Issue with My Vacation Time, what do you think...

First of all, you need to be firm here. You were told by your boss that you could work from home, and you did work from home. That cannot be interpreted as a vacation day, period.

Did your boss notify you that you could work from home via email? If so, good. If not, that’s still ok. Just be completely confident that they will correct this and return your vacation days.

Email your boss and tell him that payroll made a mistake and toook 2 vacation days from you. Ask him if who the best person is to contact to correct the mistake. If he pushes back, be calm and consistent. Either forward him the email where he told you that you could work from home or remind him of the discussion you had and how you worked from home answering phone calls. Then be clear that you are not asking for vacation days back. You’re just trying to figure out the easiest way for your vacation days to be correctly returned.

At this point, if he is not cooperating, forward the thread to HR and request a meeting.

If he refuses to communicate via email and prefers to talk in person, remember to be firm and calm. If he insists that you will not get them back or makes you uncomfortable, demand that the conversation be had with HR present.

This is wage theft.

@hmmmmmm Thank you! But I just found in my handbook that if the office isn’t “officially” closed for weather that we must choose to take sick time, vacation time, or personal time. Do you think I still have a case?

^ Of course. It’s very common in my current and previous job for people to be told by their managers that they can work from home if the weather is bad. And we do. No vacation time is taken.

If it were clear that you would be using your vacation time, you would not have worked. You put in the hours. They owe you the pay. Period.

You need to have your boss adjust your time as sick days, rather than vacation days. That would be consistent with company policy.

^ But even sick days is not right.

@BackinBlack: “Those days at the beginning of the year where the temps were in the -20’s my boss let our office know that we could work from home if that made us comfortable. He said he would be in but if we had the ability to work from home to do so.”

When you take a sick day, you are not required to work from home. If you do work from home, it’s no longer a sick day. It’s a worked day.

If you did work from home, then they were not vacation days. Period.

On the days I stayed home due to weather, I did not work and did use two vacation days.

He can’t offer you the option (like a nice boss) then take vaca days.
I’d be curious if he did this to everyone that stayed home.

@zenvelo Technically you call in sick to use a sick day and do not work. She worked so it wasn’t a sick day.

@KNOWITALL I’m the only hourly employee so he doesn’t manage anyone’s timecard but mine. I see it as he trusts everyone else to “work from home” but not me.

@BackinBlack Interesting. One thing I have learned is that sometimes even mgmt forgets the rules…maybe he just needs to be reminded by HR. Good luck!

@KNOWITALL and @hmmmmmm I realize he wasn’t sick, and worked, but I was recommending a way to get paid without using vacation time, since the boss is not going to pay him for days out of office.

I understand wanting to be right; but being right when standing in the unemployment line doesn’t buy lunch.

@zenvelo You’re definately right, sometimes you have to just bite the bullet and keep your job, and know next time.

@zenvelo: “I understand wanting to be right;”

I also understand not wanting to be stolen from. She’ll be able to tell if they’re going to try to fire her because she is asking to not have her time/money stolen from her. But I suspect they might have just screwed up or forgotten.

This isn’t a case of @BackinBlack having read the employee handbook and decided the rules don’t apply to her. This is a case of a manager stating what the rules would be for her and his employees. If he screwed up, he needs to explain that he did and apologize or try to make it right.

Of course, @BackinBlack doesn’t want to lose his/her job over this. But you have to stand up when your employer is stealing from you.

That’s bullshit (or just a mistake – I’d start with “boss probably made a simple honest mistake”).

Any day where:

* Your boss told people they could work from home.
* You did work from home.

Was not a Vacation day!

I didn’t read the other answers. You get paid. Just tell HR you will be happy to forward all the emails you sent back and forth doing your work in those days. They have to pay you if you were working. I assume you’re up in the upper Midwest or northeast, and most of those states are heavily union and even if your company isn’t union, HR know the labor laws.

If you feel you didn’t work all hours, and you are a wage earner, you can tell them by 3:00 you were done, or whatever is the truth, but being available for snails and calls is working.

If your position isn’t available for work at home, then they need to tell you that, and next time you can choose not to work or go in to work.

Is your vacation time PTO time that includes sick days? Or, are sick days separate?

A company I worked for lost an expensive lawsuit, because nurses often ate their lunch while still working at the charge desk on the floor. The company was automatically subtracting their half hour lunch break from their hours worked. The company lost because a working break is still work, and employees get paid when they work.

After the court decision any employee who had worked during lunch, could come back and list all the hours they were due money. It was a free for all! Plenty of people did deserve money, but from what I understand plenty took advantage. I was already gone from the company when this happened, I had quit, but I was told I could still submit a list to get pay I had been cheated out of. I never followed their ridiculous methods, and I clocked out when I left for lunch, and clocked back in. I took at least 45 minutes, because 30 minutes is ridiculous in my opinion. I did what I wanted, and didn’t care if they wanted to terminate me. No one ever said anything. If all employees had done it my way that company would not have been in such a mess legally.

@JLeslie sick days are separate!

And what makes me so mad is that I don’t get a full two weeks at the beginning of the year… I accrue .976 days per month. I wanted to take a vacation at the end of may and I have 4 hours of vacation time. So those two days really screwed me.

I printed emails and proof from my boss about working from home. I will calmly bring it up like it was a mistake and then if I need to show the proof of emails plus the employee handbook. The least I should get is the option to use sick time instead of vacay time.

geez…