bloody hell

[winterbadger]

This situation truly warrants the "pants" icon.

I had calculated to a nicety how far negative I could go in leave to take my trip next week.

As you can imagine, that didn't involve me taking nearly a week off sick (I can't recall the last time I did this that wasn't recovery from an operation).

So, I have the choice of taking my vacation as planned but taking the time off without pay (which would cost me a very large sum, let's call it X) or cancelling my trip (which would cost me, with nonrecoverable plane fare &c., about 2/3 of X).

This will be at least the third time in the past four years that I've had to cancel an overseas trip at the last minute. Of course, the last time I *took* an overseas trip it wasn't a 100% happy experience either.

*sigh*

Comments

[winterbadger]

All my sick leave and holiday comes out of one pool. Of which I get 17 days a year (because I'm a long-time employee!)

I am currently at about zero hours; I can go to -40 without getting the OK of a company vice president, and that's what I was planning on doing. Anything more, and I need to take leave without pay, which is bad for me for obvious reasons and doesn't make me popular with the managers because at least my paid time off counts against the overhead built into the company's contract rates. Time off without pay I'm not billing *and* I'm not burning OH.

[silme.livejournal.com]

17 days a year? Eek. That's horrible.

[winterbadger]

Yes, yes it is, and it's pretty common in the industry.

Since you start out with 0 hours and build up through the year, I don't think I've ever had a positive balance above maybe 8-16 hours. I *know* I haven't had a positive balance at any time in the last 2-3 years.

[silme.livejournal.com]

What industry are you in again?

I wished you'd emigrated years ago... The US is ridiculous for sick/holiday leave, unless you're high up in a government job. (A friend worked at NCAR for years. She had so many sick/vacation days it was silly -- and they accumulated from year to year. Nobody there went through all of their days each year unless something quite horrible happened as, after a few years, you'd have hundreds of days in the bank.)

[winterbadger]

Defense/security contracting. I've even met people who get *less*. {boggle}

I wished you'd emigrated years ago...

You and me both, sister! :-\

[silme.livejournal.com]

Oy.

I used to get 12 leave days when I taught in Boulder that could be used for sickness or personal. I could carry over only one day a year, but before that rule went into place, I had a bank of about 60 sick days (I used to get 9 sick days and three personal days a year). They were frozen and could be used only for illness once I'd gone through the twelve days per year.

New employees without a bank of sick days were stuck when they ran out of sick leave, so us oldtimers each gave a day out of our banks to create a bank for them.

And then we had the usual school holidays on top of it all.

[winterbadger]

We have periodic appeals come around for donations for people who have excess leave to help those with family emergencies. I asked once why, after having both parents become terminally ill one after the other and needing to take time off to move one of them from her home to assisted living and from there to hospice I had never rated getting one of those appeals (my managers knew everything that was going on with me). I was told that my family emergencies "didn't qualify".