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Antiwork

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We have FTO (Flexible Time Off) that is to be used for everything (sick, vacation, any other kind of time off). We can carry up to 20 days every year. We also get four personal holidays - these have to be used or they're gone so vacation or no, I try to charge my time to personal holidays at the start of the year so I don't lose them. As I have been with the company coming on 24 years, I am at the max number of weeks for FTO - 6 weeks. I have also been carrying over the 20 days for several years. So at the start of the year, I take the 20 days off the top and it comes to having to use 34 days for the calendar year. I try not to dip into the 20 days as I am supposed to get them as pay if I ever leave.

For holidays we get NY Day, MLK Day, Memorial Day, July 4, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, day after Thanksgiving (my fave) and Christmas. Our office used to get Patriots Day off as the building is located at the end of the Boston Marathon route and it was too difficult to get into the city that day. We would have to work on Columbus Day while the rest of the Massachusetts offices would have that day off and have to work Patriots Day. During the Pandemic, they took away Patriots Day and gave us the 4th personal day. Last week we were told they're now giving us Junteenth and Veteran's Day in 2024 and taking us back down to three personal days.
 
I have it a little easier. Unlimited PTO which is used for everything. I come and go as I please and I work from home, or the office as I please. I have KPI Metrics, and a bonus program to keep me in line.
 
Unlimited PTO sounds amazing, but absolutely wouldn't work in all industries. Also there's this:
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220520-the-smoke-and-mirrors-of-unlimited-paid-time-off

Yet there are also a number of companies that have experimented with UPTO only to end the policy and pronounce it a failure. Workers often end up taking less time off than they did with a fixed policy. A 2018 survey showed workers with UPTO took fewer holidays than those with a fixed allocation; according to another poll, one-third of US workers with UPTO always work on holiday.

US-based networking company Facet is one company that abandoned UPTO after it found its workers were taking fewer holidays. The CEO of London-based recruiting company Unknown, meanwhile, went viral in a LinkedIn post that explained the firm cancelled its UPTO scheme after people felt guilty and never took time off. (They’ve instead transitioned to giving 32 paid days off, universally across the ranks.)

Part of the problem is that in some companies, taking leave is something many workers don't do often enough – a phenomenon particularly pronounced in the US. "People don't take vacations now, even when they're accrued," says Peter Cappelli, professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, US, and director of its Center for Human Resources. “The reason is there's pressure on them not to do it."

Granting unlimited paid holiday doesn’t make these problems go away – in fact, it can make them worse. With UPTO, workers are not technically owed any vacation days, since there's no fixed number, and everything must be cleared by the boss on a case-by-case basis. For workers, establishing what the ‘right’ amount of paid time off to ask for often depends on observing the behaviour of colleagues and bosses. If colleagues are only taking 10 days per year, asking for more could feel inappropriate.
Click to expand...
 
"Unlimited" PTO is a marketing scam, nothing more. At my current firm we have it, but it is at least combined with a quarterly utilization bonus for high billers. The bonus is tiered based on your utilization percentage, and 85% or more qualifies. So basically, if you want any bonus at all, you get 1 week off per quarter whether it's sick, vacation, or personal time. If you don't care about getting a bonus, take the extra time and make it up next quarter. *shrug*

So it works OK in consulting, but certainly not so great in other industries.
 
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Solo law was simple: Eat what you kill.

Nice also to have the freedom to pay my assistant of 25 years a salary with no leave limitations and give bonuses when the kills were good. The main downside to sole practice is that there is no one there to provide the service but you, but the autonomy is certainly great.
 
I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot at my job.

90% of my various video feeds are Whose Line Is It Anyway clips. It wasn’t easy but I got it done.
 
Got back from three days off after having some minor surgery last week. This morning I sent my manager a note responding to the email she sent me while I was out that I needed to get her my Q4 performance report, which was due on 11/27, apologizing and telling her she would have it today. In her response back to me, I thought she might say something like welcome back, how are you feeling before reaming me out. But she just reamed me out. Well, not reamed, but made it clear her manager was asking and I was the only one who hadn't sent it to her. I'm probably making more of it than I need to I know, but I was kind of expecting a little more from her. She hardly checked in to see how I was - my two teammates and her manager reached out to me separately to see how I was feeling. She texted me Thursday with a work question (with apologies) and included a hope you're OK comment.

Grrrr. I do this a lot, don't I? Every time I do I say I'm not going to let it bother me. Easier said than done.
 
Best feeling:
Sunday, I returned to work. When I got there, the kids were on an outing, but the staff welcomed me back. When the kids returned, one of them yelled "AMBER!," and ran up to me and bear hugged me. Later in the evening, they were so eager to show me all the cool stuff they were working on. And I'm thinking... "this is love."
 
Yesterday, I learned the Developmentally Disabled and Cognitively Impaired house at my agency is closing down in 30 days. Not a state thing, but we don't have the skilled staff to make it work.

They gave us the option of returning to the behavioral stabilization home or possibly going over to the Family Supports team.
 
I have two interviews this week for DSP positions.

Started looking elsewhere after it became clear I'm not really a good fit anymore and after some demonstrably false rumors were spread about me.
 
Back to work after being off for a couple of weeks, plus working from home after my foot surgery. I was wondering if I missed a memo about today also being a holiday as there was hardly any traffic and there's so few people in the office. I got off the elevator on my floor and was greeted by a "Construction area - do not enter" sign so I was wondering if I missed a notification about working from home today. I'm glad I came in as I do need to get back into the swing of things, eating normally, etc. We have a new person starting on our team and I thought she was going to be in today so I wanted to meet her in person. My manager had to work from home as one of her kids has no school today so she told the new person to come in tomorrow. Had I but known....
 
It takes a lot of something to arrive back in town after 1am and then go to work at 6am.

Stupidity is the word I think. Yet, here I am…
 
I need a break from direct care for awhile. I don't know what else I could do, but I want a job where I don't have to bring work home with me.
 
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