'I can never take leave': Night shift worker forced to cash out unused PTO seeks advice

A post on Reddit’s r/jobs has recently narrated a story of someone working permanent nights for about 20 months. There are only two people on their shift. Their coworker gets vacation because the original poster covers for them. When the original poster asks for vacation, there is nobody to cover, so it never gets approved.

In nearly two years, they have taken four vacation days. They have already sold 40 hours of PTO back and are about to sell another 40 because they are approaching the 240-hour cap. Once they hit it, they stop accruing entirely.

The maths is simple and unfair: a benefit they earned is being converted to cash at a discount, or simply lost, because the company has not solved a staffing problem that is entirely of its own making.

“Am I overreacting, or would this be enough to make you start looking for another job?” they asked.

What Reddit said

The most actionable advice pointed toward making the problem visible to people above the immediate manager, and framing it explicitly as a compensation issue rather than a scheduling preference.

“This is a conversation with HR and finance. If your boss doesn’t let you take PTO and you’re going to cap, they need to let you cash out some hours so you don’t lose them,” one commenter said.

Several commenters pushed back on the idea that coverage is the employee’s problem to solve. “Tell your boss you are taking PTO. You booked a trip. Too bad, too sad. Let him deal with it. Coverage is not your responsibility, [but] it is your boss’s,” one user wrote. Another suggested a pointed question for any manager who pushes back: ask them when they last took a vacation.

One commenter addressed the coworker dynamic directly: “If the coworker whose shifts you cover won’t reciprocate and cover yours, you should refuse to help them again.”

A system where one employee permanently covers another’s absences without reciprocity, and where the company’s response to their inability to take leave is to buy back hours rather than fix the staffing gap, is a system that has transferred a portion of their compensation into the company’s pocket. Maybe that was their plan all along? Keep doing the same thing because it allowed them to cut costs and line their pockets simultaneously.

The job pays well and they like it overall, which makes the situation harder. But the steps Reddit suggest the original poster take are clear: document the situation, escalate to HR and finance, raise it as a compensation issue, and if necessary, book the time and let the coverage problem land where it belongs, which is with management.

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