How to create a passive-aggressive vacation policy

Do I need a vacation? Can I have a vacation? May I have a vacation?

We have already discussed how to waste your vacation. Before you take your vacation, you must notify your coworkers and gain permission to do so. There are two ways that a company can provide a system for this.

Option 1: A tracked PTO system

Paid Time Off (PTO) is provided at a set rate every paycheck, and when you get sick or take vacation you file in advance (vacation) or immediately (sick) to get the time off. If you run out of PTO and get sick again, hopefully, you won’t die before completing your work assignments.

If you are laid off, the company may pay you the remainder of your PTO, so before they do that you should fearfully accumulate it as layoff insurance until the company says they have run out of imaginary future money and stop giving you any more. Then you can use as little as possible. The PTO system can be considered like a parent's allowance to a child, but it makes both parties feel like children. The company doesn’t really want to have to track your PTO, and you don’t really want to track it either. The PTO system assumes that you get sick and take vacation at a steady pace, just like how life works.

Option 2: A passive-aggressive open PTO system

This system provides unlimited vacation as long as everyone agrees that unlimited has another definition, a secret definition, and it is going to be discovered by the team. On paper, unlimited vacation means that you can work be employed for 90 days, and then retire, never to be heard from again. Obviously, you can’t do this or take a month off every quarter, even though this would fall under the unlimited definition. But what you actually can do without angering people becomes less clear. This is similar to how taking drugs with a group works: you need to take some, but not too much, to be cool.

This provides two advantages for the company: they no longer have to track PTO and no longer have to pay you the PTO if you leave. They can liquidate an employee's expectations and put the money in their savings. And when work gets really busy they can guilt you into not taking any time off because you can’t file PTO and feel morally in the right.

Most companies offer a wide range of possibilities, like:

• Option 1 (because they don’t know about Option 2 yet)

• Option 2

• Option 1 or Option 2

• Strongly Encouraged Option 2, but also Option 1 exists

• Auto-enrollment in Option 2, which is now called Option 1 and is labeled a unique and innovative benefit of working there