[stronglikedan]

Unfortunately, most companies think that they own you 24/7 as soon as they put you on salary. To them, you are getting paid for it.

A guy at my job got written up for not responding to emails on vacation, even though he had an autoresponder directing people to his boss, and told everyone ahead of time that he'd be dark for a few days. Management's excuse is that you are 24/7 unless it's otherwise defined in your employment contract, and they won't ever put set hours into an employment contract.

[amyjess]

I work for a defense contractor, and pretty much the only good thing about our (government-mandated) insanely bureaucratic timekeeping policies is that you will never see something like this happen at my employer.

Edit: Giving some details about defense contractor billing.

For those not aware of defense contractor timekeeping, every single paid hour has to be billed to exactly one thing, and each employee needs to explicitly bill the hours themselves on their timesheets.

If you're on vacation, you bill your hours to vacation. If you're working on a project, you bill your hours to the contract that funds the project. If you're sick, you bill the hours to sick leave. If you're working on a purely-internal project, you bill the hours to internal projects.

Billing hours to the wrong project is legally considered fraud, and it can get the company in serious hot water. Besides, no defense contractor would want to bill working hours to vacation: the company makes no money from hours billed to vacation, while the company makes money for each hour billed to a contract. Now, if they want to interrupt your vacation by making you bill hours to a contract, they can, but that eats into the amount of available hours they're allowed to bill for that contract (hours which would be much better being billed when you're in the office and are able to sit down at a work computer and do real work), and you get to keep your vacation hours, so you can prolong your vacation.

[kstrauser]

Screw that. Unless I've specifically negotiated otherwise - and trust me, you'd be paying me handsomely for it - my work day starts upon arrival and ends upon departure.

Now, that's not a hard and fast rule. If something breaks at 2AM, call me. If there's an upcoming hard deadline, count on me. I've come up with plenty of work solutions while taking a shower at home. I pitch in extra because I believe in my company, enjoy my work, and want it to be successful. But if you want the right to my out-of-office hours, break out the checkbook. And frankly, you can't (or won't want to) afford that sort of arrangement.

[vvanders]

That's grounds for job-search in my book.

Vacation is a form of compensation and if a company can't respect that then they aren't worth working for.

[vinceguidry]

It's grounds for a lawsuit, as I'm fairly sure it violates labor laws. Find the relevant statutes, print them out, highlight them, and watch HR squirm.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Probably not. It's been a few years since I took the in-house Employment Law class, but in the US I do not believe that you must be offered vacation time. I remember that you have to have to be able to take at least one morning and one afternoon break, but that's it as far as the law goes.

[thecatspaw]

what? If that was my job, I'd be looking for a new job faster than you can say "check your mail". In my holidays (2 weeks in summer usually) I dont respond for the whole time. No once-a-day mail checking, nothing. Never had problems so far luckily

[stronglikedan]

I would look for a new job, and as a matter of fact, I did. When they found out I was looking (saw my resume on a job board), they compensated me to the point where I don't mind checking my email at odd hours. I was ready to leave, and I wasn't going to tell them or hold them hostage for an increase, so it worked out well for me, and I didn't feel like a salary blackmailer. It's a cushy job, and I've been here for over a decade, so I was relieved in a way (I don't like change).