I went down to Cape Town for a wedding last week, but more for a bit of time off. I was only planning to take a bit of leave in April which would have made it 13 months since I last took leave in March last year.

This got me thinking a bit. At my company I only get 15 days off per annum for mandatory leave. This is the minimum by law, which I’d assumed was the norm for companies. As we all know, companies are there to exploit their employees (to my observation…), but as it turns out, it looks like 15 days is the cheap side of cheap. I’ve spoken to about 30 other people about this and only 2 people get 15 days like me. Most are between 20 and 30 with one lucky person getting a full 33 days off. This even accounts for people that have only been in their job under 2 years. I believe after 5 years employment I’m supposed to get an additional 3 days… yay. While the leave isn’t that important to me, if you work out the equivalent monetary value of the difference, it can be a fairly sizable chunk. Of course when your overtime pay (assuming you get paid) works out to significantly less than your standard hour pay, it doesn’t really come as a surprise when the minimum is always given.

This post is sponsored by cheap corporates who only do the minimum.