Had an interview today that I feel okay to good-ish about. Was hoping to talk to the person I’d be working under but they were tied up on time sensitive stuff so I just talked to the HR person.
He was telling me that in addition to a very modest amount of conventional PTO, they give a paid weekday off every three weeks. It was spun like a good thing because the amount of total time off was more than the national average, but that’s pretty dishonest right? PTO is conventionally understood to be time you can take off whenever for whatever reason, not fixed days off like holidays.
I generally like the vibe of the place but it’s got weird things like that, plus not being open to hybrid because it doesn’t align with their “values” and some Russel Brand quotes hung up on the walls
52 weeks in a year means you’d get just over 17 ‘PTO’ days/year, assuming you get one exactly every 3 weeks (although I imagine the work-week bullshit would apply where you have to factor in holidays that fall on Mondays and whatnot). the national ‘average’ is what, like 10-14 days?
It’s definitely a scam to make you take less but think you’re getting more exactly how you’re imagining it. For reference, my full-time job upon hiring paid out 4.3 HOURS of PTO every pay-period - so every 2 weeks I’d get 4.3 hours, meaning I’d earn a ‘day’ of PTO once a month. Seems pretty equivalent, if not slightly worse, right? Since 26*4.3 = 118.8/8 = 13.975 days of PTO earned in a year. Except that there’s no issue with me taking a half-day or taking an entire week off, provided I have the PTO accrued to cover 4 or 40 hours.
I’d literally see red hearing “sorry no you can’t take off that day, your next day off is Wednesday, July 3rd based on the schedule” or some bullshit. That isn’t PTO exactly - that’s just a day I’m not on the schedule.
but I do get paid for it, and the position is hourly. it’s weird because it quite literally is paid time off, but not Paid Time Off, ya know
Hey a day paid weekday off to do things that are normally closed on weekends doesn’t sound terrible to me, I wouldn’t read too far into it
Yeah but PTO to me is more of anything ranging from ‘hey I don’t feel like working today I’m not coming in’ (although tbh if you have sick days you should use them for that kind of stuff imo) to ‘hey I’m going on a week long trip in August, I will be out between X-Y dates’.
It sounds like your PTO is more ‘you get X weekday off every 3 weeks’ with zero flexibility.
Without that flexibility, at least to me, it is less PTO and more of a ‘scheduled paid day off’.
I’m acting like I haven’t recently had a PTO request denied at work that wound up pissing me off (my supervisor constantly says I am like the sole person on the team who rarely takes sick days/PTO) because my supervisor, when I asked why it was denied, told me ‘sorry we have too many people out that week’ - which to me isn’t how PTO should work. I should be able to take it whenever I want, I already earned the time off and I requested it off like a month in advance so it shouldn’t be on me to ensure there’s an adequate amount of people working - that’s a ‘earns $10.00/hour more than me but does like 60% less work’ supervisor’s job!!!
But who knows, it may actually be one of those ideal situations! I just wouldn’t vibe with it personally and would probably not accept the position based on that unless they ensured me that I could at the very least, schedule when I’d be off.