‘I would’ve much rather just have been laid off with everyone else’: Job forces employees into negative PTO debt, where taking time off means owing the company money later

Welcome to the newest innovation in workplace misery: the Negative PTO Trap, brought to you by your friendly neighborhood nonprofit and the unregulated wilds of North Carolina labor law.

In this corporate wormhole, job security doesn't mean what you think. There, it means you hang on just long enough to owe your company money for the privilege of being out of work. Why just worry about layoffs when you can also sweat bullets about going into debt with your former boss?

The employee surviving these weird corporate physics also survived round after round of layoffs, and their reward is being forced to burn through all your Paid Time Off any time projects dry up, which, fun fact, isn't ever an employee's fault.

And when that runs out, they generously let them rack up negative PTO hours, as if your job has suddenly pivoted to running a reverse vacation Ponzi scheme. Think of it as a cash advance on time you don't have, payable in full as soon as you quit, get fired, or laid off.

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You want unpaid leave? Sorry, this black hole’s gravity is not so easy to leave. So, you sit “on call,” waiting for a text while your PTO balance circles the drain and your final paycheck comes pre-shrunk.
How is this legal? No one knows.
"Job is forcing us to go into negative PTO then pay that money back once we are fired/laid-off/quit"

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