Company wants me to pay back holiday days.

[Mooshamoo]

I started in a job in November 2022. We have an online annual leave system .
At the start of January 2023, 21 days on our online system became available to me for me to take.

I asked my manager could I take two weeks off at the start of the year. I took the last week of January and the first week of February off. This was approved by my manager. I took them. I was then moved to a new manager. Which was the way the company worked. New starters were with one manager. After two months you were changed to another manager

The company was pretty abusive and at the end of February I decided to leave.

I left. I then got an email from my second manager saying I had taken more annual leave days in the time I worked there, then I had accrued. And that I have to pay this annual leave money back. It is 550 euro. I'm in Ireland. This is a lot of money to me as i am now in between jobs.

Can they do this. My first manager who approved the annual leave days, never told me that I did not have enough annual leave days to take. She approved them. She never told me at any stage that if I left the company that I would have to pay these annual leave days back. If I had known that I wouldn't have taken them .

Can they do this to me now?

Yeah that's normal. As ur leaving or left u haven't accrued those holidays so whatever u haven't accrued they will want bk. It happened to me with a company I was at, I owed them 1 day and had already been paid. They said someone from head office wld contact me but they never did prob given it was just 1 day, prob more hassle than it was worth.

They didn't know u were going to just leave though so how cld they inform u 🤷🏻‍♀️ It's common place and well known that if u leave part way through the year and u have taken holidays but not earned them l, they take it back. Usually from ur last pay but as u didn't give notice they want u to pay them back.

I think @dodogrocks has given you some really good and practical advice OP.

Why are people still explaining how AL works. OP gets it, she has said so. OP, you made mistake lookimg back you can understand where you went wrong in your thinking. Most of us have made silly decisions at some stage, age does not make us infallible.

Stop beating yourself you will get through this. Take @dodogrocks advice and try pushing back. If that doesn't work try and arrange a payment plan with them, you can't give what you don't have.

Good luck with your next job!

You've obviously had a difficult time in your job but it's also quite unusual to quit a job without thinking of the consequences. Especially as this isn't your first job.

I think your best bet is to try and negotiate with the employer directly - not the manager - and see if they can either wait until you have a new job or alternatively arrange small repayments.

You will be paid 1/12th of your annual salary each month.
so if you’re on 12,000 you get gross 1000 each month

Well, that was nasty.

Not sure if I am the first Irish person to post so here goes.

For love of Sweet suffering Jesus (and the wee donkey) cop yourself on, no one is that thick and now you have repeatitis 🙄you knew you hadn’t accrued that holiday and yet you happily and greedily took it.

It is right up there with Bertie Aherne swearing black was white that he didn’t have a bank account whilst Finance Minister a Finance Minister without a bank account, it is as unlikely as you think it is that you had earned that holiday.

Stop perpetuating the unintelligent stereotype and figure out how to pay it back.

My advice was based on this post where the OP says she checked her contract and there was nothing on this.

But now she's clarified she can't check the contract, chances are that it's contractual.

I wasn’t the only one. Or the nastiest. Not sure why you felt the need to single me out. Whatever makes you feel big, I guess.

Realistically what are they going to do?

Sue you? unlikely.

Yes, you basically took all your annual leave in one go but the number of days off you were entitled to was based on you working the entire year.

It is up to you as to whether you want to tell them to get lost and not repay the amount.

What I don't understand is why this was not automatically taken out of your last pay slip during your notice period? it would have been the sensible thing to do.

Did you leave without serving your notice?

OP do you think your pain and suffering somehow alleviates the money you have been paid that you hadn't earned?

There's a reason you're asked to do a weeks notice and not jack on the day. You must have known there would be consequences

Why are people still explaining how AL works

This makes me laugh on threads like this.

OP doesn't understand
Posters explain
OP gets it

Then pages of people explaining the same thing.

If you keep focusing on the job, you'll make yourself feel worse OP. Concentrate on getting a new job where you're treated better. Maybe in a more relaxed environment. Then when you've found something you can go back with a payment plan. Try and be reasonable, i.e. not over five years, but also not making it too stressful for yourself - e.g. spread over six months? You can sort this, it's just a question of thinking straight now.

Hi thanks for asking. It is not possible to take breaks.

The customer service role that I was in was quite specific and had a lot of responsibility.

It is not like a customer service role where I answer questions about online shops for example.

In my role I received calls from the public and then I had to log the call in a specific time ,and I sent these call requests to engineers and contractors to go out and do work for customers all over ireland. I was connected to a lot of moving networks around Ireland. These call requests had to be sent by me to contractors in a very specific time.

When the customer called in , while I wsa son the call I had to update four different technical systems with the information, send the correct info to the contractors within a certain timeframe. We get 20 seconds between each call, calls are back to back all day. There are no time between calls .there is no scheduled administration time. I end up doing casework for the previous call on the next call

There is so much technical work to do on systems , and we have no administration time (no time off calls) at all, that the only possible way to keep on top of the technical work is to do the work during your alloted break times. 15 mins break in morning, 30 mins lunch , 15 mins afternoon. There is no possible way to keep on top of the work other than work through your breaks.

It's pretty obvious really,it's called annual leave for a reason.
Common sense would (should)tell you that was part of your year's holiday,why on earth would they give you two weeks leave after three months work?were you expecting more as well?no because you knew that was part of a year's entitlement.
Unfortunately you are going to have to pay it back.
If they were so abusive you had to leave can you look at that angle?because leaving without having another job is quite the move to make in this climate.
Hopefully they will allow a payment plan.good luck

My colleague just texted me on the WhatsApp chat that she wasn't able to take a break all day yesterday and she feels faint

Just because other people are being nasty doesn't mean you get to join in. Grow up, maybe.

1. Are you an adult?
2. Did you have a contract?
3. Did your employers have reasonable grounds to believe you would read and understand your contract yourself without them having to revisit and explain all the detail to you?

YOU didn’t inform YOURSELF. It wasn’t up to them. Harsh lesson learned, OP.

Sorry OP, as others have said it's correct you'd owe them for the holiday time and this is in no way a failing on their end - its not normal to have to micromanage employees through holidays, and certainly not usual to remind employees of terms they have already signed. You need to hold yourself accountable.

That being said, if you started at the beginning of November it's possible you had 3 days of holidays from last year that you may not have taken if you didn't use any holiday time in the initial November/December period. I would contact them to ask if this can be taken off the balance if so and the rest deferred until you find work or made into a payment plan to give yourself some breathing space.

So you deliberately didn’t take breaks and are trying to blame them for it?

So nobody actually stopped you having a break at all?

The problem with holding off payment as a way of bartering with the company over grievances is that a court will always say….pay first argue later to get it back.

If they have a deadline for your payment you need to stick to it.
You can write and complain but be mindful of that deadline
If they start adding interest, management fees etc for non payment it will never end ( they should state this on their letter to you, or it may be in your contract which I appreciate you can’t view now )

No I'm not shocked that they locked me out of the system. I was expecting it. Someone just asked me did I reread my contract and I was pointing out that I can't get into the system to read the contract or hr files anymore as I am now locked out. So I can't read it again to see whats in it

ok look, this sounds so obvious but when you get your next job, get a print of your contract. I can't believe that people don't know this basic stuff. I'm in Germany so it maybe different, but when you sign a contract there are 2 paper copies, i sign both, employer signs both and i keep one. Make sure this happens when you sign your next contract.

The second thing is this: see if you can go back. Say you were feeling hugely overwhelmed, it's too much work for too little breaks (and I'm sure in Ireland that's not legal - in Germany you MUST have at least a 30 minute break after 6 hours of work and companies enforce this). Tell them that you have calmed down now, and that you were also under some outside stress in your private life that is now under control. Apologise if you must (but don't grovel)

And when you are back at work, try to take breaks. If you get pushback try to talk to HR or boss-of-boss and explain that their high turnover is due to the lack of breaks in part and if they solve that they'll bring down their recruitment costs.

If that's the dope that thinks she can have a free 4 weeks holidays with out accruing it give her a heads up.

Do you have an employment contract?
It will be explained there.

It's normal to have to pay back excess holiday you've taken though. Otherwise people could start a new job, take all their holidays and get paid for them, then leave.

But lots of companies won’t allow people to carry holiday allowance over to the next year….it’ll be in the contract if that’s the case

Plus sounds like that OP might have been some sort of training period…again if there’s holiday allowance for that it’ll be in the contract
As OP didn’t get a contract till January I’m guessing that’s the case.

You are being unreasonable to expect more paid time off than you earned, and it's ridiculous to think that they should have warned you about something so obvious, but it's perfectly reasonable to not pay it back all at once if you can't afford it. I don't know about Irish law but in the UK they aren't allowed to make a deduction from your final pay cheque without your agreement, and have a duty of care not to put you into financial hardship even when your service is terminating, so it would in the UK with these circumstances be possible to receive your final pay with no deduction for the holiday pay owed, and then to make an arrangement to pay them back at an affordable rate (e.g. £5 per month). You would have to speak to whatever the Irish equivalent of Citizens Advice is to find out if this would be reasonable under Irish legislation.