Reading through all these reminds me of a job I had 12 years ago (2010) and I had just started as a recruiter for staffing/consulting firm. I had over 10 years' experience as a recruiter so I didn't need any hand-holding. This firm prided itself on having “Unlimited” PTO, which was rare at the time. Three months into my job, we unexpectedly found out that we would be adopting a child in 4 days. We were over the moon! I talked to my boss and we agreed that I would take 1 week of vacation after baby was born, and instead of taking maternity leave, I would then work from home until we were able to bring baby home from out of state (since we were crossing state lines, we had to wait for necessary approvals to leave the state baby was born in). This process took over a month and so in the meantime, I started returning to the office 2-3 days a week, leaving my newborn with hubs or family members out of state. I should share that working from home at this time was VERY rare, but completely doable if you had internet capabilities.
The adoption process was tumultuous to say the least and took 9 months to finalize. We ended up spending over $30K in lawyer fees that we borrowed from family. Once the adoption was finalized, we decided to throw a huge fund-raising party with bands, auctions, games, etc. We wanted to try to off-set some of our debt and start to repay our family back for their support and generosity during this time. Plus, just celebrate Baby being officially ours.
I requested the week off before this event so I could start organizing everything, collecting donations, decorations, events, all of it. Keep in mind that this is NINE MONTHS after baby was born. I took zero maternity leave, only took a week of vacation and hadn't had a day off since then, WITH A NEWBORN! The CFO pulled me into his office and said that he wasn't going to approve my time off because, “You took so much time off last summer when Baby was born.” I was speechless. At the time, I wasn't one to question authority, so I agree to just take 3 days off leading up to the event.
Needless to say, I didn't stay long at this firm. Now when I hear about “unlimited PTO” my hair stands up and I want to know exactly what that means.