I have a stressful job as a software engineer so I always like to take at least 3 weeks vacation back to back. I live in Europe so enough days off 🙂
But in my company there is always pressure to work as much as possible and to do overtime. So I carefully requested my time off in the course of few months so the management wouldn't notice that it would amount to 4 weeks. First I requested 10 days in December, then a few weeks later – the first week of January, and finally the rest of the days.
When I come back on Monday I had a 1:1 with one of my team mates who is at a more senior position but is not my boss. He told me that my input was invaluable and I was missed during those 4 weeks. And then assured me that anyway, it wasn't my fault, it could happen to anyone, he understood that I had to take those days off because it's the law in our country. WTF, dude?