I am a full-time employee of a certain organization and entitled to plenty of vacation days and sick days. I almost never take sick days, and they lapse, while my vacation days (previously 10 days a year, not 15) can accumulate to a maximum of 19. I haven't taken a single vacation in last 4 years either hence losing all these benefits over the time.
Here is why i have not been able to take any days off (except for legitimate times when i took days off a few times).
As i mentioned, I am an employee of an organization, let's call it an XYZ organization who provides consulting services to other organizations, hence placing their employees (i.e. me) into their client's organizations to work for them. They get paid, we get paid, and if we don't get placed with a client for 3 months, chances are we will be fired for being on the bench for too long and not making money for the XYZ Org. and enjoying free salaries for those months on bench.
So, for the past few years even before this bubble of AI, i started noticing this behavior on multiple clients, that every-time you take a vacation (more specifically that lasts for more than 1 week), you will be offloaded from the project and/or the organization, because, by the time you come back from your vacation, the client would have replaced you very efficiently.
By replacing I mean, they have found a way to make their existing workforce take ownership of your workload along with whatever they already do. Essentially, everyone of your peers do the same thing, and have the same technical expertise, so they can take over unless they are really busy. This also proves one of the two things,
- Existing workforce had more time at hand then they would have liked to disclose, or
- They feel the pressure of being fired too and would just take more and more work as it comes their way.
Long story short, i have seen multiple consultants let go because they decided to take that overdue vacation they had been planning for years.
Once they let go of you, you are benched and eligible for interviews to other clients. The number of days you are on bench matters specially with tightened financial situation around the world post-covid and number of Technology firings going on for various reasons including the AI. A consulting organization would not bear your costs for more than a couple of months. The XYZ Org. used to allow benched employees on company payroll for 6 months just 3 years ago, which has already shrunk to 3 months, and since its not a defined or public policy, you never know if its already reached to 2 or even 1 month now.
So, I am not able to take that overdue vacation! Because i fear for being fired despite my numerous hours on wonderful projects and achievements for the client. What has the world come to?
Tell me who is the Asshole here?😗