Prior to this company I had only worked at small businesses or retail chains.
A lot of these jobs didn't offer PTO. This meant one of two things: Time off was encouraged because the business wouldn't lose money to pay your payroll for 5 days, or time off was denied because the company was so mismanaged that if any single person took a day off the place would collapse (These types of business owners love saying things like “We don't need you, I can do it myself!” and then their world goes to shit if you need to take an unexpected sick day).
During the height of Covid I worked for a company that lost about 90% of its revenue every month due to people realizing they didn't need the company's service. 6 months after lock down when everything began opening up I decided to take 2 days of PTO to go on vacation. I had 10 days of PTO per year and hadn't used any, and I needed a break.
A few months later I was laid off. In my exit interview my boss actually said part of why I wasn't a “suitable” employee was that I took PTO during a crunch time. The thing was when I requested my time off these dates weren't in any kind of crunch time. It only became crunch time because she dropped the ball on a project and I ended up having to work 12 hour days a week before and after my trip to keep it on track.
At my job after that the place needed all hands on deck because it was horrendously understaffed. I later found out that one of my co-workers was coming into the office with Covid. He was sick but the boss couldn't let him stay home for 2 weeks, so this dude came in every day and we had no idea until he started to really look like death.
Cut to the current job, I went away for a week, taking PTO for the first time since working at my current large corporation job. No one gave me grief, they just said to let everyone in my department know I'd be out. When I returned i had my job and everything was fine. I was able to catch up on my work, and the place didn't fall apart without me.
It's such night and day working here compared to a small business. This is the first week-long vacation I had taken in about 10 years, something which everyone seemed to do and be able to take for granted when I was growing up.