So the directors of the part of the company I work out sent out a email asking for PTO requests for the remainder of the year including holidays so that there's coverage during those times. This makes sense as they do this every year.
My company has advertised having an “Unlimited PTO” policy but in the handbook it's called a “Flexible PTO” policy.
I request 7 days in the remaining 6 months, 2 for a vacation, and the other 5 days are travel days to fly/drive home during non peak hours for the holidays or weddings, so I doubted there would be overlap with my other coworkers, so coverage would be there. I get an email back from the directors saying “You've used up 130 hours of PTO this year so far. There are guidelines to limit employees to 3 – 3.5 weeks of PTO a year. Since your work product has been good, we will give you an extra 3 days of PTO, please let us know which days out of the 7 you requested you want”.
For context I did take a 2 week vacation this summer as my girlfriend and I saved up and she had a work conference abroad that we turned into a vacation, first one since COVID. The other PTO days were just random mental health days or just cuz I went home. I figured I can just take them cuz it's supposed to be “unlimited”.
I respond with the most recent employee handbook and note there's no limit to PTO but I'm willing to compromise for 5 instead of the 7 since I had flights booked and I was willing to rebook some things. I just felt gross having to beg for 2 more PTO days when the company I work at just got valued at 1.6 billion and sold part of it and my directors probably got a fat payout for their equity.
TLDR Unlimited PTO is actually limited to 3 weeks and I feel gross begging for 2 more days while the company is profitable and worth 1.6 billion.