How strict is your PTO policy?

[SearchMaster]

I am currently in a very small startup - we work hard but taking time off is no problem. I was at my previous company over a decade - we could take days off pretty much any time, if we needed a couple of hours in the middle of the day to run errands, it wasn't a problem. We received a lot of PTO but for the most part it wasn't abused (our department was 100+ in a company of ~3000).

My wife is in a completely different situation. She's a professional (accountant) in a small accounting firm. Everyone worked 80-100 hours/week during tax season (Saturdays were mandatory, but she and most others worked 90% of Sundays as well). She's just getting started in the industry after raising our kids for 10 years then managing a gym for ~6 years.

At this point she has almost no accrued PTO. In January, she contracted viral meningitis (probably due to all the hours and stress) so she had to take a week off (doctor had stated 2 weeks minimum). She still put in about 40 hours that week from home, which is NOT easy when your head is exploding, but was docked the full 40 hours of PTO and went into the red. Now that tax season is over, they're back to a more reasonable 50 hours/week but the PTO issue continues to be a sore spot.

Yesterday in a staff meeting, the boss-man (not the owner, but the guy who runs the office) made a comment about getting stricter about PTO. One of my wife's coworkers had come in very early last Friday because he had a doctor's appointment at lunchtime. So he took a 2 hour lunch period but still worked well over 10 hours for the day, but they retroactively forced him to take a half day (4 hours) of PTO. This worries my wife because with summer baseball upcoming, she might need to leave the office at ~4pm on Friday to watch our son and had planned to make it up with extra hours during the week, but now realizes this is not going to be allowed. In the same breath, boss-man announced that he going to take this Thursday off because he had worked last Friday (he came on board with the agreement of the owner that he gets Fridays off). I have no problem with his Fridays arrangement since it's part of his contract, but the hypocrisy of "I can make my own schedule but you have no flexibility at all" irks the shit out of me.

I've told her she needs to find a new job but with her relative inexperience in the industry she's hesitant to do so. She doesn't even like accounting but it's what her degree is in. Ironically she took the job initially because they convinced her that they really care about their employees but it sure doesn't seem that way.

Keep in mind these are professional people who are generally working half a dozen returns at a time, not a small retail establishment where someone not showing up makes the entire business short staffed. In my opinion, you should be judged by the job you do and as long as you're not ABUSING the flex time concept, there shouldn't be a problem - especially if you're going to expect/demand 80-100 hours a week for a third of the year.

Does anyone else work for a company like this?

 

[cbrunny]

It either is flex time, or it isn't. Can't be both. If it is and they pulled that garbage, I'd raise hell and burn the place to the ground on the way out. If it isn't, well, it isn't.

 

[Kelvrick]

Is she classified as an exempt or a non-exempt employee? I don't know what state you're in, but some of that stuff could be considered illegal.

In my situation, i'm at a top 10 accounting firm and work ~80 hours a year for 4 months out of the year but otherwise am very flexible with my pto. A lot of it also has to do with the relationship you have with your senior/manager but as long as my work is finished, my superiors don't care. I usually don't show up until 9:30 every day since I wait out traffic and 1.5-2 hour lunches are no problem.

I've been here over 10 years though and have a little sweat equity built into my relationships, but most of the seniors/managers I know won't care if you need some time to take care of personal stuff. Once someone establishes that they are responsible for the first year, I'm a lot more lenient when I'm dealing with people as well.

 

[Homerboy]

Sounds like a shitty place to work.
If they aren't offering ANY semblance of balance between life and work, GTFO

 

[Drako]

Most companies I have worked at in the past had "comp time". Usage of this was usually left up to each groups managers.

 

[SearchMaster]

It either is flex time, or it isn't. Can't be both. If it is and they pulled that garbage, I'd raise hell and burn the place to the ground on the way out. If it isn't, well, it isn't.

That's the point - there is zero flex time except for the head honcho. But IMHO, if you're going to demand your employees work on their own time during tax season (and working more than ten hours every single day for 4 months is absolutely demanding "their" time), then you should have some flexibility during the slow(er) season.

 

[Exterous]

Thats fucked up. I'd take a close look at her employee handbook\contract\state law\etc

I agree that it absolutely doesn't sound like they care about their employees. Unless you need the second income I would quit and look for somewhere else to work. Or even find a lower paying job while looking for somewhere better. Life is too short for that level of bullshit

The strictest place was one where I just had to coordinate my time off with the only other IT person in the company. There were some blackout dates around big transitions\upgrades but that was it. Now I get all kinds of time off, flexible hours and no micromanagement.

 

[cliftonite]

We have 5 weeks of vacation time and can take it whenever we want with reason.

 

[TXHokie]

I don't work for jerks....life is too short for that.

 

[brianmanahan]

we have sick time that's separate from vacation time

 

[lxskllr]

In my situation, i'm at a top 10 accounting firm and work ~80 hours a year for 4 months out of the year but otherwise am very flexible with my pto.

That's my kind of job. 5 hours a week, and 8 months a year off. I'll do it for half your salary. Put in a word for me, k?

 

[AznAnarchy99]

I'd quit.

 

[PenguinPower]

I am currently in a very small startup - we work hard but taking time off is no problem. I was at my previous company over a decade - we could take days off pretty much any time, if we needed a couple of hours in the middle of the day to run errands, it wasn't a problem. We received a lot of PTO but for the most part it wasn't abused (our department was 100+ in a company of ~3000).

My wife is in a completely different situation. She's a professional (accountant) in a small accounting firm. Everyone worked 80-100 hours/week during tax season (Saturdays were mandatory, but she and most others worked 90% of Sundays as well). She's just getting started in the industry after raising our kids for 10 years then managing a gym for ~6 years.

At this point she has almost no accrued PTO. In January, she contracted viral meningitis (probably due to all the hours and stress) so she had to take a week off (doctor had stated 2 weeks minimum). She still put in about 40 hours that week from home, which is NOT easy when your head is exploding, but was docked the full 40 hours of PTO and went into the red. Now that tax season is over, they're back to a more reasonable 50 hours/week but the PTO issue continues to be a sore spot.

Yesterday in a staff meeting, the boss-man (not the owner, but the guy who runs the office) made a comment about getting stricter about PTO. One of my wife's coworkers had come in very early last Friday because he had a doctor's appointment at lunchtime. So he took a 2 hour lunch period but still worked well over 10 hours for the day, but they retroactively forced him to take a half day (4 hours) of PTO. This worries my wife because with summer baseball upcoming, she might need to leave the office at ~4pm on Friday to watch our son and had planned to make it up with extra hours during the week, but now realizes this is not going to be allowed. In the same breath, boss-man announced that he going to take this Thursday off because he had worked last Friday (he came on board with the agreement of the owner that he gets Fridays off). I have no problem with his Fridays arrangement since it's part of his contract, but the hypocrisy of "I can make my own schedule but you have no flexibility at all" irks the shit out of me.

I've told her she needs to find a new job but with her relative inexperience in the industry she's hesitant to do so. She doesn't even like accounting but it's what her degree is in. Ironically she took the job initially because they convinced her that they really care about their employees but it sure doesn't seem that way.

Keep in mind these are professional people who are generally working half a dozen returns at a time, not a small retail establishment where someone not showing up makes the entire business short staffed. In my opinion, you should be judged by the job you do and as long as you're not ABUSING the flex time concept, there shouldn't be a problem - especially if you're going to expect/demand 80-100 hours a week for a third of the year.

Does anyone else work for a company like this?

Salaried, exempt? If so, that's an illegal practice and your wife should notify the DOL.

 

[Chiropteran]

Sounds like BS to me.

You should suggest your wife to not use her PTO and see what happens. You work hourly, 60 hours a week you get paid for 60 hours. Miss a whole 12-hour day and you get paid for 48 hours of work. Makes logical sense. If you work by salary, it's a bit different- you get the same pay every week regardless of hours. Now some companies can rightfully pro-rate your pay if you don't work X days during the pay period, which makes sense. But how the hell are they going to dock the pay of someone who came in late but still worked 10 hours on a day just because that person didn't use PTO? I'm no lawyer, but I think it's illegal to let an employee work for 10 hours in a day and then refuse to pay them for that time.

It's sounds like this company wants to have it's cake and eat it too, in that it wants to pay a set salary to avoid overtime but it also wants to deduct pay for every hour missed. This is something where he laws vary from state to state, but I doubt it's completely legal anywhere.

 

[Insomniator]

Don't understand why businesses run like this... unless you have a bunch of min wage teenagers PTO should be pretty much unlimited. If its abused you get disciplined.

At both my IT jobs we pretty much took whatever time we want, knowing that we may be asked to work a Saturday night or do some other extra work when needed. We are all adults... no one is taking 8 weeks a year + 3 hour lunches. Officially we have 23 days of PTO, most people scramble to use it by the end of the year.

We're not in middle school anymore... if I have something important like a doctors apt during the day I'm not going to be 'forced' into taking a half day of PTO. Our work still gets done...

 

[SearchMaster]

Is she classified as an exempt or a non-exempt employee? I don't know what state you're in, but some of that stuff could be considered illegal.

In my situation, i'm at a top 10 accounting firm and work ~80 hours a year for 4 months out of the year but otherwise am very flexible with my pto. A lot of it also has to do with the relationship you have with your senior/manager but as long as my work is finished, my superiors don't care. I usually don't show up until 9:30 every day since I wait out traffic and 1.5-2 hour lunches are no problem.

I've been here over 10 years though and have a little sweat equity built into my relationships, but most of the seniors/managers I know won't care if you need some time to take care of personal stuff. Once someone establishes that they are responsible for the first year, I'm a lot more lenient when I'm dealing with people as well.

She's obviously exempt.

Your situation is how it should be IMO. Yes, everyone knows that public accounting is a grind but your employees will be much more likely to stay motivated during the bad times if given some flexibility in the good times.

 

[SearchMaster]

Salaried, exempt? If so, that's an illegal practice and your wife should notify the DOL.

Interesting - I suspected it was but she thought that since she's exempt and it's a very small company they can do pretty much anything they want. But since you only highlighted the PTO-specific areas, it makes sense that they can't accept your work and take away your PTO for it at the same time.

 

[Platypus]

Not at all luckily, I can basically take what I need within reason.

 

[SearchMaster]

Thats fucked up. I'd take a close look at her employee handbook\contract\state law\etc

I agree that it absolutely doesn't sound like they care about their employees. Unless you need the second income I would quit and look for somewhere else to work. Or even find a lower paying job while looking for somewhere better. Life is too short for that level of bullshit

The strictest place was one where I just had to coordinate my time off with the only other IT person in the company. There were some blackout dates around big transitions\upgrades but that was it. Now I get all kinds of time off, flexible hours and no micromanagement.

The funny thing is that I knew that (a) she doesn't like accounting, and (b) would be miserable working that hard at a job she didn't like. She had gotten an offer that would have been not-quite-full-time (35 hours/week) at 70% of the salary, doing a job that was right up her alley and was much closer geographically to boot so I thought that would be a great path. But she felt like she needed to exercise her accounting degree and the sales job of "we take care of our people here" convinced her to go this route.

 

[Kelvrick]

She's obviously exempt.

Your situation is how it should be IMO. Yes, everyone knows that public accounting is a grind but your employees will be much more likely to stay motivated during the bad times if given some flexibility in the good times.

Yeah, it sounded like she was exempt, but I'm no labor attorney. Also, it would vary from state to state as well.

How does she log her time? At my work, we have an electronic system where we enter our time and if you hit 7.5 (we have 7.5 hour days), why does she need to use any additional PTO? Workers "eating" their time so that they aren't hitting a job's budget is a separate issue.

 

[Ns1]

small accounting firm

I found the problem.


I worked at a small accounting firm - we got NO PTO for the first year. I left after 1 year to a new company that gave me 13 days off/year after a mere 3 month probation.


OP: wife needs to find a new job.

 

[PricklyPete]

Dear god. Your wife's job sounds horrible. I'll add accounting to my short list of careers to push my kids away from.

 

[gorcorps]

Not at all luckily, I can basically take what I need within reason.

Same here.

As long as you don't try to take time off during a pre-planned maintenance outage where you're needed, it really doesn't matter as long as stuff is getting done. We have a security gate that we swipe in/out of, so if somebody was getting into bad habits of leaving early the manager has proof, but it's very rarely ever looked at.

We have a good thing going, and most people are aware of it and don't want to do something stupid to lose it.

 

[CraKaJaX]

That's brutal. I would be looking for a new gig ASAP. We get 15 days vaca, 7 days sick, 3 floating holidays and can accrue up to 3 days by donating blood (4 hours per donation, which is every 56 days). The sick time goes up 1 week for every year you work. I usually don't use any time if I have to leave a few hours early for doctor/dentist/mechanic-type appointments. I get my stuff done, so it's not really putting anything on hold. My boss is cool with me just charging overhead or some huge project we may have in this case.

 

[SearchMaster]

Yeah, it sounded like she was exempt, but I'm no labor attorney. Also, it would vary from state to state as well.

How does she log her time? At my work, we have an electronic system where we enter our time and if you hit 7.5 (we have 7.5 hour days), why does she need to use any additional PTO? Workers "eating" their time so that they aren't hitting a job's budget is a separate issue.

There's no formal time log other than the billing system. I can't remember the exact numbers but she billed over 100 hours between like April 1st and April 7th (and it generally takes 1.0-1.5 hours of actual work to bill one hour). Another common office problem is that the previous generation of employees screwed things up so bad last year that figuring out things for this year's return could take several hours of non-billable time. She swears that if she ever runs across one particular former employee on the street that she'll punch her in the face for screwing things up so badly.

The reason she would be forced to use PTO if she left at 4pm on a Friday is because mandatory office hours are 9am-5pm and PTO must be taken in 4 or 8 hour chunks, but to get the work load done it's generally 7:30am-6:30pm during non-tax season, and more like 6:30am-9:00pm during tax season (plus mandatory 8+ hour Saturdays and not-officially-mandatory 6+ hours on Sundays).