I posted this in another subreddit but thought you all might enjoy it here as well.
Background: I work in the Corporate Office side of Healthcare as a worker bee. My company has recently had a fairly huge budget shortfall due to some “mistakes” made by a department.
I had some time off last week and when I came back I saw all my coworkers in the group chat were extremely upset about some order that had come down from our Corporate overlords.
I check my inbox and see the cause of all the anger and frustration: Corporate is stating they are shutting down our “offices” for additional days this holiday season and are REQUIRING us to use our PTO to cover their closure to the tune of 60+ hours affecting literally hundreds of employees. The best part? They're trying to spin it as a Christmas gift because everyone is so stressed and by “giving” us this time off it will allow us all to de-stress and come back refreshed. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! Forcing us to not work and use all our PTO (and in some cases go negative) is supposed to de-stress us? And the cherry on top: If your vacation is negative and you leave during this time, you have to pay Corporate back. NO. FUCK NO.
I was particularly upset because I had some time off for a doctor's appointment coming up that I would now need to cancel in order to make sure I would have enough time to cover our “Chritmas gift”. In my rage I canceled my request and noted to my boss “Canceled due to due Corporate greed”. My boss was displeased with my sass and fired back an email about how I shouldn't have said that and that this was an amazing gift and I should be happy.
I lost it. I sent back an email explaining in no uncertain terms that there is no way this a gift, it was done to save money by Corporate and that forcing people to use all their PTO during what is a very stressful time of year is BS. Not to mention PTO comes from a different budget and is taxed differently. I also made sure to include that as someone with documented medical issues cosidered disabilities that I had to cancel a doctor's appointment because of this and I find it offensive to frame it as a gift. Note: I'm on spectrum so huge changes tend to cause me to have meltdowns.
In the back of my mind I had this nagging thought that this whole thing was extra fishy, so I did some checking with the Department of Labor in my state and lo and behold: legally an employer cannot require or force you to use your PTO.
So I told my boss who brushed it off and passed it to their boss who told me they can set up a call with HR to have them explain everything. I politely told big boss “No thanks, but here is the law that says legally they can't do that.” and then crickets…
So I filed a complaint with the Department of Labor to cover my ass and forwarded everthing to my personal laptop in case of retaliation.
So I'm sitting here now, waiting to see how bad this gets because I pushed back and called their bullshit. I might get fired, but I'll be sure to make their life hard if I do.