Approximately a month before I submitted my resignation, one of my colleagues resigned. There is a policy that an employee should give out a 30-days notice prior to their exit. So this particular colleague told me that she had accumulated about 2 weeks leave, and would be using up her annual leave so she could leave the company 2 weeks early to begin her new job.
My initial reaction was “wow, that’s not so smart”. Because cashing out an annual leave is…money. In fact, since May 1, annual leave days have been exempted from income tax.
After my resignation, I’ve taken 2 parts of annual leave. My friends found that really weird, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they found that stupid (but just didn’t use that word to express that opinion). They probably had similar reactions to mine when I found out that my ex-colleague was using up her leave to leave the company earlier.
In her case, it’s because her other employment needed her to start immediately. But in my case, it’s a slightly different story. Have you ever been in this situation? I have resigned 3 times in life. After resgination, there is this feeling of freedom; free from stress and responsibility. This has been the biggest resignation in my life so far because I’ve exited from a professional-level of employment. So there really is this odd feeling off being free. So I am having a hard time caring about the remaining projects and company clients that I have to deal with.
Let me give you something you can relate to: it’s like deciding to excrete the contents of your bowel after keeping it in for a week. That’s what resignation is like. Not leaving immediately, is having to stop midway. At this point, it’s very difficult to hold on to the stuff you’ve been carrying around.
So that’s what the disadvantage of not using up your annual leave is: you have to hold on to more stress and responsibility until the very end (i.e. your last day). It’s not similar to what you’ve been carrying around while being employed, because then you actually cared about the future of the projects. But that said, clearly the big advantage of cashing out annual leave is “free money”; a small percentage you’ve been entitled to every month that has accumulated to a non-negligible amount.
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WYSIWYG! I'm a simple person trying to live the simplest life possible - it seems to be the most difficult thing to achieve! I'm an internet enthusiast and I've been a webmaster since early 2007. I like: blogging, developing sites using open source software, social media, computer games, '80s music, comedy & horror, animals, crunching on M&Ms peanut and Smarties!
