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by babycake 1732 days ago
What a weird perspective this is. There is a man whose wife is dying. He needs support from his employer because that's what's paying the bills for the food, shelter, and medical bills that pile up while he's taking care of her. He's put in all his time and effort into helping the company succeed, now he's asking for some leeway when shit hit the fan for him.

It's so pedantic to then point to these random rules, which are specifically designed to screw the employee over, and then say 'welp, those are the rules, too bad'. It also goes against the company mantra, of putting your health before the company (as he states in the article).

The guy in the article even stated:

> - No, it's not even a question, because you won't be using it as a vacation, right? Technically you won't be on PTO, so take a medical leave.

> It sounds very touching, but I didn't recognize the trick here. They wanted me to use my medical leave, because they didn't want to pay for the PTO I earned.

The point here is that the company didn't want to pay the guy for his hard-earned PTO. They pulled out all the stops to avoid paying him. They instead wanted to give him unpaid medical time off. Then they said they couldn't approve PTO because they didn't have enough office coverage, yet his boss took a month off.

So why can't he use his PTO? That's his money, his wife is dying, and his mental and physical health is at an all time low. Let him use his damn PTO.

3 comments

This.

Any manager under me who refuses PTO to someone caring for a loved one in such a mentally wrenching situation like this deserves to get fired themselves. And if I have anything to say in the matter, they will be, in short order.

He didn't say his wife was dying. Colon cancer is not automatically fatal. The problem is that these are always one sided stories and it's impossible to get the full picture...how can you even begin to adjudicate this by assuming his claims are true?
Doesn't sound like he had much PTO anyway. Why wouldn't he just take leave? If he wanted to take PTO and then dip into leave when it runs out, there may be legal reasons you can't do that.
Sounds like he had unlimited PTO and had hardly used any of it to me.
They did take leave -- evidenced by the language about not being able to extend the leave by using PTO in the email from their manager.
Exactly. He's basically arguing over a few dollars (PTO vs leave), and I'm guessing it's not because he needs the money.
Because PTO needs to be approved by the manager which they weren't ready to do.