Unlimited PTO: A Double-Edged Sword

30 Aug 2025 · 1 min

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In this monologue, the speaker shares a personal experience working for a company that offers unlimited paid time off (PTO). They initially use the policy to attend numerous medical appointments and later to take vacation time and visit family. When the frequency of their absences becomes noticeable, their manager questions the practicality of unlimited PTO, and HR expresses concern about the amount of time taken. Feeling the policy isn’t truly unlimited, the speaker investigates alternatives and discovers intermittent FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) as a possible way to protect their right to take needed time off for health reasons without employer pushback.

Chapters

I was working somewhere, one of those employers that has the wonderful perk of unlimited PTO. We know how that goes. There's unlimited. Well, so here's what I was running into. I was using my unlimited PTO to, you know, cop out for my doctor's appointments when I needed to. I was getting testing, I was seeing different specialists and bouncing all around. And so I was using unlimited PTO, no big deal, got my work done, then I needed to actually I go on a vacation, take a few days off and visit some family and went again to the boss and unlimited PTO. And, but you've taken them off so much time recently. So then I'm like, well then what's the point of unlimited PTO then? So I go to HR and we, we start talking about, um, you know, what, what else can we do there if this isn't working? This is about the time I learned on my own about something called intermittent FMLA.