[AnimalMuppet]

I'm an "exempt" employee. That means that I'm exempt from the fair labor laws.

It means that, for example, I don't get docked in pay if I work a few less hours this week. It means I don't punch a timeclock.

We just had a bit of a big deal about this at work. Some of us were taking parts of days off, and marking them as such in our system: "I took two hours off today." HR told us to stop. Apparently, there's some kind of a legal/liability issue they were getting into, where exempt employees don't have to do that. We can just take a couple hours off, without using up vacation time to do it. (I don't know the details about it. I can't tell you how to make your HR department see it this way. To me, it was just one more of those random HR policy changes. But the point is, exempt is a different set of rules, and some of those rules are pretty nice.)

Exempt also means, once in a while, that I get called in after hours, or that I work unpaid overtime. I accept that, as long as it doesn't happen too often. I accept the bad part of the deal in order to also get the good part.

If you refuse to work unpaid overtime, are you also willing to let go of the good parts of the deal?

[hwstar]

It would depend on company policy. If company policy requires you to take PTO for a doctor's or dentists appointment, then I'd only work 40 hours at that company. If the company doesn't account for exempt time, then they may get more than 40 hours of work out of me.

Regarding exempt employees having to take PTO, recent court challenges in California have come out in favor of the employer. See Rhea V. General Atomics. http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of-appeal/1673316.html