Vacation Time

 

When I was considering leaving my old job, where I had been for 15 1/2 years, one of the cons on my pros and cons list was giving up five weeks of vacation. A wise person told me: If you had a job you liked and where you were treated better you wouldn't feel you needed five weeks of vacation time.

Fast forward to this year (3 years after I left that job). Well, let's go back to November of last year first. Our HR manager told us how much personal time we had left for 2023 and we were supposed to tell her if we were going to use it or roll it over. (Roll it over?! At every job I ever had it was "use it or lose it.") I started work there on Feb. 21 and wasn't even thinking about personal days, vacation days, etc., so I was surprised to learn I had more than 13 hours of personal time left. With all the holiday time we all get, I only had to work one day between 12/21 and Jan 1. And, even that day could have been half a day. I worked because I wanted to get caught up on stuff so I wouldn't be overwhelmed when I got back on Jan. 2.

Now, a little over a month from my one-year anniversary date, a co-worker mentioned that I will have one week of vacation time plus the 10 personal days as of Feb 22. That's three weeks of paid time off after one year as opposed to five weeks after 15 1/2 years.

That alone is enough to tell me I made the right choice. 

(I could, and probably will someday, go into the myriad other reasons I made the right choice.)