This isn't as bad as some of the stuff I see here, but until now I have always felt that my employer has fair and reasonable practices, so I was a bit surprised by the 180 degree flip the moment I gave notice.
I work for a large, non-profit research institution. I have been there a long time but recently received an offer to make big move up in my career. I want to really start strong in this new role, so I wanted some extra time to lay the groundwork for this new position (writing an operational plan, researching new vendors, drafting job descriptions for positions I will add.. you get the idea).
Forcing me to stay longer
I planned to give over a month of notice at my old job, but due to the usual HR delays at the new job, I did not receive my offer letter until recently and so was delayed putting in notice of my leave. I let my supervisor know that I intended to leave in three weeks. He was fine with that, but the head of our division (and the institution) says that company policy says that my minimum notice is equal to total annual vacation plus some extra. Basically I cannot leave for about 4.5 weeks. If I violate this policy, they will not payout my vacation time and mark me as “ineligible for rehire” in the system. The vacation is no big loss for a reason I will explain in a moment but the black mark in the system makes me worry about clearing a background check for some future job, so I am capitulating. It makes me angry.
The vacation scam
They have ingeniously constructed the policy around vacation to make sure they owe nothing, and it cannot be used. Even my boss was shocked when I told him that this is how it works (and he has been there for 30 years). The moment one puts in notice, they will not be approved for any time off. They can receive payout for vacation time but there is an ingenious catch. You can only get paid out for your vacation accumulated in the CURRENT year, not any vacation carryover you are owed from a previous year. I am paranoid about keeping things running smoothly so I lose vacation time almost every single year since you can only carry over so much. When one DOES take vacation, they take it first from the vacation in your current year and only touch the carryover pool if all of the current pool is used up. So since I did something rather uncharacteristic and took time off this year, there is very little time in the current-year pool but lots of vacation in the carryover pool. So I can't take a vacation and they made sure to use a clever accounting policy to make sure that I am not paid for the vacation that I have accumulated in my time there.
As I said, I have generally found my employer's policies to be reasonable while I worked there, so I am shocked by this sneaky nonsense.