What is the reason/benefit for a company to require you to use a full hour of PTO instead of .5 hours if that’s all you need?

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I can’t understand this, and I’m so frustrated with it at work. If I need to leave a half hour early for an appt, apparently they would rather I stop working an extra half hour early, leave and have a half hour to kill before my appt. If it could make sense in my head maybe the aggravation can stop. Thanks.

In: Economics

12 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

From a policy perspective, an argument can be made that some jobs simply don’t tolerate short interruptions well. I can probably cover a fry cook for 30mins, but if my closing store manager wants to leave 30 minutes early, I probably have to round up another manager to be there a full hour to cover that shift. Making partial PTO hours available to some employees means I incur a risk of other employee complaints of discriminatory treatment. And, practically, I’ve totally seen employees use partial PTO days, and simply don’t bother contributing at all that day. It’s a way to pad your vacation time on the employer’s dime (and, technically, fraud if you want to be honest.)

I’ve been salary the past ten years. Most of that has been bullshit “unlimited PTO”, which means you can ask for as much time off as your supervisor/manager will permit. Unsurprisingly, it’s a broken, unfair vacation system that panders to favored employees and intimidates everyone else. The times where I’ve had _paid_ PTO, time off was calculated not by _hour_ but by either 1/2 (4hr) or 1/4 (2hr) day. You didn’t have the option to take only an hour, much less 15 or 30 mins. The flip side for both systems (paid and unlimited) was occasionally leaving 30 mins early was never a big deal, and simply wasn’t reported as PTO. Shifting work hours an hour early or late, especially to facilitate child care was common.

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