Consulting- is it normal to take PTO to fill a timecard when you don’t have work?
Hi there- I’m in a small satellite office at a medium sized consulting firm. I recently had several projects I committed to cancelled, rescoped, or delayed by the client without a deadline on restarting. I ended up struggling to fill my workload with new, ad hoc work until these projects started. I ended up using PTO to fill my timecard. This was communicated to my supervisor and other more senior engineers. No one really squawked much until I burned through 60 hours of PTO over four months (plus whatever I was accruing) and starting filling out incomplete timecards. Stuff like this happens usually once a year or so. We have a larger office, and folks there don’t seem to have the same problem, possibly because the office is ~20x the size and there’s more stopgap work available? I keep getting promotions, raises, and bonuses, and I have explicitly asked trusted colleagues if I have a bad work reputation, and the answer is no.
Any advice? Is all consulting like this? I’ve been here 7+ years, have a PE, etc. I’m not sure if the grass is any greener elsewhere, but I’d like to be able to use PTO for an actual vacation (I’ve taken 5 days off at a time once since I’ve been here, not counting paternity leave, which is state-funded)
EDIT: wow, thanks for chiming in. Lotta responses. I should clarify that I don’t mean using PTO to cover in-office time. I mean essentially working reduced hours (e.g., I don’t have 40 billable hours this week so I’ll take Friday afternoon off).