I probably shouldn’t mention that 20 days is the legal minimum for full-time employment, and that 30 days is the typical amount most people receive. And there are extra days for getting promoted or working 10+ years...

I read mine. My boss sent it to me 2 days before I actually started working there, then he let me work there for a week before actually signing, with all benefits being contractually valid from the day I started, not from the day I signed.

If you never saw your contract, get a lawyer.

How do you sign it then?

What do you sign when you start your job?

Honestly never heard of no contract, what country is this?

Are y'all getting 5 weeks of vacation a year? My American mind cannot comprehend this.

I've been at my company for almost a decade and I think I'm a bit over 4 weeks of vacation, a good chunk of that is due to seniority.

hours

the US labor rights are so bad they have to measure time off in hours 😭

I can carry a max of four days to the next year, but the system doesn't track it so it's an "honor" system

which basically means leverage to fire you over it if they even need a reason

Was it easy to finance?

I mean... yes and no? I earned about £35k+ per annum between between 2013 ish and 2017 ish, and didn't spend much money on hobbies and such and being frugal. So I was saving money without trying that hard, and figured that about £16k was enough to take a year out to try to learn spanish and slightly change careers, if I spent about £1k a month.

What made your sabbatical so good?

The complete freedom, living on my own, being able to work on daily and long term goals. I lived in a town that was near london, so it was (kinda) cheaper, walkable, 1 h away from london so I could visit from time to time, and had a climbing center nearby.

I took the time to get regular exercise, work on my mental health, learn spanish and just live at my own pace. I even travelled a little (I had a holiday I booked in 2017 for 2018 that I was going on anyway to visit LATAM, and Behold The Arctopus was playing live gigs again for the first time in 5 years, and obviously they were not coming to europe, so I went to NY for like 5ish days (3 days + 1 night + 1 morning). [EDIT : I also returned to my country of origin for a month to save money/drop off sentimental value things/visit family, and en route away from europe I visited Denmark to be with a friend for a week for the last time in ages]

I’d love to but all the logistics are overwhelming for me.

What logicistics are causing you issues? I stayed in the same place I was in while I was working, and all I had to do was quit my job. There's not much to do... oh. You must be from the US? Healthcare? Good luck with that shit.

Just to put it into perspective, the sabbatical isn't meant to be frequent and usually you're not meant to be paid, just have a job to go back to after. If it's available, it's somewhere where you're quite senior and been working there for a long time.

For my sabbatical, I just straight up quit; I wasn't even playing to stay in the same country after it was over.

They just get lost in the UK too, most places seem pretty good about making sure you take them though.

At the first full time job I had in Oz there were a bunch of old dudes who had each accrued over a year in untaken annual leave. The company had to crack down on it and make them start taking it because it was a huge liability, both financially and as a risk to actually getting work done. They had to develop plans for them to take it a couple months at a time.

Yup. The only thing you can count on from your employer is what they have already given you. I don’t believe any promises.

If I got paid out for my vacations, I would not take my vacations ever. Probably a good thing they don’t pay them out.

That's fucked up

But a time-honored one

Hell - here's how fucked up it is - my SO worked in clinic that wasn't open on holidays, but offered no holiday pay, so employees had to use the 10 or 14 vaca days they got to cover their 7 holidays, which they couldn't have worked if they wanted to. 'Ready, able, and willing' is how the law is worded, for salaried employees. But these things are meaningless relics of old times when labor had some power and wasn't just the fleshlight of the rich.

Rolling them over would be better, but most full time jobs do cash out your unused PTO onto the last paycheck of the financial year. Some jobs let you roll over a limited amount, and sometimes that amount increases each year.

that's so american brained it's comical. no dude, in normal countries you can't deduce benefits from the wage. "i can pay you less than minimum wage because you get tips" doesn't happen outside of corporatistan

Pretty sure that's considered wage theft in all 50 states. But not surprised it happened to you, wage theft costs Americans more money than any other crime, literally billions of dollars annually. As far as I know there is no law enforcement proactively policing this stuff, anything that goes unreported goes uninvestgated and unprosecuted.