TL;DR: Um…hell no.
Yesterday my boss was complaining that our team of three has had staggered vacation all summer. Which means we went into our busy season “out of sync.” He mentioned how great it would be if we all took our vacation at once so we had more “team time” leading up to it. We already aren’t allowed to take more than three consecutive days of vacation in July for that very reason.
I did my best not to tell him how utterly asinine that plan is and instead mentioned that my husband is a new firefighter recruit and so will likely get his vacation week assigned to him for the first couple years due to more senior firefighters getting to choose vacation first.
Other reasons this is stupid:
1. He gets an extra two weeks of vacation due to his tenure. So he’s still gonna be gone when we run out of PTO.
2. He uses his PTO on his kids school breaks. I homeschool and enjoy the freedom of doing a major trip in…February or October or any damn time I please.
3. I’m already planning next years vacation and asked if he was interested in taking that week off. It’s exam week for his oldest.
4. Our coworker is a big hiker/backpacker and she’s entered lotteries for several large hikes and won’t know until she knows. She might win all or none. I’m not waiting to plan my vacation around her and she shouldn’t have to give up her hiking for us.
5. I don’t wanna.
Like, dude. One of the BEST parts of this job is that we start with a full month of vacation time. I want to use it when I want to use it.
Admittedly he’s a great boss normally. He’s doing a great job being a shield from the upper management and gives us extra time off, etc. But I guess this teaches me that even good bosses have stupid ideas and try dumb policies.