I adore how much you know about this. Have all 17 of my Internet gold stars, good sir.

Thank you both!

Awesome, but one point. The only state I've worked with that wouldn't let a company 'erase' (versus pay out) vacation is California. Clearing out a balance at anniversary is pretty brutal, though; it speaks 100% to your point about understanding policy as way of evaluating if it's a good work environment.

I sympathize with the heartache, though. That kind of thing hurts when you realize you were mistaken. You can figure out a way to make time away happen. Let the frustration wash over you and percolate and a solution will eventually bubble out so you can have the thing you want.

I dunno. I feel like if history was taught more accurately, ppl would be better able to grapple with being non-important. Since history is taught badly, certain types of ppl think their ancestors or group did more by themselves than they did. They can't reconcile why their lives aren't awesome. Similarly if basic logic and certain historic conspiracies that fell apart were thoroughly explained, ppl would have a better sense of what humans can and can't do (hint: we're terrible at the large scale conspiracies anti-vaxxers, anti-science and anti-government ppl see everywhere.)