Don’t Rustle Jimmy’s Jimmies Or He’ll Leave You In A Jam

I work at a company that gives out exorbitant amounts of vacation. Anyone who works there for more than twenty-five years receives eight weeks of vacation and two weeks of personal time. This is a family-owned company, but it’s rather large. We run three shifts totaling over 250 people.

Enter Jimmy. Jimmy is a grizzled old man. He started at the company when he was just twenty. Now, he is sixty-three and gives absolutely zero s***s. Jimmy also knows how to make a specific part for our product; he’s the only person who does besides one other higher-up in the office.

One day, the plant owner comes out and announces that he’s selling to a corporation. He’s older and ready to retire. He promises that there will be very little change and wishes us all well.

The new company comes in and immediately goes after many of the great benefits we had. The first thing they do is cut everyone’s maximum vacation down to four weeks, and they completely do away with personal time. Anyone who’s maxed out has until December 31st of this year to use it up, and they won’t pay it out. They then go into the office and clean house, firing anyone who’s close to retirement — including Jimmy’s backup.

But they also do away with one very important rule. You no longer have to get vacation approved; you can just call in and take it.

Jimmy is pissed, and they know it. They realize he’s the only one in the building that can do his job now, so they hire a new kid for him to train, most likely to permanently replace Jimmy.

Jimmy does what anyone would do. He calls in on the first training day for the new hire and lets us know he’s going to use all of his paid time off at once, and he promptly takes ten weeks off.

We have a back stock of parts Jimmy made, so it isn’t too unnerving. But for ten weeks, Jimmy goes and applies for other jobs, finds one, and starts.

Fast forward ten weeks. It’s the day Jimmy is supposed to return. He doesn’t. For two days, they try calling him, and they even go to his house. He’s nowhere to be found. Finally, on day three, he calls and resigns, and they lose their s***. The parts he makes are specialized and patented by the original founder; you can’t just hire someone off the street to make them.

Eventually, they have to contract the original owner to come in and teach some new hires how to make the parts, and when the owner finds out what they did, it pisses him off. The last I heard, he’s charging them a seven-figure contract to teach them how to produce the parts, and they have to pony up or close down.

Moral of the story: don’t f*** with people’s vacation time.