Assuming it’s a true story.
That said, the vacation expiration rules haven’t always been around. They started showing up back in the 90s/00s, as accounting firms started counting these days as liabilities and businesses started trying to minimize how many days were outstanding on their books.
I did know a few public school teachers who did exactly this. They’d save up vacation for five years and then take a paid semester off.
Can’t do it anymore, but it wasn’t always this way.
Yup, it was a shift because unlimited vacation was from the boomer era where employers actually treated employees fairly well. Companies started realizing that all of the boomers who had been with the company for two or three decades all had like two years of vacation time saved up. And when that gets counted as a liability (because the employee can just fuck off and disappear for an extended period, while you keep paying them,) it was a big incentive for companies to begin limiting vacation.
Lots of the boomers were grandfathered in so they got to keep their vacation banked, mostly to avoid the “half of our entire staff just walked out of the all-hands meeting and put in for 2 years of vacation time each, because we announced we’d be clawing back any unused time at the end of the month” dilemma. But new hires get fucked with vacation time caps, and big limits on how much they can get paid out if they quit.
the boomer era where employers actually treated employees fairly well
Lol what are you talking about
I’m talking about the time period where one person (with only a high school diploma) working 40 hours a week could reasonably support a family of three or four, with a modest house and two vehicles. And then after staying with the same company for 25 years, that person could retire and receive a pension (not a 401k that they had been forced to invest their own money in) which was paid for entirely by the company. Because pay wasn’t absolute shit compared to the cost of living.