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Timeless advice (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
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[-] jaschen306@sh.itjust.works 14 points 2 days ago

Pro Tip to youngesters just getting into corporate.

Don't let the company think they actually care about you. They don't. HR doesn't care. Executives doesn't. Nobody doesn't. You're the only person that cares about you.

Also, work is just a business transaction. They need your service. You need their money. Do make friends, but not at your expense.

[-] DJDarren@sopuli.xyz 17 points 2 days ago

Americans and their attitude to their holiday allowance will never cease to amaze me.

Literally the only consideration I need to make on behalf of my employer is whether my days off will leave less than 75% of my department out. And as that never happens then I never have to think about it.

If you have holiday available to you, take it.

[-] nickiwest@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

"Hard work" is one of the cultural norms that the Puritans instilled in our society. Our ancestors fought hard to form labor unions and to guarantee that we wouldn't have to work 80-hour weeks, and yet here we are.

Not to say that people in other countries don't work hard. They do. Many work harder than their counterparts in the US. But their governments have (very reasonable) limits on the amount of time their employers can expect them to work. (As well as minimums for time off, sick leave, etc.)

It's a weird holdover of American culture that spending too much time at work and putting the company's needs before your own is somehow virtuous.

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[-] waigl@lemmy.world 159 points 3 days ago

The Scrooge McDuck avatar lighting a cigar with a dollar note makes me think this was either satire to begin with, or the original poster has lost any and all contact with reality.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 48 points 3 days ago

Business Bros love to run a boiler room enterprise that prints decals for the local dollar store and pretend they're going to be the next Steve Jobs.

[-] Empricorn@feddit.nl 23 points 3 days ago

Personally, I'm so sick of people saying "it's parody/satire!" That's on the same level as fucking with people, then laughing "it's just a prank, bro!"

There's so many garbage takes and smooth-brained people believing the dumbest shit now, despite having all collective human knowledge at our fingertips... If your super funny satire is indistinguishable from these, it adds absolutely nothing.

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[-] aeternum 37 points 3 days ago

If your company can't function without you, it's time for a pay rise.

[-] umbraroze@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 day ago

If you want European pro tips:

  1. While in internship, slap your employer with "Oh hi, by the way, THIS is my union" and if the response is anything other than "Okay, cool! I'll check their collective bargaining agreement for our next meeting" maybe start looking for next post, just saying.
  2. If you are in internship or whatever, and your employer has not asked anything about union details or whatever until last week, yeah, you might as well start preparing for disappointment.
[-] Dogiedog64@lemmy.world 98 points 3 days ago

I worked craft beer sales for a hot minute. Place was a disaster, so I was already looking for a new job anyway. Labor day rolls around, and I inform my bosses A MONTH OUT that I will be taking a week off at the end of August to go on vacation. They approve it, all is well, everything's great, I get back to work. The week I leave, I remind them that I'll be gone for a week, I won't be available for work things, and that I'll see them next week. They say cool, tell me to have a great time, and I clock out for the day.

9:01AM, the day I leave, I get a text. "Hey Dogiedog64, when are you coming back? We need to have a chat about some things." I don't bother responding, since I'm on vacation, and moreover, I'm driving on the highway. The day passes, I get where I'm going, but it's past work hours, and I want to enjoy my vacation. THE NEXT DAY, they call me. 9:01AM. I miss it, they leave a message and another text to the effect of "Call us back. It's important." I don't. I'm on vacation, they KNOW I'm on vacation, and it can wait.

6PM rolls around, and I get a text. "Dogiedog64, since you didn't call us back today, we're unfortunately going to have to let you go. Your performance wasn't cutting it and we've gotten numerous customer complaints about you." I know for a fact this was bullshit, as I had done the rounds before I left, and all my customers loved me and our beer, but hated our managers and distribution scheme.

Now, you may ask "what was the point of that story?" It's simple: companies will find a reason to fire you for nothing, no matter how well you lay out boundaries or plans, so don't bother treating them like they're special. I lost my job, but I did nothing wrong; I set clear boundaries and expectations, with ample documentation, notice, and approval, and they STILL fired my ass.

So yeah. Take your PTO. It's YOURS. Go on that vacation, leave your work life AT WORK, and have a good time. Your coworkers will be fine without you, and if the company collapses while you're gone, they deserved to collapse anyway. Life is simply too short to spend it all slaving away for a company that hates you.

[-] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 61 points 3 days ago

also it's free to contact the local labor bureau or eeoe if you're fired for taking a vacation, they'll even help you with lawyers, mediators etc

[-] fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 41 points 3 days ago

If it collapses without you, then maybe it should be your company.

[-] RidderSport@feddit.org 8 points 3 days ago

This would be a case a law student would be able to win you in Germany, not that companies here don't try it here anyway.

[-] noxypaws@pawb.social 20 points 3 days ago

Is there an ending to that story? If I was in that situation, I would have ignored it all and then came back the day I said I'd come back and act like everything was normal, make up something about how my phone got broken or stolen or something.

At the very least I hope you tried to get unemployment or some such!

[-] Dogiedog64@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

The ending was pretty underwhelming. I wasn't employed long enough to get unemployment, and haven't been able to get another job since. Now back at school pursuing a new degree.

[-] BigBenis@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

That sounds like cut and dry wrongful termination. You should have sued, if not for rightful compensation then to make sure that they think again before they pull the same shit with other employees.

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[-] madjo@feddit.nl 24 points 3 days ago

Also stop using the acronym, because it's too easy to forget what those letters mean when just the acronym is being used. Call it "Paid Time Off".

[-] KyuubiNoKitsune 6 points 2 days ago

We call it vacation in the rest of the English speaking world.

[-] Fredthefishlord 4 points 2 days ago

Vacation ≠ pto and it's strange to equate them. There's various non paid ways to take a vacation, such as a(n intended) gap between jobs, unpaid additional leave, or on a 3 day weekend. There's people working in my job with 6 and 7 weeks of pto that still take unpaid additional vacations.

[-] sem 3 points 2 days ago

How are they taking unpaid vacations when they could be using PTO?

[-] Fredthefishlord 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

They use all of their pto, as well as taking more. Also, management allows people to choose if they want to use pto when taking a day off. All unused pto pays out at the end of the year and raises are in October -- wait to use it and it adds a dollar per pto hour

I know people who are off even up to a third of the year

[-] KyuubiNoKitsune 1 points 2 days ago

Where do you live? Where I live, we call it Semester..

Literally, the only place I have ever heard PTO used is in the US.

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[-] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 days ago

Tip for managers: anticipate how your staff taking PTO will impact your team and try as hard as possible to minimize any disruption. And realize that there are times when their PTO is going to be inconvenient and you're going to have to deal with that.

[-] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 54 points 3 days ago

As an immigrant, I thank the god and fates I didn't end up in America. This level of guilt tripping and toxicity is astounding.

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[-] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago

I think both stances need more nuance. Yeah - if your company doesn't hire someone that can fulfill your essential duties while you're gone, that's on them.

But when you do have someone who can cover your duties while you're gone, it makes sense that you can't all take off the same day. I work in municipal government for a small city, and my boss and I are each other's backups. We've worked together for years, and we haven't taken the same day off yet, but both take several weeks a year. Heck - tomorrow there's an annual conference we both should attend, and we alternate each year who goes because someone has to hold down the fort.

If your company takes care of you and treats you with respect, most people will think of this sort of stuff and reasonably accommodate. Most businesses with this mindset of don’t take PTO are just running skeleton crews to boost profits at the expense of work life balance. They are typically the ones always guilting people about taking the very sparse amount of PTO offered in the US. I am union and my company treats us well, so I always think about my team without being asked. I didn’t when I worked for shitty big chains who took advantage of workers when I was younger.

[-] phx@lemmy.world 28 points 3 days ago

I get both sides of this argument. Some businesses have certain periods where it's extremely busy followed by an ebb in work. Accountants for example may be balls-to-the-wall at year end, but that period doesn't justify hiring somebody who might otherwise have their thumb up their ass and nothing to do most of the rest of the year. I've also had IT jobs that resolved around projects in this way., and there are always a certain number of SME's that you kinda need at launch.

At the other side, I've known employers who basically ran the bare-minimum amount of staff for a team/project (or less and worked the rest to the bone) and getting them to sign off on holidays for any reasonable length of time was near impossible. Those are the types that would try to call you from the middle of open-heart-surgery if they could, and yeah anyone in this situations should be looking for a new job. The hard part being that getting the time to do proper job hunting was often also similarly difficult because of work, and bills still needed to be paid.

[-] Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 days ago

If your employer doesn't hire enough bodies to make sure the work gets done when people call in sick or take PTO, that's on them. Absenteeism can range between 3-5% on any given day, and can be industry dependent. This is something that should be factored into the amount of work that needs to get done per day on average when deciding on appropriate headcount. Companies that want to run skeleton crews because, "muh profits," can find out when they fuck around. I was always taught that when it comes to things critical for your survival, you should always have them in triplicate. This is why I have an E-bike, analog bike, and bus pass; if one stops working, I have backups. Employers should have this mindset with critical tasks and headcount.

[-] RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 46 points 3 days ago

I take the other members of the team into consideration. It does make sense since I work with them fives days a week, don't want to make shit harder for them, within reason.

[-] wieson@feddit.org 38 points 3 days ago

Exactly! Not taking your PTO will create pressure for your coworkers to also pass over their PTO or work longer hours.

Don't set a bad precedent.

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[-] Soup@lemmy.world 13 points 3 days ago

Yea, no. At my last job every project was constantly late because they kept over promising and clearly didn’t have enough people for what they committed to. I couldn’t even get a department meeting once a month for an hour because everyone was always “too busy”.

These projects always need everyone to commit to it like it’s a personal passion project because their goals are unreasonable. If they can’t handle someone being away for a day then the manager clearly cannot plan and/or the enployees need better training(in my case half of them were simply stubborn and ineffective on top of the questionable management). Sure, don’t take a week off right before a reasonably set deadline if the work’s not done but otherwise do whatever.

I had someone call me yelling because I was going to finish the job in exactly the amount of time I said it would take me, but I started a day late due to technical errors which made another project go over by a day(and that day I still stayed late to make sure things were done!). If you can’t take a day off then you also can’t be sick, and if managers don’t account for THAT obvious possibility then they are fucking stupid and awful managers, zero exceptions.

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[-] vapeloki@lemmy.world 61 points 3 days ago

Over here in Germany where everybody has at least 3 weeks paid time off (being ill does not count to this contingent btw), it is common that leaves are planned in the beginning of the year for larger vacations, so there are no collisions.

Also, if you have children you have priority during school breaks for paied leaves.

This concept could be copied by us employers also, I wonder why not? Maybe because this way you can pressure your employees with your vacation as leverage

[-] abbadon420@sh.itjust.works 44 points 3 days ago

And in this system, it is common courtesy to make effort to make sure your team has as few problems as possible from your absence. Of course it is also common courtesy that you are not contact for anything work related during your vacation time.

[-] enbipanic 33 points 3 days ago

This is exactly what seems to be missing in the US: courtesy.

A system that gives everyone entitled leave means better employees and less downtime due to leave (surprise surprise, courtesy leads to coordination).

Shockingly this leads to people caring about their team mates, and things aren't zero sum anymore.

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[-] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 50 points 3 days ago

If your business isn't sustainable when I visit family over the holidays, your business isn't sustainable.

[-] tooclose104@lemmy.ca 26 points 3 days ago

I remind my team about their vacation and floater days on a quarterly basis and all them to be used. All I ask for is time for me to pivot as needed and if you have ongoing projects that you reschedule planned meetings, document as you go, and ensure access is available to the rest of the team if needed.

I've had employees in the past who I've sat down and directly asked them to take time off (paid) because they were burning out and would otherwise push through it. I've even reminded some of available leaves of absence for situations in their personal lives.

If the business can't continue without any one person, then the business isn't sustainable as-is and that's not fair to anyone. Hire more people if it's coverage or train your people if there's skill gaps. Documentation of systems and processes is also crucial.

[-] squaresinger@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

If the business can’t continue without any one person, then the business isn’t sustainable as-is and that’s not fair to anyone. Hire more people if it’s coverage or train your people if there’s skill gaps. Documentation of systems and processes is also crucial.

This is it, and not only for PTO reasons. Anyone can get in an accident, get sick or resign at any time. As a manager you just cannot depend on a permanent all-hands-on-deck situation where everyone just works like a cog in the machine (as in, if one cog is missing the whole machine is down).

Running a company like that is terrible practice and a disaster waiting to happen.

Always keep the bus factor in mind (as in "how many people can get hit by a bus before the project grinds to a halt?") and plan accordingly.

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[-] HarneyToker@lemmy.world 22 points 3 days ago

I mean, there are jobs where the first posters advice is relevant. I’m a musician, and there are just rehearsals I cannot miss. When I am working with a high school, I cant take PTO during key production days or performances because I am the only person at the place that can do exactly what I do: that’s why they hired me.

[-] GroundedGator@lemmy.world 21 points 3 days ago

I work on a business communication tool. You know those things you have in your phone that people send messages to and expect you to answer.

When I leave my computer, that's it, I'm done. I don't have the application on my phone. I didn't check email or messages after 5 or 6 and most days I work for a few hours before I check them.

On weekends, I turn off my computer.

I've been doing this for years now. No one notices, or if they do they are smart enough to not bring it up.

I came up in a world where we were the ones introducing Yahoo and AOL into the business world, I had a phone on my desk that was essential, and email was king. I rarely had a laptop and they were quite rare. When you left the office, it was expected that you were some for the day.

The grind culture over the last decade or so is insane. It is insane that people will give over half their time to a company that would show them the door in an instant.

Yes, you should do everything possible to set up your team and colleagues for success when you take your PTO, but that should never require a tether to the office.

[-] Grimtuck@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago

It's not just the last decade. Office Space came out 25 years ago! We're more connected now, but this ridiculous work culture in the US has existed since at least the 1980s.

I'm glad we have some balance here in Europe.

[-] Corelli_III@midwest.social 5 points 2 days ago

"timeless advice" motherfuckers when PTO stops existing 😯

[-] ITGuyLevi@programming.dev 4 points 2 days ago

I am lucky to get the time I do (It's more than most people I know) but I recently too two full weeks off to spend with my wife for our 20th anniversary, it was amazing. After I got back to work I had hundreds of emails to catch up on and so much extra work that had piled up I started thinking about all the extra work I had taken on over the years to "cover down" for people and then realized that was the most consecutive time I've taken off in the past 9 years.

I think it's time for a change. Not a job change per-se, but time to start taking time for me, my family, and my health.

[-] ravelin@lemmy.ml 15 points 3 days ago

Take PTO Make sure your absence maximizes disruption that only you can fix Clean everything up right when you get back Job security!

[-] rising_man@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago

Most people who get promoted in my company are taking holidays after being hired, are back from maternity/paternity leave, are taking lots of break, some don't even work the hours they should.

The key is just to be visible.

Those who work a lot silently are not visible because they think they will be noticed, and the management needs them to stay where they are to do the hard work.

Just take your leaves.

Ugh, soon...once things stop exploding in infascinating ways my coworkers aren't equipped to handle without leaving a bonfire for my return. Not their fault, I'm just the guy tasked with the oddball stuff that looks nothing like their day-to-day. Fine when things are the normal amount of on fire, less so when actively erupting and (recently) literally on fire.

[-] ITGuyLevi@programming.dev 4 points 2 days ago

Take some time off my dude, it's not worth your health and being that guy will get in the cracks before you realize something is off. After taking two weeks off recently I came back to the world on fire and have started to realize I don't care that much!

[-] Rooskie91@discuss.online 23 points 3 days ago

If you haven't hired enough people to cover vacations and unexpected absences, you've hired poorly.

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[-] logicbomb@lemmy.world 20 points 3 days ago

It does depend on the size of the company. If it's a small business, it may have no leeway occasionally, and you may need to time your PTO.

That being said, the last time I worked for a small business and they contacted me during my vacation to beg me to work, I quit directly after the vacation ended.

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[-] RBWells@lemmy.world 17 points 3 days ago

I mean, having a plan for the work you won't be there to do is normal, I tell my boss "I will be out on Friday, will you do x, and when I get back I will do Y".

And sure, would not request a day if the other two people in my department will both be out that same day.

This is in the flexible environment I work in, though. Don't need to take PTO for appointments, can come in late or leave early, can take a long lunch to go for a walk or run, nobody even blinks. I come in late sometimes because I needed to do gardening before work. I am flexible for them because they are flexible for me.

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this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2025
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