The corporate project immediately came to a near halt with Gary only assisting 1 hour a week. By the second week, the big wigs became extremely irritated. This was now costing the company some
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    serious revenue. When Gary returned to work on Wednesday of week 2, his boss had a huge grin on his face and told Gary that they are scheduled for a conference call with the executives immediately. On the call, Gary and his boss were both questioned concerning Gary's sparse work schedule. When explained that it was the
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    only way that Gary would be able to use his vacation time that he was being forced to use or otherwise forfeit, the execs brought HR on the phone and grilled them. Needless to say, Gary was given the exception for his vacation time. He was allowed to keep his planned and scheduled vacations for the following year and roll over the time needed to do SO.
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    TLDR: New owner of company tried to screw employee out of vacation time. Employee decided to use all vacation as they dictated, leaving company up sh*t creek.
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    Kehndy12 It must be so satisfying to watch your leaders fail without you when you're gone for vacation.
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    trivial772 Surprising how fast the bigwigs run in when the bottom line starts creeping up. Great story. You dad sounds like he was an epic guy.
    via u/trivial772
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    -S-I-R-E-N- OP Thank you. He really was.
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    GreenEggPage At my old job, they changed the rollover policy for PTO in October. No more rolling over-use it or lose it. So, all of the developers
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    took the entire month of December off. That things up for a while.
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    [deleted] Why don't execs understand that you NEVER mess with the Gary's of the world? Your dad sounds awesome, my sincere condolences.
    via u/[deleted]
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    -S-I-R-E-N- OP Execs and bean counters will never learn. Smh. And thank you.
    via u/-S-I-R-E-N-

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