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Leadership100 Best Companies to Work For

Here’s How Many Vacation Days These Fortune 500 CEOs Didn’t Use

By
Jen Wieczner
Jen Wieczner
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By
Jen Wieczner
Jen Wieczner
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December 18, 2015, 1:42 PM ET
David Paul Morris © 2015 Bloomberg Finance LP

It’s that time of year when employees at many companies are scrambling to use up their remaining vacation days. And with the holidays over the next couple of weeks, lots of workers are planning to be out of the office. But if a few Fortune 500 CEOs are any example, you might be better off forfeiting the time off and reporting to work instead.

According to a Bloomberg analysis of proxy filings, top bosses at Apple (AAPL), Whole Foods Market (WFM), and Qualcomm (QCOM) have as much as a year’s worth of unused vacation days left—or more.

Whole Foods co-CEO Walter Robb takes the prize for best office attendance, with 338 days of unused vacation time, or enough for him to go on holiday tomorrow and not come back until the spring of 2017, Bloomberg notes. The company’s other CEO and co-founder John Mackey has racked up about 267 unused vacation days, by Fortune’s math—technically enabling him to take off all of next year.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, meanwhile, was paid $56,923 for his unused vacation days in 2014—meaning he left about 8.5 days on the table that year, according to Fortune’s calculation (using the daily equivalent of Cook’s base salary). Qualcomm CEO Steven Mollenkopf, for his part, has accrued $185,777 worth of unspent vacation time, equal to 45 business days, or more than two months of paid time off.

It’s notable that Whole Foods doesn’t have a use-it-or-lose-it vacation policy that’s common at many companies—which is why its executives were able to accumulate so many paid days off. Instead, the grocery chain allows employees to roll over an unlimited amount of paid-time off year after year, according to Bloomberg, which could encourage people to bank their unused vacation time for an extended trip later on. (Mackey, however, chose in 2013 not to accrue any more paid time off, the company’s proxy filing states.) Whole Foods ranked No. 55 on Fortune’s list of Best Companies to Work For this year.

Prefer to maximize your vacation time? See Fortune’s roundup of companies with great vacation policies.

About the Author
By Jen Wieczner
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