How many vacation days did you take this year? How many does your employer allow you to take? Did you work through illness and burnout because you didn’t have enough paid time off to rest and recuperate? Did you skip meaningful events with your family? When was the last time you took an actual vacation from your job?
Today we’re talking about vacation time, or paid time off (PTO). It’s the bitter controversy that launched a thousand memes about the difference between Europe and the United States.
In the past, I’ve worked for employers that offered anywhere from 6 to 10 vacation days per year. I’ve worked for companies that allow you to take comp time (i.e., if you work on a weekend day, you may add that day to your total PTO). Currently, I work for a company that “doesn’t have a vacation policy.” Other employers call this “unlimited PTO.” In practice, this means that I can take as many days off as I see fit, so long as I get my work done.
With that generous vacation time policy, you might be wondering how much time I took off this year. Welp…
I took 8 fucking work weeks of vacation time this year. That’s 40 whole days.
And I feel absolutely no remorse. In fact, I feel giddy. I feel like celebrating! Let’s unpack that!
How I spent my vacation time
Before we dive into the greater proletarian discourse of PTO, allow me a humble brag. Here’s how I used my 40 days of vacation time over the course of this year:
- I visited my family on the East Coast for a non-Christmas Christmas in mid-January. During this trip I visited my grandfather in the hospital, where he was being treated for pneumonia and dementia.
- In March my dog died. He was 16 years old and going through renal failure, so I needed to take a few days off to manage his care and plan for the end of his life. It sucked. I miss my dog so much.
- A week to the day after that, Papi passed away. I flew back east again for the wake and funeral. We knew it was coming, and I’m glad I had a chance to say goodbye in January… but it still hurt.
- After all that grief, I deserved a real fucking break. So in April I took three weeks off to raft the Grand Canyon—a trip we’d been planning for a whole year. I was completely off the grid and thrilled about it.
- For my husband’s birthday in July (though not on Independence Day weekend), we went on another outdoor adventure in Southern Colorado, rafting and swimming and brewery-hopping with friends.
- This September I went to Vermont to officiate the wedding of my childhood bestie. It was magical. She looked like a gd angel. The wedding was in the Green Mountains, and I got to do a fair amount of hiking in between my responsibilities as High Priestess of Love and Commitment.
- Then I took a week off in October to raft the Green River with some friends. Along the way we hiked to waterfalls and petroglyphs and got rained on.
- Finally, I went to Santa Fe to celebrate a friend’s birthday. It was debaucherous. It was silly. I drank too much and played lots of guitar around the fire.
[deep sigh] My life is so cool.
What my vacations say about me
Alert readers will notice a couple trends here:
First, I often traveled for meaningful occasions with my loved ones: weddings, funerals, birthdays. I’m so glad I was able to take time off to be with my family when my grandfather died. And on the other end of the emotional spectrum, I got to officiate a wedding! I’ve never felt so drunk with power!
Second: When I unplug, I unplug. Notice how many of those trips were to the wilderness? I couldn’t be reached via Slack, text message, or even smoke signal for most of those trips! I left my phone and computer behind. Working on those vacations was simply not possible.
(I also left my CPAP behind. Many a rutting javelina was sorely disappointed after mistaking my sleep noises for the wild call of their mate.)
Lastly, I took vacation outside of regularly scheduled holidays. Traveling for Christmas is exorbitantly expensive… so my family celebrated Christmas in January instead. Same goes for Independence Day weekend. Having that flexibility saved me a ton of money, but it also meant that I was available at work when my other coworkers were taking time off for normal holidays.
The instinct to defend my vacation time
When I first got the idea to write about paid vacation time, I mostly wanted to write about it broadly, as an institution. I wanted to include all kinds of facts and figures (don’t worry, those are coming) and stick to the research. But our sweet baby bitchlings seem to like it when we bare our souls and write about our own experiences, so here we are.
I thought my own vacation time usage would be a minor footnote in this very serious, journalistic research article. But when I actually counted up how many paid vacation days I used this year… I felt a thrill of panic. Of danger.
Because 40 days is… a lot of days, you guys! Had I gotten away with something? Did I take advantage of my exalted employer’s largesse? Was I… a bad girl?!?
My knee-jerk reaction was to apologize, to defend my decision to take so much time off, to prove that I’d somehow earned it and hadn’t left my coworkers high and dry. (Don’t worry, all that is coming too. You can take the girl out of Catholicism but it’s reeeeal tricky to take the Catholic guilt out of the girl.)
In the spirit of practicing what I preach, I realized that none of that is actually necessary. I don’t feel any remorse for taking 40 days of vacation time. And that’s how it fucking should be!
No one is abusing vacation time
The bad-faith argument against generous vacation policies is that everyone will just take excessive PTO and the work won’t get done. You know—just another variation on the classic anti-labor strawman that if we treat workers like human beings, they’ll want to get away with everything! If you give a mouse a cookie he’ll want BASIC LABOR PROTECTIONS AND THE POWER OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING!
I work with a high level of efficiency. So when I’m on the clock, I am getting shit done. A close friend once told me that my life is productivity porn for other people (‘sup Meg). When I took 40 days off this year, I didn’t leave my coworkers hanging. I worked hard before vacation to make sure my absence would have a minimal effect on my team. And when they went on vacation, I reciprocated by covering their work.
While there are always outliers, I know that I’m not alone. Most people are invested in keeping their jobs. And they understand the best way to do that is to… well, do their jobs, no matter how much PTO they take.
Vacation time is part of your compensation
When I was interviewing for my job, the unlimited PTO policy was dangled like a crisp, juicy carrot to entice me to take the job. I was told that they would never ever forbid me from taking three weeks off to raft the Grand Canyon—a thing that literally happened to me at my last company!
So I took them at their word.
Because after all, that unlimited vacation time is part of my compensation. It has real value, just like my salary, my employer-sponsored retirement account, and my employer-provided health insurance. Why would I not go on vacation when they are literally paying me to do so?
If I were not given PTO, I would expect them to pay me more in coin of the realm. In fact, I would demand it. Just like I would demand more money if my employer did not provide me with health insurance.
Using a vacation day is equivalent to spending your paycheck. You wouldn’t just not accept money from your employer, right?
Americans suck at taking vacation time
And yet! When it comes to vacation time, my 40 days off make me an outlier. Traditionally, my countrymen suck at taking vacation time.
According to a 2023 report from the Pew Research Center, even when granted generous PTO, Americans just don’t take their vacation time. 46% simply don’t use some or all of their vacation and sick days! When asked why they don’t take time off, these vacation day-avoiders gave various reasons:
- they don’t feel like they need to take time off
- they worry about falling behind at work
- they feel badly about their coworkers covering for them
Aw, that’s nice. So selfless! So helpful and accommodating!
Keep that corporate nonsense out of your mouth. Unused PTO is a scourge against the proletariate and we won’t have it here in Bitch Nation!
Negative workplace consequences of unused vacation days
Our glorious workers’ revolution aside, unused PTO can lead to mental and physical health problems, burnout, and [gasp] lack of productivity in the workplace.
A 2015 study of more than 4,000 working adults found that unused vacation negatively impacts employees’ workplace performance. According to the study, employees “who don’t take vacations are more likely to be burned out by work, unable to meet work requirements, and lacking the energy they need for work. These characteristics do not describe ideal employees, nor the kind of
managers we want leading our teams.”
WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE IDEAL EMPLOYEES?
Negative personal health consequences of unused vacation days
More to the point, Rebecca Zucker for the Harvard Business Review explains that unused vacation is also horrible for the human beings putting on worksonas to increase shareholder value every day. Zucker writes:
The cognitive impact when you’re overwhelmed with work can include cognitive fatigue, difficulty concentrating, forgetfulness, and impaired problem-solving ability, among several other effects. Taking a vacation provides greater opportunity for rest and better sleep (both quantity and quality), which can help unclutter your mind to create more mental space.
But wait! It gets worse! Zucker writes of the physical impacts of skipped vacation:
Everyday work pressures can result in elevated levels of the stress hormones cortisol and epinephrine, similar to if you felt you were in physical danger. An increase in stress hormones has the effect of suppressing your immune system so your body can channel its energy to flee from (or fight) a non-existent saber-toothed tiger. Relaxing on vacation can reduce the levels of these stress hormones and allow your immune system to recover, making you less prone to get sick. Conversely, if stress hormones stay chronically elevated due to lack of rest and recovery time that comes as a result of putting off or forgoing vacation, you will be more susceptible to not only colds or the flu, but also vulnerable longer term to more serious illnesses like heart disease or cancer.
In other words, skipping vacation time means you’re foregoing these crucial opportunities to reset your mental and physical health. Guys! That’s really bad for you!
Unlimited PTO must be the solution!
This might make you think the solution’s simple: just give everyone more vacation time! Maybe even… unlimited vacation time! Yet there are weird cultural forces afoot even for employers with unlimited PTO, like my own. Namely: you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it spend a long weekend in wine country.
According to the BBC, “In some firms with UPTO [unlimited paid time off], workers end up taking less holiday—not more—because of peer pressure and perceived expectations around ‘acceptable’ amounts of holiday.” That same delightfully British article (“holiday” 😊) also notes that one-third of Americans with unlimited PTO always work while on vacation!
But besides the social stigma around unlimited PTO, there’s also a pretty solid financial argument against it.
Is unlimited PTO… a trap?
When you have a limited amount of PTO as part of your compensation, its value is quantifiable in dollars. So if you leave the company without having used your PTO, the company has to pay you the value of your vacation time on your way out the door. Also, this is why at various companies vacation days roll over at the end of the year, or else employers warn to “use them or lose them” before they expire at year’s end.
Note: Make sure your boss pays out your unused PTO when you leave the company. Don’t let them commit the most common form of theft in the country (wage theft, that is).
I once worked for a publisher that sent me on so many business trips during weekends that I ended up using comp time for vacations more often than I used PTO. When I left the company, they owed me nearly $5,000 in vacation time. That was more than enough to pay for my COBRA health insurance and pad my emergency fund before my benefits kicked in at my next job.
But all of that goes out the window with unlimited PTO.
Remember how my current employer just “doesn’t have a vacation policy”? This means my PTO has no strict monetary value. When I eventually leave the company, they won’t have to pay me for any unused vacation days. In the meantime, they don’t need to waste any time, personnel, or resources on tracking the vacation time of hundreds of employees.
Add to that the social pressure to avoid taking PTO, and unlimited vacation time ultimately benefits employers over employees.
Which is one more reason why I am using as much vacation time as I damn well please.
The benefits of my 40 vacation days
Taking the vacation time I needed when I needed it was, uh… really fucking good for me!
It improved my personal life in measurable ways.
- I was able to take time off for family emergencies without guilt or stress. I could travel immediately for funerals. While I’m sure my family would have been very understanding if I told them “I can’t make it because I don’t have enough PTO”… I’m just glad I didn’t have to.
- In rafting the Grand Canyon, I was able to go on an incredibly ambitious adventure that challenged my outdoors skills, endurance, patience, and mettle in a way I’ve never experienced before. It was as physically demanding as it was spiritually fulfilling. Just thinking about that trip gives me a jolt of happiness!
- Every time I went on a true vacation just for fun, I came back to my job refreshed and energized. It reset the clock on burnout and the physiological effects of work stress. I was more creative, more engaged, and more motivated to excel at my job.
Will I be taking another 40 days of vacation in 2025? Maybe! Or maybe I’ll take even more time off. Either way, I won’t hesitate for an instant to take time off when I need it. It’s better for everyone that way!
Vacation time is a powerful weapon against burnout
Believe it or not, it’s a bit of a struggle to practice what I preach. I wasn’t always the 40-vacation-days type! I used to agonize over taking time off and enter a whole anxiety spiral just wondering what was happening at work while I was out. Relaxing it was not!
That’s why here at Bitches Get Riches Laboratories and Emporium, we’ve spent years perfecting our patented formula for burnout recovery. With our rigorous yet affordable course and workbook, you too can learn how to make the most of your vacation time in order to recover from the lasting effects of burnout!
How much vacation time did you take this year? Did you use it on sick days? Did you take an honest-to-goodness vacation? Does your employer even allow you to take time off? Let’s discuss in the comments section!
