Exempt Time Off

Exempt Employees

The way that our company schedule is structured, exempt employees are required to be here during our normally scheduled times, from open to close, unless you take PTO. The law currently says that exempt employees cannot take less than 4 hours of PTO at a time, but on some occasions, you may need to be absent for less than 4 hours. As a company policy, exempt employees are given the privilege to take an hour or two off here and there without using PTO.

For absences of 3 hours or less, you may be granted time off with no use of PTO, and for anything more than 3 hours, you have to take 4 hours of PTO. To guard against abuse, exempt employees will request exempt time off in a CSW just as you do for PTO.

The point of the exempt time off is NOT to give you all extra PTO, because you get actual PTO for that. The point of it is ONLY to allow you some leeway if you have a personal appointment that you couldn’t make at any other time, or a plane to catch, or a really important family occasion, and it’s not necessary to leave 4 hours early to accomplish it. It’s not really meant to allow you to take 2 hours off to go to the movies or just start the vacation early. For that reason, we do not allow use of exempt time off immediately before or after PTO days in order to extend a vacation, unless you just need to leave an hour early to catch a plane.

The idea is that exempt employees are expected to work here for the full schedule, unless you are taking PTO, going home sick, going to a medical appointment, or have CSW’d for a couple of hours off for a pressing reason. Exempt employees are encouraged to schedule personal and medical appointments on Mondays whenever possible.

And as usual, if an exempt employee takes the entire day off for any reason, then you use PTO. And if an exempt employee goes home sick, then you don’t use PTO for the rest of that day.