New army boss urges employees to take their PTO, entire team takes off at once, leaving new boss scrambling: 'Each of us had accumulated between 200 and 500 extra hours'

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
May 16, 2025 4:00 PM EDT

It's always amusing when bosses try to do the right thing but totally fumble in the execution. It's the kind of chaotic miscalculation that makes you wonder how these people got promoted to positions of authority in the first place. Sure, maybe for once these folks have the purest of intentions, but that does not necessarily mean that their policies will go well for them when put into practice.

In this instance, we have a new army boss who urged the employees on his team to take their paid time off as soon as possible. The problem was that everyone on the team had accumulated between 200 and 500 hours, so they had earned the right to take a month off of work and even more in certain cases. When they all put in their requests, suddenly, the new boss and his own manager realized that there was no one around to take up weekend shifts. That's what you get, sir!

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    <00
    via Unsplash+ (Getty Images)

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • This workplace environment may have been the military, but obviously, this kind of structural and organizational mishap could have happened anywhere. These employees had earned the right to take their vacations, but the fact that this new guy thought having everyone go on leave at once wouldn't result in a workflow issue is beyond most of us.

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    Typical im not native English, im sorry for mistakes or flow issues at the start of a reddit post.
    via Rude-Strawberry4097
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    Story is some months old already - In my job(military), we get a decent number of extra hours when we work on the weekends, around 60-65. Which is normally
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    happening not so often due to the amount of personnel which can work on the weekends. Due to some mismanagement, paternal leaves etc etc.
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    Our "weekend workforce" for this specific position was now consisting of max. 7 people.
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    Therefore, as you can imagine, within some month we all got some huge extra hours. The extra hours are normally per regulation to be taken
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    in free time, but since we all know how that would end, we mostly get them paid out. Cue in our new - bossboss.
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    He was all pro family and pro off time. So when we asked our boss how he(bossboss) would like to proceed regarding the extra hours, he told us
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    "the regulation is to prioritize free time, not the money. So do that". 5 of us, told him (boss) on different occasions within the same week, that this
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    will be a catastrophe but he(bossboss) demanded that we take our time off. Cue in - malicious compliance.
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    Cheezburger Image 10505764864
    via Unsplash+ (Getty Images)

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

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    In the middle of the month, we all submitted our time-off requests to use up our extra hours, which our boss approved, since we're now prioritizing our free time.
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    Starting at the end of the month, we each had scheduled leave. The work schedules are planned monthly and approved about a week before the new month
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    begins. Each of us had accumulated between 200 and 500 extra hours, which meant we were taking anywhere from about 1 month (based on
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    a 41-hour workweek) to up to 11 weeks off, depending on the amount of time each person had built up.
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    When our plans guy was coming around asking which weekend shifts we want to do, we all told him that we are having days off. He went full panic
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    since the boss and bossboss obliviously are waiting for a set plan by the end of the week.
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    The solution was, that people from other companies in the battalion had to come into our unit and work there on the weekends.
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    After our scheduled leaves, we were all allowed again to get our extra hours paid, since our bossboss had a nice talk with our grandboss
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    (had to use the term, since i saw it in another post today), after the other bossboss's of the battalion complained.
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    Sometimes the military is a fun space. Edit for some extra context :We also had to do nightshifts Mondays to Fridays but could leave while other personnel is on duty. So we came in at
    via Rude-Strawberry4097
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    the end of the day and were on duty until the next morning. So that had to be compensated too Edit2: Thanks for the queue/cue tip
    via Rude-Strawberry4097

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workplace-stories work stories toxic-workplace job bosses work military employees PTO overworked-employees Horrible Bosses reddit thread bad bosses Reddit company toxic-work-environment
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