Sometimes, jobs provide maternity leave—aka the employer pays an employee who just had a baby while they take some time off to figure out parent life. However, maternity leave isn’t offered at every company. Sometimes, other colleagues will donate their vacation time to someone who just had a baby so they can have this time off.
But what if the colleague doesn’t want to give away their time? Is that really THEIR responsibility?
In a recent Reddit thread in the “Am I The A**hole?” group, one woman asked if she was a jerk for not wanting to give up her vacation days to her pregnant coworker. The woman is 24 years old, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have any plans to take time off—and she wants to be able to use her PTO for herself, since she earned it.
“I work as tech support in a telecom company. They don’t provide paid maternity leave but ‘fundraises’ whenever a pregnant women needs time off,” the woman explained.
Everyone at the company is offered two weeks of vacation, five sick days and three PTO days. But the pregnant woman? She already used some of hers. “So my boss asked everyone to ‘donate’ and most people have given a day,” the woman explained.
The 24-year-old also used up a week of her vacation and PTO days, and needs the rest to go on an upcoming family trip. However, that seems irrelevant to the coworkers who are pressuring this woman to give up her days to the pregnant woman.
“They feel like I don’t need them being single w/o kids but I already bought my plane ticket,” the woman said. “I also don’t really know the pregnant lady and don’t feel like my responsibility when my boss could just give her the days.”
She ended the post asking if this is totally wrong of her and if she’s a jerk for not wanting to do it?
Reddit is pretty much on her side on this one—that it ISN’T her responsibility to have to give up her hard earned vacation time.
“Another example of employers not giving a crap about employees. You earned those days, you deserve those days, so YOU use those days,” someone wrote.
“Next time you are pressured, maybe say, ‘this is my vacation time. I’m not responsible for someone else’s time off, medical or not. Maybe our employers need to rethink their paid time off policy to include medical reasons such as this. Seems like it’s their responsibility and not me, someone that controls nothing of how the policy works,’” someone suggested.
‘You did not create this system, and just because you’re single and have no kids does not mean you are less entitled to your time than anyone else,” someone else said.
Would you give you time up in this situation? Who do you think is the jerk here?