[RKDinOKC]

A friend of mine used to work at Apple Computer. At that time, some time during your 7th year of employment you had to take a 1 month sabbatical.

The sabbatical was 4 weeks paid vacation besides your current vacation and had to be taken contiguous. If you did not schedule and start your sabbatical by Thanksgiving of that year you were not only forced to take your sabbatical from Thanksgiving until Christmas you were not allowed on the Apple campus during that time. And if you did show up you would be escorted off the campus by security. They enforced this because employee badges that allowed you in the building were tracled and nobody was allowed on campus without a badge.

They said they did this to prevent job burnout. You did get to cash in any accrued vacation to use on the sabbatical.

I've visited Apple campuses in both Austin and Cupertino on a Sunday. About 10% of the employees were there messing around even though the offices were closed. My friend said people working all the time like that is why they had to have the sabbaticals.