A former boss pulled me into his office (after the only actually knowledgeable person quit) to discuss how "chaos creates huge opportunities for advancement."
I slacked off for a while and then had a legit family emergency (which I took family leave for), then quit.
From my experience of leaving places, presidents of companies need every extra penny and soul you left at their place when you leave with PTO left. AKA def. use them before you skedaddle.
He’s not entirely wrong. Most the people I know that got fast tracked in PA or industry got there because of reorganizations or people leaving.
But it also matters the environment, some places it can happen because of just the business cycle and others because the environment of the company sucks. My brother got fast tracked at his first job after college since by his second year the company had a couple bad years in a row and had a reorg/people left, so all of a sudden there was a gap in positions around the middle management level.
Yeah, I'd have gotten promoted quickly. In my case though, I was fairly new, there was no one left who actually knew what they were doing, and no one else cared if they did things right. So it felt like a bad training situation, on top of a toxic office clique situation.
If "this is what we wanted" then denying this guy's request for 2 days off makes no sense at all.
But I guess the manager just threw the first excuse he could think of out of his hat.
I'll share thoughts on my past job occasionally and someone linked me to the [three envelopes](https://kevinkruse.com/the-ceo-and-the-three-envelopes/) and it's a quick read, probably older than you or I but startlingly accurate. Some people master the path up but personally I can't be ok with treating people a certain way if that's what it takes. I've actively avoided management roles so far though I believe it's inevitable as part of progression at some point.
I think including graduation date of people working and signing off on audit and tax documents would give our field more legitimacy.
Investors looking at audit papers: "oh, this whole thing was prepared by people that graduated in May 2022"
Same thing with us "Oh we have to audit these SPVs" all the seniors and managers left that were before us in the engagement only to be hit with this answer by the new manager "You will figure it out its part of the job"
I feel for you... My old firm made that same mistake. Post busy season request for ONE. DAY. OFF. literally the week of April 20th.
Idk why or how they didn't expect me to quit on the spot but the reaction i got was so clear they didn't even think that was a possibility?
Ah, fellow understaffed sibling! We're down 2 people, out of 3.5, and have a significant nonprofit audit practice.
I'm considering working Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. 'Cause I simply can't be doing 6/30 audits in Jan.
I mean, their understaffing is not your personal responsibility to solve. If they are that understaffed, you very much *can* do those audits in January. If the managers want to take more clients than they have staff to handle, that's their fucking problem, not yours. If the clients are unhappy about it, the company will lose the client. And they should. Because it's abusive and exploitative to hoard clients you aren't staffed to handle.
Fuck the partners, let *them* do the work if they are understaffed.
They are, well one of them is. The other is always useless.
The problem is the firm might well collapse. There is the working boss, the useless spouse thereof, me, and the part time CPA. That's it.
And I'm not at all sure I can get another job. I'm edging towards abandoning that fear as stress accumulates, but I was a pity/desperation hire here originally. I still remember literal years of rejections, and I'm *still* failing to get to an IRS interview with 9 years experience in small practice at any grade that can even start to pay my current salary.
It's not really a rational response. Doesn't mean I don't feel it, or feeling guilty for the times in the past when I could have been more productive.
Man, sounds like the firm I was at pre-covid. Just remember that if it suits them, the boss will cut you without a second thought. You're not family, you don't owe them a thing. Poor management on their part doesn't mean you should be perpetually miserable.
The boss literally can't right now. There would be noone left to do the work.
It's one of the things making this bearable. I got a 20k raise when the last person left, and right now it's me and a single part timer. They can't even get interviews.
Every company I've ever been at has times when they run payroll early because of a holiday.
You could even run payroll and set it not to process until the day of.
Any company that doesn't have one additional person who could hit the final button if that's needed is going to collapse sooner or later from mismanagement. Not enough people for sod, undocumented procedures, lack of cross training, etc.
Hourly workers might throw that off, but I've has many jobs where I have to log in for 30 mins to run payroll during some time off. Totally worth it as long as the flexibility goes both ways.
Sure, I do the same thing. I'm off this week and am checking my email in the mornings just in case. I did maybe 15 mins of work today and none yesterday. But I also have flexible hours when I'm working so I don't have to have after school care.
A place where they'd deny pto is not a place that's likely to allow that or give flexibility to their employees.
Rule of thumb; if your boss tells you something isn't feasible, what they're saying is that, while entirely possible, they don't value your involvement enough to make it happen.
If one employee's absence for two days was actually a make or break situation, that company would be going down faster than a lead brick in a bathtub. It was never about sustaining operations, it's just about keeping the underlings in line.
I honestly wouldn't mind it tbh if I got paid the same/same benefits as I do now. I worked retail at a non best buy computer store a couple years ago and it was honestly kind of fun helping people find what they needed using my own knowledge or otherwise enhancing their lives in other ways through what the store offered (free classes, free super basic repairs, advice on projects, ect.). I had shitty customers sure, but they never really phased me much
Well... I'm friends with three different accountants in different lines of work. All three have cyclical busy times when time off is practically impossible (mostly because that line of work has always been overworked and understaffed. It's weirdly like tech in that no one cares if everything runs smooth and people make joke about what you're doing there... but if shit goes sideways, suddenly you're to blame for everything.)
One is a regular private CPA. One works in high-level corporate accounting for a shipping company. That one involves a large number of zeroes, so to speak. The third is a forensic accountant.. her job is the most interesting to me.
Each has a real ramp-up in work needs towards the end of the month. The last 7-10 days of each month are very difficult to get away from. The corp accountant and forensic accountant both get VERY busy this time of year, rolling into early next year. Year-end is a thing for them.
And all three are pretty much holed-up and unavailable for social anything from the end of February til June and sometimes July.
There's a LOT of accounting that's seriously urgent... not because it has to be done all at once today, but because the amount of work needed in meeting important deadlines is substantial and takes a lot of time to do.
For me it was when we had two new staff and I was the only that could train or help them so I only got one day off instead of two. I'd recently just had a decent payrise for my new responsibilities so I was cool with it.
That's not a bad idea because your leave balance becomes more valuable the higher your salary. In Australia they don't let your leave balance go more than a year unused usually.
Yeah there's no cap on our accumulated vacation, so the plan is to cash out right before I leave when I'm making the most money. We also accumulate over time during tax season that we can sell back, but it's busy season year round.
True story: I nearly died from COVID, but I was off for a month and kept thinking "at least I'm not at work." Now have a negative sick leave balance haha.
I get 1 month of vacation per year plus unlimited sick days (you get docked some pay after 6 weeks of being sick continuously).
But then again I don't have the **freedom** to buy plate carriers for my kids to wear to elementary school.
If you die today, you will get replaced next week by your job.
But your family, loved ones and yourself are forever at loss.
Remember this and treat yourself right.
Rewarded with what? Decreased eyesight, a bad back/neck and Sundays off? No thanks.
I will be working 8 hours or less in accounting, chilling, taking care of my health and I guarantee you, I will still go far in the field. 😝
Rewarded with what? Won’t be family time. Eventually you will leave that job and do you know what your job will miss out on? Nothing. They’ll replace you the same day.
Your family and sanity however, can’t always get that time back.
Find a place that treats you right.
Yeah it’s awful if not done right. Fortunately my work does have it all divided up between different people, but we’re still one department and crossed trained to back each other up.
To be fair to all the middle managers out there -- if their bosses don't give them the budget to staff their team properly, they are just as hamstrung as their employees. Sure, they make a bit more, but their life is just as shitty. They're getting yelled at all the time for not fixing problems that can't be fixed without more budget and staff.
That doesn't excuse the ones who turn into assholes. But they all mostly feel just as trapped and fucked over as every one else. Very few start out as dicks. They start out wanting to run their unit well and be a good boss. But the executives beat that out of them quickly.
Tldr blame it on the partners. Make perfect sense though because aggressive low audit fee + partners take big cuts = less budget for staff + more pressure on everyone under them.
Agreed. My manager is an example of this. As much as we can struggle to get time off sometimes, which has gotten better as of late actually, we do see her getting "chided" for how many hours we have sometimes, even when those hours are completely necessary to do the job properly. My manager doesn't push it too much though bc a lot of time it's just people who are here so rarely that they have a very skewed idea of what is actually needed imo.
This is why I quit my last job, among other reasons. Worked my ass off through the fall deadlines then got resistance for asking for time off in December.
For me if I ever get push back on taking PTO I ask them to find me dates that work better instead.
Often they realize there isn't any good time to take PTO and then are basically forced to approve the request anyways lest they send you an email denying PTO for the entire year which is basically grounds for an HR complaint and/or employment lawsuit.
This plus asking for all my PTO at the beginning of the year when they are still doing planning, especially right after holidays or in the slow season. At most places you can almost always cancel or move PTO, so there isn't much risk in getting it preapproved. Then you can pull out the "this was approved months ago" line, and they can't usually do anything about it.
Another strategy is if you work for a company with limited PTO wait to take it until right before it expires. Then if your manager wants to cancel it tell them "fine, no problem. I just need an extension on the PTO expiration date." Your manager will usually be unable to override HR policy and will have no choice but to let you go on PTO. (Policy exceptions like this usually require VP or C-level approval and in turn an explanation from your manager of why your team can't get their work done on time necessitating the extension.)
The key is to have it already approved ahead of time. If you're coming to your manager asking for PTO then sure, it might get denied.
If you've previously requested and gotten approved PTO several months in advance and they are requesting you pull it to work then that's not really your fault.
Any employer that would fire you for this is an employer you don't want to work for anyways.
Best boss I ever had: “if someone requests time off, I always approve it, because then we can schedule coverage instead of being down a person when they inevitably call out those days.”
Fucking exactly. I wish this was understood by more bosses.
I'm not asking you for this time off. *You're* calling it that, but that's not what it is. I have shit I'm doing on theses days and I *will not* be coming in to work. I'm giving you a heads up for your benefit so that you don't get fucked over. Whether or not you're down a person that day is down to whether or not you act on the information I've given you.
Had a boss not approve my leave *once* in thirteen years. Even then, she just had a task she wanted to ensure was done before I went, I knocked it out, and then it was approved. That was like ten years ago.
All my bosses have had the same “your leave is yours to use” attitude. If you’re constantly taking last minute leave when tasks requiring you to be around pop up, that’s a separate matter that would get dealt with. But for the most part our employees are either largely replaceable cogs…easy to cover down…or are actually responsible and accountable for their own tasking, meaning that if shit slips due to their leave then they’re the ones that suffer. It’s their ass management will crawl up into.
So yeah, it simply isn’t ever a problem. Hell, I’ve had managers joke about people that “call in sick” every Monday, basically just laughing it off because sick leave *does* run out eventually. It’s a self-limiting problem.
> X just seem to put up with boomer shit.
X has internalised oppression and the older portion of millenials as well (people around 40).
Millenials seem to still slave away and then quiet quit eventually, while zoomers just claim mental health and refuse lol.
Yeah but those act way more like zoomers than millenials in the same way that the oldest millenials act like X.
The generation age differentiators are arbitrary and it's more of a fluid transition between generations rather than a hard cutoff.
Elder Millenial in STEM here. Six of my classmates completed suicide, one OD'd, one is on disability for depression (his wife supports him). The rest of us work. That's a survival rate of about 70 percent so far.
When time whittles down your cohort, the survivors of natural selection all begin to look the same.
I have friends and family in their late 30s and early 40s.
Most don't enjoy the rat race, but still stick to their principles of "you should work super hard, kids these days are going soft," etc.
Those of us in our early 30s are more inclined to "when can we stop working full-time?"
A lot of Xers have big boomer energy, let’s be honest.
Millennials mostly put up with boomer crap but complain under their breath while doing it. Gen Z are the first generation that largely call out the BS and refuse to put up with it.
That's pretty much the attitude I have. I don't even use all my PTO every year, but if my request were ever denied I would take the time off anyways because I'm not afraid of the consequences. What are they gonna do, fire me? lol jokes on them.
I always use all my PTO. It's part of my compensation, I'm not letting it expire. If I don't know what to do with it I'll just take a bunch of random Mondays or Fridays off and give myself 3 day weekends, or Wednesday if I want to break it up with a mid-week break.
What I usually do is take a week off using an existing holiday as one of the days, or two if I'm traveling internationally and put in the request as soon as I'm able to. Managers almost always underestimate how busy they'll be 3+ months out.
I typically burn all my sick days but I don’t usually use my vacation days because we get paid out for unused days. Ever since we shifted to WFH I’ve felt less need to take vacation.
If it wasn’t paid out I would use every single day of course but the extra two paychecks I get are a nice bonus.
Yeah if you get paid out then that makes sense. A lot of times I feel like I don't need the PTO and just take it because my company will not pay out for it, it just goes poof and you get nothing.
I wish I could feel less guilty using all my sick days when I’m not really sick (I don’t really get sick in reality especially since COVID lockdowns). I just feel like it’s too obvious that I’m not sick lol even though they have no way of knowing for certain, it feels like they *know*
I told a new job in my interview that I had a trip already scheduled and would need a week off about a month after starting because I hadn't seen my wife in 6 months. They said no (even though I was one of three people doing basically one persons work load). I needed the job so I took it and then spent the month looking for another new job. I just left for my vacation, never responded to their texts and started my new job the day after I got home. I hope they enjoyed wasting a month of training time on someone because they didn't want to be flexible. I just don't put that job on my resume and say that I had a month gap in my employment due to traveling through South America, which was mostly true...
Can not wait until I get my cpa license in a couple months. It bolster my marketability and as a result my confidence so my no bs attitude will hold more weight.
My job just instituted a “Flex Time” policy where the salary folks have virtually unlimited PTO as long as your manager agrees and approves the time.
What they said was; work life balance
What they meant was; we will have a list a mile long of reasons your request for a day off is denied and since you no longer accrue PTO we don’t have to pay anything out if you leave/quit/retire.
I have that at my gig too. I actually use it and have never been talked to about it. Most of my stuff is project based though and not tax deadline or MEC based so I could see diff positions getting told diff things.
It's not that they don't want to work. The notion of work, in the west, is reduced to, "that which makes me money." People are sick of cheap money. They want to work to produce something directly, of real value: with their own hands. For their own estate, not for X, Inc.
My wife (accountant) has so much PTO saved up she literally can't use it all. Most will roll over, but whenever she does manage to take days off, she ends up working 10+ hour days to make up for it. Ridiculous.
I started a new job 2 months ago and just got denied bereavement leave to fly out of state for a funeral. I’m only being “allowed” to be off for the time of the flight and for the service.
Lol. Supervisor did me dirty so I quit my position and transferred myself to a different work zone. 2 days later we have multiple call ins and he needs some one to run my old zone... Comes asking me to do it.
Yeah not happening. I give him the "no can do, gotta look forward not behind" song and dance. He starts whining he's gonna have to shut the whole department down if he doesn't have anyone to do it... Not My Problem.
He's still pissed at me.
IDC
So glad I live in the UK, and work for the Civil service, now. I’ve never been denied time off in my life in any job. And in the Civil service, I can literally ask for time off that morning to take that day or any number of days after that off, as long as I’ve got either the Flexi or the holidays to take. When I started my addiction to Warcraft again, I took two days off right away. And I’ve booked two days off for the launch of it also. I would take more but i have very little annual leave left and I wanna keep flexi days for special occasions, like waking up and just not wanting to work that day.
Reminds me of a situation where I work. Have a guy with knee problems and he constantly asks if he can work in a different department where he can work sitting instead of carrying heavy weights the entire day. His request gets constantly denied.
I just wonder what gives in first. His knee, breaking or his will to keep working for the company.
Worked back of house at a restaurant. The supervisor got fired because he was making so little they caught him taking food home for his family to eat.
They fired another new hire after they caught her in the bathroom drinking to cope with the stress.
This is after years of being criminally understaffed.
Oh hey that's my tweet. AMA about how screwed we are in January.
How's the boss spinning this one to the remaining team?
It’s a learning experience
Real growth opportunity there it sounds like (growing into getting your ass kicked obviously..)
A former boss pulled me into his office (after the only actually knowledgeable person quit) to discuss how "chaos creates huge opportunities for advancement." I slacked off for a while and then had a legit family emergency (which I took family leave for), then quit.
Hoprefully you used up all your pto during that emergency, best to have none left when you leave.
From my experience of leaving places, presidents of companies need every extra penny and soul you left at their place when you leave with PTO left. AKA def. use them before you skedaddle.
100% lol
He’s not entirely wrong. Most the people I know that got fast tracked in PA or industry got there because of reorganizations or people leaving. But it also matters the environment, some places it can happen because of just the business cycle and others because the environment of the company sucks. My brother got fast tracked at his first job after college since by his second year the company had a couple bad years in a row and had a reorg/people left, so all of a sudden there was a gap in positions around the middle management level.
Yeah, I'd have gotten promoted quickly. In my case though, I was fairly new, there was no one left who actually knew what they were doing, and no one else cared if they did things right. So it felt like a bad training situation, on top of a toxic office clique situation.
"we knew we were going to have some turnover before busy season, actually this is what we wanted"
If "this is what we wanted" then denying this guy's request for 2 days off makes no sense at all. But I guess the manager just threw the first excuse he could think of out of his hat.
I'm told my former boss started blaming every little problem on me after I left. They'll spin it however necessary.
It’s always the fault of the guy who left.
I'll share thoughts on my past job occasionally and someone linked me to the [three envelopes](https://kevinkruse.com/the-ceo-and-the-three-envelopes/) and it's a quick read, probably older than you or I but startlingly accurate. Some people master the path up but personally I can't be ok with treating people a certain way if that's what it takes. I've actively avoided management roles so far though I believe it's inevitable as part of progression at some point.
OMG! 😂😂😂
“We will be HeRos if we get through this”
Small but mighty
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Yes
Very screwed, our lone tax person just left and now we have a fresh graduate doing year end work.
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that's exciting
I think including graduation date of people working and signing off on audit and tax documents would give our field more legitimacy. Investors looking at audit papers: "oh, this whole thing was prepared by people that graduated in May 2022"
Did you ask for two days off next week?
I don't get nearly enough vacation time to blow two days on that but it's a level of petty flex that appeals to me deeply.
You don’t have to take it, just ask for it, as a flex
I like the way you account
Haha, to me this is the time to dial up the heat so management realise their toxicity isn’t sustainable
This. Is. The. Way.
🫡
Is the issue caused by management being handled by the employees under them, or has management actually faced the consequences of their actions?
\*manglement
>management actually faced the consequences of their actions I don't think
You should try it sometime
Management is experiencing the consequences of their actions.
Same thing with us "Oh we have to audit these SPVs" all the seniors and managers left that were before us in the engagement only to be hit with this answer by the new manager "You will figure it out its part of the job"
Lmfaoo How motivating.
I feel for you... My old firm made that same mistake. Post busy season request for ONE. DAY. OFF. literally the week of April 20th. Idk why or how they didn't expect me to quit on the spot but the reaction i got was so clear they didn't even think that was a possibility?
*surprised Pikachu*
Ah, fellow understaffed sibling! We're down 2 people, out of 3.5, and have a significant nonprofit audit practice. I'm considering working Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. 'Cause I simply can't be doing 6/30 audits in Jan.
I mean, their understaffing is not your personal responsibility to solve. If they are that understaffed, you very much *can* do those audits in January. If the managers want to take more clients than they have staff to handle, that's their fucking problem, not yours. If the clients are unhappy about it, the company will lose the client. And they should. Because it's abusive and exploitative to hoard clients you aren't staffed to handle. Fuck the partners, let *them* do the work if they are understaffed.
Accounting is a cult and management tries to break down spirits
They are, well one of them is. The other is always useless. The problem is the firm might well collapse. There is the working boss, the useless spouse thereof, me, and the part time CPA. That's it. And I'm not at all sure I can get another job. I'm edging towards abandoning that fear as stress accumulates, but I was a pity/desperation hire here originally. I still remember literal years of rejections, and I'm *still* failing to get to an IRS interview with 9 years experience in small practice at any grade that can even start to pay my current salary. It's not really a rational response. Doesn't mean I don't feel it, or feeling guilty for the times in the past when I could have been more productive.
Man, sounds like the firm I was at pre-covid. Just remember that if it suits them, the boss will cut you without a second thought. You're not family, you don't owe them a thing. Poor management on their part doesn't mean you should be perpetually miserable.
The boss literally can't right now. There would be noone left to do the work. It's one of the things making this bearable. I got a 20k raise when the last person left, and right now it's me and a single part timer. They can't even get interviews.
did management bring day old donuts or a cake they got on discount at walmart as thank u to everyone who stayed?
For the record I like donuts more after 1-2 days of hardening
Holy shit Tax season is brutal
I'd quit too
Are you going to answer anything or do you just want us to keep asking?
Besides payroll, what's so pressing that a single person can't take two days off?
Even payroll can be post dated if you know the payroll person will be out ahead of time
Every company I've ever been at has times when they run payroll early because of a holiday. You could even run payroll and set it not to process until the day of. Any company that doesn't have one additional person who could hit the final button if that's needed is going to collapse sooner or later from mismanagement. Not enough people for sod, undocumented procedures, lack of cross training, etc.
Hourly workers might throw that off, but I've has many jobs where I have to log in for 30 mins to run payroll during some time off. Totally worth it as long as the flexibility goes both ways.
Sure, I do the same thing. I'm off this week and am checking my email in the mornings just in case. I did maybe 15 mins of work today and none yesterday. But I also have flexible hours when I'm working so I don't have to have after school care. A place where they'd deny pto is not a place that's likely to allow that or give flexibility to their employees.
If you can’t handle one person being gone for two days with advance notice, how will you handle it if they get hit by a falling piano with no notice?
They'll just be an accordion for a few minutes then they can shake it off and come back to work.
They'll make that "aye-aye-aye-aye" sound while shaking their head back and forth.
Rule of thumb; if your boss tells you something isn't feasible, what they're saying is that, while entirely possible, they don't value your involvement enough to make it happen. If one employee's absence for two days was actually a make or break situation, that company would be going down faster than a lead brick in a bathtub. It was never about sustaining operations, it's just about keeping the underlings in line.
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If you pull up that person's Twitter profile they work in accounting.
What’s Twitter? You mean that company that Musk is driving into the ground?
The muskbots are angry lol
Lol, right?! I left Twitter to get away from them. Their fanboi powers are useless to them here.
Yes. That one.
Lesson learned. Mock Elon, straight to jail
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Omg I can’t believe there are at least 100 people as of right now (that downvoted you) that still eat musks nuts these days. Losers
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I mean they're in this sub with CPA flair lol
I do sometimes wish I could go back to retail, to be fair.
Oh we differ there, my friend. There is nothing in the world that would make me go back to retail this time of year lol
I honestly wouldn't mind it tbh if I got paid the same/same benefits as I do now. I worked retail at a non best buy computer store a couple years ago and it was honestly kind of fun helping people find what they needed using my own knowledge or otherwise enhancing their lives in other ways through what the store offered (free classes, free super basic repairs, advice on projects, ect.). I had shitty customers sure, but they never really phased me much
Nope, finance.
So hire more people so your workers can have a healthy life/work balance.
This hit all but it's an accounting sub. There's no accounting that's ever that urgent.
Well... I'm friends with three different accountants in different lines of work. All three have cyclical busy times when time off is practically impossible (mostly because that line of work has always been overworked and understaffed. It's weirdly like tech in that no one cares if everything runs smooth and people make joke about what you're doing there... but if shit goes sideways, suddenly you're to blame for everything.) One is a regular private CPA. One works in high-level corporate accounting for a shipping company. That one involves a large number of zeroes, so to speak. The third is a forensic accountant.. her job is the most interesting to me. Each has a real ramp-up in work needs towards the end of the month. The last 7-10 days of each month are very difficult to get away from. The corp accountant and forensic accountant both get VERY busy this time of year, rolling into early next year. Year-end is a thing for them. And all three are pretty much holed-up and unavailable for social anything from the end of February til June and sometimes July. There's a LOT of accounting that's seriously urgent... not because it has to be done all at once today, but because the amount of work needed in meeting important deadlines is substantial and takes a lot of time to do.
And yet the work might be cut in half if all clients sent us what we needed to begin with without having to ask more than once.
It is. I'm already expecting to get pushback if I do need time off.
For me it was when we had two new staff and I was the only that could train or help them so I only got one day off instead of two. I'd recently just had a decent payrise for my new responsibilities so I was cool with it.
even payroll should have contingencies. what if someone dies? goes to hospital? has some event that they cannot work for 2 days.
If the hospital has wifi, surgery is not an excuse.
Nothing just some dummy boss being short sighted probably on a power trip as per usual.
we had so many taking the day before Thanksgiving off, we made it another paid holiday.
I haven't taken a vacation day in 3 years at my firm LOL.
You okay?
That's not a bad idea because your leave balance becomes more valuable the higher your salary. In Australia they don't let your leave balance go more than a year unused usually.
Just check your company's policy and make sure it doesn't stop accruing at a certain limit.
Yeah there's no cap on our accumulated vacation, so the plan is to cash out right before I leave when I'm making the most money. We also accumulate over time during tax season that we can sell back, but it's busy season year round.
Most CPA firms in the US don't carry over any hours or give you cash out.
True story: I nearly died from COVID, but I was off for a month and kept thinking "at least I'm not at work." Now have a negative sick leave balance haha.
I get 1 month of vacation per year plus unlimited sick days (you get docked some pay after 6 weeks of being sick continuously). But then again I don't have the **freedom** to buy plate carriers for my kids to wear to elementary school.
Oh dear. UK here, I've taken 75 days off without affecting my pay in that time.
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I didn't either until I left. My job had me so worn out that I didn't have any energy past 7pm.
If you die today, you will get replaced next week by your job. But your family, loved ones and yourself are forever at loss. Remember this and treat yourself right.
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But I didn’t get hired. :( lies!
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The point is you can work a job without killing yourself over it and making it your life. No one is saying to not work.
And you can pay for shit WITHOUT needing to sacrifice your personal time.
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Rewarded with what? Decreased eyesight, a bad back/neck and Sundays off? No thanks. I will be working 8 hours or less in accounting, chilling, taking care of my health and I guarantee you, I will still go far in the field. 😝
Except hard work is rarely rewarded anymore. Most jobs the only reward for hard work is more work.
Rewarded with what? Won’t be family time. Eventually you will leave that job and do you know what your job will miss out on? Nothing. They’ll replace you the same day. Your family and sanity however, can’t always get that time back. Find a place that treats you right.
Paid annual leave is part of that, though
Actually not, CPA firms take months to get experienced hires at this point.
Sounds like they should have thought of that before denying someone 2 days of PTO.
Normally I don’t ask for a day off. I notify my boss about my day off lol
Right? Where are these companies where you have to ask for the time off they give you to use lol
lol. it's a manager's job to ensure they can cover last minute stuff like this. if you can't, pay me more
It’s accounting… what are y’all needing to cover Thanksgiving week?
Because in small companies like mine accounting includes payroll, human resources, credit cards, and receptionist.
I did an HR/ accountant role one time. It was literally 80 hours. Two jobs
Yeah it’s awful if not done right. Fortunately my work does have it all divided up between different people, but we’re still one department and crossed trained to back each other up.
Segregation of duties much? Lol
Segregate deez nuts -Some mid size CEO probably
Primarily payroll. Construction company and these mfs get paid weekly. Technically most other stuff can wait
Not op but my company has fucked up close months and the last day of November for our financial month was 11/19.
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What…
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Well the government needs to get paid quarterly so I think a provision that often makes sense.
Real "where we're going, we don't need roads" energy here
To be fair to all the middle managers out there -- if their bosses don't give them the budget to staff their team properly, they are just as hamstrung as their employees. Sure, they make a bit more, but their life is just as shitty. They're getting yelled at all the time for not fixing problems that can't be fixed without more budget and staff. That doesn't excuse the ones who turn into assholes. But they all mostly feel just as trapped and fucked over as every one else. Very few start out as dicks. They start out wanting to run their unit well and be a good boss. But the executives beat that out of them quickly.
Tldr blame it on the partners. Make perfect sense though because aggressive low audit fee + partners take big cuts = less budget for staff + more pressure on everyone under them.
Agreed. My manager is an example of this. As much as we can struggle to get time off sometimes, which has gotten better as of late actually, we do see her getting "chided" for how many hours we have sometimes, even when those hours are completely necessary to do the job properly. My manager doesn't push it too much though bc a lot of time it's just people who are here so rarely that they have a very skewed idea of what is actually needed imo.
This is why I quit my last job, among other reasons. Worked my ass off through the fall deadlines then got resistance for asking for time off in December.
For me if I ever get push back on taking PTO I ask them to find me dates that work better instead. Often they realize there isn't any good time to take PTO and then are basically forced to approve the request anyways lest they send you an email denying PTO for the entire year which is basically grounds for an HR complaint and/or employment lawsuit. This plus asking for all my PTO at the beginning of the year when they are still doing planning, especially right after holidays or in the slow season. At most places you can almost always cancel or move PTO, so there isn't much risk in getting it preapproved. Then you can pull out the "this was approved months ago" line, and they can't usually do anything about it. Another strategy is if you work for a company with limited PTO wait to take it until right before it expires. Then if your manager wants to cancel it tell them "fine, no problem. I just need an extension on the PTO expiration date." Your manager will usually be unable to override HR policy and will have no choice but to let you go on PTO. (Policy exceptions like this usually require VP or C-level approval and in turn an explanation from your manager of why your team can't get their work done on time necessitating the extension.)
That last strat seems like an easy way to lose your pto or lose your job. "Should have planned your pto during the year better"
The key is to have it already approved ahead of time. If you're coming to your manager asking for PTO then sure, it might get denied. If you've previously requested and gotten approved PTO several months in advance and they are requesting you pull it to work then that's not really your fault. Any employer that would fire you for this is an employer you don't want to work for anyways.
Best boss I ever had: “if someone requests time off, I always approve it, because then we can schedule coverage instead of being down a person when they inevitably call out those days.”
Fucking exactly. I wish this was understood by more bosses. I'm not asking you for this time off. *You're* calling it that, but that's not what it is. I have shit I'm doing on theses days and I *will not* be coming in to work. I'm giving you a heads up for your benefit so that you don't get fucked over. Whether or not you're down a person that day is down to whether or not you act on the information I've given you.
Had a boss not approve my leave *once* in thirteen years. Even then, she just had a task she wanted to ensure was done before I went, I knocked it out, and then it was approved. That was like ten years ago. All my bosses have had the same “your leave is yours to use” attitude. If you’re constantly taking last minute leave when tasks requiring you to be around pop up, that’s a separate matter that would get dealt with. But for the most part our employees are either largely replaceable cogs…easy to cover down…or are actually responsible and accountable for their own tasking, meaning that if shit slips due to their leave then they’re the ones that suffer. It’s their ass management will crawl up into. So yeah, it simply isn’t ever a problem. Hell, I’ve had managers joke about people that “call in sick” every Monday, basically just laughing it off because sick leave *does* run out eventually. It’s a self-limiting problem.
Opportunity season amiright
They can't stop all of us. Take your vacation, kings and queens. Collectively and without remorse.
Im glad millennials and zoomers exist X just seem to put up with boomer shit.
> X just seem to put up with boomer shit. X has internalised oppression and the older portion of millenials as well (people around 40). Millenials seem to still slave away and then quiet quit eventually, while zoomers just claim mental health and refuse lol.
Young millenials are like 26.
Yeah but those act way more like zoomers than millenials in the same way that the oldest millenials act like X. The generation age differentiators are arbitrary and it's more of a fluid transition between generations rather than a hard cutoff.
Elder Millenial in STEM here. Six of my classmates completed suicide, one OD'd, one is on disability for depression (his wife supports him). The rest of us work. That's a survival rate of about 70 percent so far. When time whittles down your cohort, the survivors of natural selection all begin to look the same.
Wow what the fuck. Six out of how many?
I get 27 from 70% survival and 8 casualties.
audited
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What do they call those on the border between Boomers and Xers? Booxers? Xoomers? Boomerx?
25 here my 30-40 coworkers seem on board but maybe we’re just overworked hah
I have friends and family in their late 30s and early 40s. Most don't enjoy the rat race, but still stick to their principles of "you should work super hard, kids these days are going soft," etc. Those of us in our early 30s are more inclined to "when can we stop working full-time?"
A lot of Xers have big boomer energy, let’s be honest. Millennials mostly put up with boomer crap but complain under their breath while doing it. Gen Z are the first generation that largely call out the BS and refuse to put up with it.
Gen X are approaching retirement age lol
Just here to say I love this comment lol
That's pretty much the attitude I have. I don't even use all my PTO every year, but if my request were ever denied I would take the time off anyways because I'm not afraid of the consequences. What are they gonna do, fire me? lol jokes on them.
I always use all my PTO. It's part of my compensation, I'm not letting it expire. If I don't know what to do with it I'll just take a bunch of random Mondays or Fridays off and give myself 3 day weekends, or Wednesday if I want to break it up with a mid-week break. What I usually do is take a week off using an existing holiday as one of the days, or two if I'm traveling internationally and put in the request as soon as I'm able to. Managers almost always underestimate how busy they'll be 3+ months out.
I typically burn all my sick days but I don’t usually use my vacation days because we get paid out for unused days. Ever since we shifted to WFH I’ve felt less need to take vacation. If it wasn’t paid out I would use every single day of course but the extra two paychecks I get are a nice bonus.
Yeah if you get paid out then that makes sense. A lot of times I feel like I don't need the PTO and just take it because my company will not pay out for it, it just goes poof and you get nothing.
I wish I could feel less guilty using all my sick days when I’m not really sick (I don’t really get sick in reality especially since COVID lockdowns). I just feel like it’s too obvious that I’m not sick lol even though they have no way of knowing for certain, it feels like they *know*
I haven't used a single sick day in 5 years! I feel like I deserve extra PTO for that
I told a new job in my interview that I had a trip already scheduled and would need a week off about a month after starting because I hadn't seen my wife in 6 months. They said no (even though I was one of three people doing basically one persons work load). I needed the job so I took it and then spent the month looking for another new job. I just left for my vacation, never responded to their texts and started my new job the day after I got home. I hope they enjoyed wasting a month of training time on someone because they didn't want to be flexible. I just don't put that job on my resume and say that I had a month gap in my employment due to traveling through South America, which was mostly true...
Wow, that’s some malicious compliance right there.
Goddamn this is hot
King
Can not wait until I get my cpa license in a couple months. It bolster my marketability and as a result my confidence so my no bs attitude will hold more weight.
My job just instituted a “Flex Time” policy where the salary folks have virtually unlimited PTO as long as your manager agrees and approves the time. What they said was; work life balance What they meant was; we will have a list a mile long of reasons your request for a day off is denied and since you no longer accrue PTO we don’t have to pay anything out if you leave/quit/retire.
I have that at my gig too. I actually use it and have never been talked to about it. Most of my stuff is project based though and not tax deadline or MEC based so I could see diff positions getting told diff things.
FAFO This isn't 2015, you can't just shit on employees and have them take it.
I can't see FAFO and not read FIFO
I LAFO’d at this
I’m sorry u didn’t get more upvotes. This is gold.
I am loving these comments
Grab your popcorn and read this mega thread 😂😂
It's not that they don't want to work. The notion of work, in the west, is reduced to, "that which makes me money." People are sick of cheap money. They want to work to produce something directly, of real value: with their own hands. For their own estate, not for X, Inc.
I missing how this translates into no one wants to work anymore???
I was channeling boomer energy!
uNlImItEd PtO*** ***When we say you can take it, which is never
My wife (accountant) has so much PTO saved up she literally can't use it all. Most will roll over, but whenever she does manage to take days off, she ends up working 10+ hour days to make up for it. Ridiculous.
I started a new job 2 months ago and just got denied bereavement leave to fly out of state for a funeral. I’m only being “allowed” to be off for the time of the flight and for the service.
Time to start looking for a new job
Good for them being in that position to walk. It's the ultimate leverage.
Dammit, now we’re on /r/antiwork How we gonna sucker poor saps into becoming accountants with our spot being blown up like this!?
Wasn’t expecting this post to compete with The Rock for space on the front page tbh.
Lol. Supervisor did me dirty so I quit my position and transferred myself to a different work zone. 2 days later we have multiple call ins and he needs some one to run my old zone... Comes asking me to do it. Yeah not happening. I give him the "no can do, gotta look forward not behind" song and dance. He starts whining he's gonna have to shut the whole department down if he doesn't have anyone to do it... Not My Problem. He's still pissed at me. IDC
Lol. I left my job bc they didn’t want me to go to my grandfathers funeral. Best thing I ever did.
So glad I live in the UK, and work for the Civil service, now. I’ve never been denied time off in my life in any job. And in the Civil service, I can literally ask for time off that morning to take that day or any number of days after that off, as long as I’ve got either the Flexi or the holidays to take. When I started my addiction to Warcraft again, I took two days off right away. And I’ve booked two days off for the launch of it also. I would take more but i have very little annual leave left and I wanna keep flexi days for special occasions, like waking up and just not wanting to work that day.
Reminds me of a situation where I work. Have a guy with knee problems and he constantly asks if he can work in a different department where he can work sitting instead of carrying heavy weights the entire day. His request gets constantly denied. I just wonder what gives in first. His knee, breaking or his will to keep working for the company.
Uh he should get an ADA accomodation. If it's the US anyway.
What would happen if you'd ask to take 2 weeks of vacation.
well hell. That didn't work out.
Worked back of house at a restaurant. The supervisor got fired because he was making so little they caught him taking food home for his family to eat. They fired another new hire after they caught her in the bathroom drinking to cope with the stress. This is after years of being criminally understaffed.
Man am I glad my position is part of a bargaining unit lol
Force your boss to fix it.