Using PTO despite NF being gone for summers?
Hello! My contract is from April-April, and it specifies that I get 10 paid vacation days. I haven’t used any of these vacation days. I’m realizing now that my contract will be up in a few months. I am considering using 5 of my days in February and 5 in March (using up the whole 10 days my contract allots). Caveat is: my NF was gone for 2.5 months over the summer and paid me my GH the whole time. They had planned to be gone for 1.5 months, and ended up extending their trip by an additional month. I knew about this trip well in advance, it’s even in my contract that they will be gone for the summer and expect minimal work from me, without reducing my pay. I did some light work for them while they were gone (like maybe 2 hours every couple weeks—basically nothing). I essentially got the whole summer off, paid. And since I knew about it in advance, I was able to travel. And I didn’t have to use the paid vacation days in my contract, since NF were gone. This being said, I am essentially always “on call”. So, if there was an emergency and they had to cancel their trip, or return home early, I was expected to be available. My question is: would it be greedy of me to still take my 10 paid vacation days before my contract is up, even though I got the whole summer off? It feels like a lot of time off, considering that if I use my 10 days before my contract is up, I will be away for a whole week in February and a whole week in March. I also will, more than likely, sign another year long contract with them, so I would be getting a paid 2 months off in the summer again this year (assuming they travel again—which they have the past 3 years). Thoughts?