So, I’m 32 years old and I finally have a job that offers paid vacation. I earned my vacation time last fall and was planning on using it the first week of January.
Unfortunately we had to fire 2 employees which made us extremely short-staffed so I decided to hold off on using my vacation time until we could hire and train someone so the store wouldn’t be absolutely fucked if I took some time off.
That finally happened last week so I put in for 5 days of vacation time, only 4 of which got approved.
In the past 4 weeks I’ve worked 195 hours (50 hours for 3 weeks straight and 45 this past week).
My coworker made the comment, after seeing I had vacation on the schedule, “You probably don’t even feel bad for us!” He was joking for the most part, but I looked at him and said, “I’ve never had a paid vacation in my life, so no, I don’t feel bad one bit.”
My mental health isn’t the greatest and I’m not gonna sit around feeling guilty for finally taking some time off to just relax and not stress about work. My boss even made the comment that she didn’t take that much time off in April for her wedding (she took 3 days off and still had a 2 day weekend so 5 days off) and that’s not counting the many times she’s left 2-3 hours early or called in “sick” (ie hungover) in the past 6 months.
Idk why I’m sharing this here. Just figured at least you guys would understand where I’m coming from, I guess.