For three years, I barely took any time off work.<\/p>\n
Every time I requested vacation, my manager asked me to postpone it because we were short-staffed.<\/p>\n
I kept agreeing.<\/p>\n
Eventually, my pay stubs showed 90 unused vacation days.<\/p>\n
In June, I finally decided to use them.<\/p>\n
I submitted a request to take all three months together.<\/p>\n
HR called me into her office.<\/p>\n
\u201cNinety days?\u201d she said. \u201cThat’s ridiculous. If you need that much time off, maybe find another job.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few coworkers overheard and laughed.<\/p>\n
I didn’t argue.<\/p>\n
Instead, I said, \u201cOkay. Then I’ll work Mondays and Thursdays until December.\u201d<\/p>\n
She laughed again.<\/p>\n
What she didn’t know was that I’d already contacted payroll.<\/p>\n
They had confirmed my entire vacation balance in writing.<\/p>\n
I’d also checked our employee handbook. Unused vacation couldn’t carry over into the following year, and staggered leave was allowed with management approval.<\/p>\n
So I emailed my manager and HR, attaching both documents and a proposed schedule.<\/p>\n
The next morning, HR called me back.<\/p>\n
This time, my manager was sitting beside her.<\/p>\n
He admitted they couldn’t afford to have me gone for three consecutive months.<\/p>\n
But after reviewing staffing needs, he agreed to the two-day schedule.<\/p>\n
By Friday, my new calendar was approved.<\/p>\n
The coworkers who laughed suddenly wanted to know how I’d managed it.<\/p>\n
I told them something simple.<\/p>\n
\u201cI finally read the benefits I’d been earning for three years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For three years, I barely took any time off work. Every time I requested vacation, my manager asked me to postpone it because we were short-staffed. I kept agreeing. Eventually, my pay stubs showed 90 unused vacation days. In June, I finally decided to use them. I submitted a request to take all three months …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10619"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10621,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10619\/revisions\/10621"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}