Three (!) week Christmas contractor furlough

[northernladuk]

You should be able to but one of the perks of being a contractor is also deciding when you work, not being told. It's tantamount to a 6% pay cut over the year if you were planning to work those weeks, and that's not something one wants to hear - especially if they only tell you shortly before.
If you tell your client "by the way I won't be here in June" only a few weeks beforehand they likely would consider that a bit unprofessional.

But it's also about knowing your client and your business. If you work for a retail or banking client for example, and you don't factor in downtime over Xmas you deserve to be disappointed.

[BackupBoy]

Ah, well. I’ll know better in future.

[Eirikur]

Another Americanism.

Comes from the Dutch word "verlof" which means leave, but mostly used when taking leave when you are in the army or police

[vwdan]

I can remember the old time contractors I worked with back in the 90's all used to go off to the Bahamas / Caribbean for Xmas.

Take a leaf out of their book...

I mean 3 weeks is long enough for a trip to New Zealand - I know what I'd do!

Funny how people think, isn't it. Can't go away for family reasons, but I saw this thread and promptly sent a message to the Mrs saying "Thinking of taking some proper time off over Christmas"

[l35kee]

One of the other contractors just asked for December off. PM laughed in their face. Go live in Feb does that to a person.

I'm thankful. December is when the extended family is all off work too. So I'd much rather be in the office..

[Lance]

One of the other contractors just asked for December off. PM laughed in their face. Go live in Feb does that to a person.

I'm thankful. December is when the extended family is all off work too. So I'd much rather be in the office..

ASKED??? There’s the problem right there. Don’t ASK a PM permission. Tell them.

[pr1]

ASKED??? There’s the problem right there. Don’t ASK a PM permission. Tell them.

"Telling them" you're having a month off 2 months from go live may result in them "telling you" not to come back at all, suppose it depends how much you need/want the money

[SlipTheJab]

2 weeks off over Xmas, its a given with me.

[ladymuck]

No problem with that. How many days can contractors bill for?

Funnily enough that was what I said in the team meeting. Fortunately, the manager is a friend and just laughed at me. I said if the four billable days were enforced, I would just take the whole month off.

It does frustrate the bejeesus out of me that the banks have this year end budget balancing angst and demand all stinky contractors to down tools irrespective of the knock on impact to their projects. In some roles, enforcing leave is necessary from a compliance angle as that's when some dodgy practices come to light. However, I am ususally more than happy to take leave, and lengthy leave at that, but do prefer to choose when I take it.

This year, moot point. Off to sunny Australia and won't be back until mid-January. Booked before I started the gig.

[lecyclist]

4 week shutdown at the UK FS co where I work. Taking an extra week off, 1 week working from home both sides, 7 weeks with the family. Can't wait.