Cari Garcia couldn’t wait for her two-week summer getaway to Spain.

With visions of fresh churros and steaming hot chocolate in Madrid, bustling tapas bars in Barcelona and sun-splashed wineries in Andalusia, the stressed-out clinical social worker working in an understaffed hospital psychiatric unit in South Florida submitted her vacation request six months in advance. One week before her departure, her supervisor unexpectedly canceled her paid time off. 

Garcia says she was not about to get stuck with nonrefundable plane tickets and hotel reservations. So she quit on the spot.

“This wasn’t a request,” she told her supervisor at the time. “It was a ‘hey, by the way, I’m not going to be here so figure it out.’”

Social media is rife with disgruntled workers venting about rebuffed time-off requests and stingy bosses who summon you into work on your wedding day or the day of a family funeral. 

One poster said she was denied time off for her honeymoon. “I was not allowed to be gone for two weeks in a row because I was ‘needed,’” she said. “Instead they got to learn what it was like without me.”

Another poster who worked as an assistant general manager for a restaurant saved up his PTO all year to take two weeks off after his daughter was born. Two days into his leave, his boss called him back to work. So he went in and quit.

Gripes like these are fueling a populist internet meme across Instagram, Threads and TikTok. PTO doesn’t mean “paid time off,” workers say, it means “prepare the others.”

“We feel like our right to have a life outside of work is being violated and that’s super triggering for people,” said Tessa West, New York University psychology professor and author of “Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them.”

Gap between PTO requests and PTO granted widens

If your boss has denied your PTO request, you are not alone. It's harder than ever to get time off work, data shows.

There’s always been a gap between how much vacation employees ask for and how much they get. But lately, that gap has been getting wider. 

Employee PTO requests have increased 11% on average annually since 2019, but approvals have only increased 9%,  according to a new report from BambooHR, a cloud-based HR software company.

In the first two months of this year, PTO requests jumped 9% year-over-year. Approvals rose by just 3%.

“You have this huge friction going on between organizations that are getting slammed with these requests and individuals who feel like they have the right to make them,” West said.   

Workers' desire for balance causing scheduling headaches

You can blame, in part, a newfound yearning for work-life balance. 

As the job market tightened, employers expanded PTO and other perks to attract and retain workers. At the same time, workers − who used to avoid taking time off because they feared their careers would suffer − have changed. Weary of heavy workloads and long commutes, they are taking more vacations than they have in over a decade.

That workplace tension is being stoked by a younger generation that views PTO, not as a discretionary benefit, but as a fundamental entitlement, workplace experts say. In 2023, 44% of employees made PTO requests, up from an average of 37%, BambooHR found.

The flurry of time-off requests is putting a squeeze on staffing amid persistent worker shortages. About half of PTO requests are denied each month, according to BambooHR.

People often ask for the same weeks off during the holidays or the summer, which can lead to scheduling headaches and low approval rates. So can "less strategic leadership," said BambooHR's head of HR, Anita Grantham.

Too few breaks from work can cause burnout, fatigue, poor morale and lower job satisfaction. Studies show that using PTO can significantly reduce stress and improve employee productivity.

"I think managers feel like their people aren't able to handle all that's happening and that they need to have their teams work more to keep up," Grantham said.

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Beware the petty PTO tyrants

Workers point to another phenomenon behind the wave of denied PTO requests: Petty bosses.

West, the psychology professor, says when she worked in retail, her manager played favorites when doling out PTO. “It is the ultimate power move when you feel like you don’t have power over employees in any other way," she said.

Jena Marie DiPinto says it was a controlling boss who tried to veto her time-off request when she was teaching middle school chorus in 2007. She asked for a day or two off to go on her honeymoon. The principal told her she should get married in the summertime instead. DiPinto refused. 

“It's all about clinging to power and policy,” she said.

In the aftermath of the Great Resignation and quiet quitting, workers are starting to take back some of that control.

While still on holiday in Spain, Garcia started applying for jobs. By the time she returned home, she had interviews lined up. “I was unemployed for maybe a week,” she said. 

She used to run into her former boss at work-related functions. Each time, she’d try to rehire Garcia. “Wild horses could not drag me back,” said Garcia. 

Garcia said she eventually decided to get out of the rat race altogether. She turned a hobby into a full-time gig and now is a food blogger who shares Latin American recipes and sets her own hours.

“I’d rather be my own boss,” she said.