I am a chemist who a year ago was laid off with my entire team of 4 people. However, they realized they still needed someone to actually do the work. I got rehired and aside from sick days, haven't used pto at all. In fact, one of the small perks was as long as my work didn't falter, my sick days didn't use my pto as long as the work was done. Simple no?
Well, I just got back from my first ever actual vacation (been working for 8 years as a chemist) and a customer sends in enough samples that just to prep them will take over 24 hours of active work. My boss now tells me that I will need to work overtime to get it done on time. I push back and say it feels like a punishment for going on vacation only to return to essentially mandatory overtime, while still making sure my normal work is kept up. He then threatens to adhere to the actual pto policy for the company and cancel my other usages of pto to cover the sick days I had taken but still kept my work in line.
Any salary benefits are a lie when they can be weaponized against you. If I had another job lined up I'd be leaving today, but no. Also doesn't help I have zero backup, so any work that came in last week is piled up as well. Today was and is spent just logging in samples, not even testing any. My backlog list was two samples before I left, now I have well over 100.
Fuck skeleton crews, fuck putting all the burden on a few people (or less), none of us here are paid enough to put up with the crap we deal with.
End of rant.