This is a classic example of “good intentions with negative consequences”.
One thing my manager has been doing occasionally and wants to start doing more in the summer is giving me and my coworkers time off to relax/unwind/get away from work.
That's great and all, but the catch to this…it's unpaid time off. They aren't doing do because it's unpaid time off and the company saves money or anything, they don't care or see it that way since even they're low down on the corporate ladder. They're actually doing this as a nice gesture to us, but they just fail to see that us getting time off means we don't get paid.
The thing is, there actually isn't much work to be done the next few months, which is another reason they wanted us to have time off since we wouldn't be missing much and they'll be on vacation throughout the summer. I'm sure all this could've been solved by giving us “work from home” days for HR/scheduling purposes, but in reality we just take it off like they intended so at least we get paid for it (they have done this in the past, but it was more like for a half day or one day every few months). It just sucks how a good gesture like this has negative consequence on me and my coworkers when we know full well this isn't what they intended.