So, the question I keep getting from everyone is how the hell I manage to take so many days off from work. I’d like to give credit to my boss (he is a nice guy), but I won’t owe it all to that. It requires genius planning and here are the ones that have worked best for me.
1. Assumption is the mother of all f***ups rule – Figure out what is the leave policy in your company is well in advance (before joining). Don’t assume you get 30 days off or 25 days off and then find out that they are sadists who only give 5 days off. Quitting an organization for leave policy may not be considered sanity in the corporate world. I am lucky. The organization I work for gives 36 days off. They are Austrian and generally in holiday mood most of the year.
2. Everything counts rule – Learn more details about the leave policy. If you take a Friday and a Monday off, is it considered as 4 days or 2 days? If it is 4 days, then you work for sadists. It it is 2 days, its better. Then, you can plan your holiday from a Monday to a Friday and still get 9 days off but it gets counted only as 5 days. Once, I had taken only 13 days but it worked out to something like 25 days due to genius planning.
3. No sick leave rule – Certain organizations have a sick leave policy. According to me, unless you are hospitalized or have broken both your legs, you should come to office, however sick you are. Then, your boss will feel sorry for you and send you home and it doesn’t get counted as leave. Your commitment to work overrules the 1 day leave you took. This way, you save on your leave for when you really need it – a holiday.
4. Maximizing your boss’s leave – Never take leave when your boss is on leave. Ensure you are at work. It is as good as a holiday anyway.
5. Maternity leave – If you know for sure you don’t plan to have kids within the tenure you plan to spend in this company, you can
request HR for a sabbatical in lieu of maternity leave. 3 months is great. In France, its 2 years. If you work for a company that buys this excuse, let me know. I’ll forward my resume to them.
Before you use any of these excuses, you need to know that these are only for long leaves only. For small leave, one or two days, you should keep in handy the book of excuses – dog is sick, kid fell down the stairs, stomach upset, small accident and so on. If you can come up with about 30 of these excuses and put them in an excel sheet (as rows) and have months (as columns), it would be a fantastic one pager to ensure you don’t overuse any particular excuse.
Finally, if you have decided this job isn’t for you anyway and you need your short leave, long leave or whatever, you can try using this cool line – ‘Let me go’ or ‘Let me go’.
PS: Boss, if you are reading this, go back to the first para. I’ve called you a nice guy.
PS: Team, if you are reading this, you don’t need to use the excuses with me. I encourage you’ll to take leave all the time.
