Time off

well, once you judged me for breaking a “rule” that you decided was a rule but really wasn’t at all. i’m not sure you really don’t judge others in these scenarios.

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Never claimed to not judge anyone. I judge people all the time, pot.

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Same. And I’m salaried, so if I’ve been getting lots of work done, i may b lax about “making up the time” but if I’ve been dicking around on GoActuary and have stuff I need to finish, I will work late and make sure my work gets done.

If by “discussed with your manager” you mean “mentioned to my boss that I need to take the cat to the vet, so I’m blocking off 3-5, just to be safe”, then yes, I’ve discussed it with my manager.

We’ve had people miss huddles because the plumber showed up, or they had a dentist appointment. It’s not a big deal, and it’s certainly not something that happens under the table.

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Also, as I recall, you asked for advice/brought up the situation, didn’t like the advice I gave, and then for some reason are still holding that against me. idk, that’s not the same as ratting you out?

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I’m more likely to tell my immediate team (pseudo boss, actuarial partner in crime) if I’m not going to be around than my actual boss - that guy doesn’t even read my emails.

Appointments just get blocked on the calendar - half/full days off I put through the system and watch the request go through automatically after my boss ignores it.

Oh and apparently we have 7 hour workdays here, so I’ve probably already made up some missed time.

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My company gives “unlimited PTO”, so I always figure there’s no reason to make a formal request. I usually don’t even say anything. If I wasn’t working from home I would probably let my manager know that I won’t be in the office, but I still wouldn’t make a formal PTO request in the HR system.

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Our system doesn’t involve “formal requests”. We usually report PTO in the system after taking it. We list it as “planned” or “unplanned”, and our manager sees what PTO we take and whether we called it planned. So it would be awkward to book a lot of vacation that my boss didn’t know about in advance. (or to be absent for a big chunk of time without letting my team know in advance.) But absolutely no one expects actuaries to seek formal approval to take a few hours off to run an errand.

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There are talks of this happening here, but given the uproar that occurred when upper management accidentally on purpose announced they were eliminating the “winter break” (Christmas through New Years), I’m not sure this will happen anymore.

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If I am going to be away from my desk for more than an hour or two during “working hours” I just let my supervisor know. I never make up the time.

Rule here, is if you are arriving to work more than 20 mins late, just let someone know, so people don’t think you are dead in a ditch somewhere.

Ugh. unlimited PTO can be okay, if it’s “we actually have a standard, but we don’t want to say so in writing because then we have to pay it out if you leave without taking it”. That’s a way for the company to offer fairly generous vacation time without accruing a liability on their books. But it’s all too often “take what you need, but don’t be needy”. I’ve had a few friends who had the latter, and it really sucks.

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i thought you were claiming you don’t judge. if you’re not claiming that, i have no issue here.

my advice in this situation is to gauge the culture and if it’s not super obvious, ask your boss. every office is different, so what we do might not be applicable.

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Our current vacation day allotment is pretty lame-sauce actually (15 days total, for everybody, regardless of tenure). Plus the winter break.

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This is getting into a personal fight, and isn’t even related to the thread topic. Both of you knock it off.

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k

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I read somewhere that when companies allow for unlimited PTO, the workers actually take LESS. Usually when the alternative was use-it-or-lose-it. People tended to use all their time off just because.

I think the rules are diff for salary vs hourly but there are so few hourly that rules are essentially the same for all, except that diff teams apply additional diff rules on top of formal rules.

We are supposed to track what would otherwise be overtime if we were hourly and also track time that we are out that doesn’t amount to a full day. The former is not meant to be a bank for the latter, including “don’t think you can take the latter, just because you’ve done the former”, explicitly stated as such. My boss in particular recognizes we couldn’t possibly take enough of the second to make the two amounts equal, so encourages us to take a half day (or even two :scream:) a week in the less busy times to make up some of the discrepancy.

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I’m with most people here, anything less than 4 hours and it doesn’t get reported.

I used to work with a woman who was meticulous. She often worked 50-60 hour weeks, and then she’d put in a request for two hours of PTO. I was her manager and I denied them and told her since she worked until midnight last Tues or whatever, don’t worry about two hours.

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Our permissive time off has been pretty great. There is no real tracking, and I’ve easily taken 4-5 weeks most years, and I’m very likely to take at least 6-7 weeks in the 52 weeks after the travel restrictions are over, and as long as the work gets done no one will care.

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My problem is that I already feel like I have too much work to take time off as it is. So there is never a “good” time to do it. Having a bank and having a use it or lose it policy makes me far more likely to actually use the PTO, because otherwise I’d just keep putting it off. I used very little time off in 2020 in the first three quarters, and knowing I had that expiration date on my PTO is what motivated me to prioritize it. I’ve learned my lesson from that, but without the impetus, I would have taken maybe 1.5 weeks last year.

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I only took 3 weeks last year, and I’m really feeling the burnout. Unless the travel restriction is lifted during a reserve season, I’ll be out for 2-3 weeks within a couple of weeks of that happening.

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