I had the summer off once
They put about 20 of us "at risk" in the early noughties. That meant we were supposed to come to the office, but didn't have to do any work and were allowed time out for interviews etc. Due to a clause in my contract my place of employment was listed as my home, so I showed up in my lounge every day for 6 weeks.
Then I went in for my exit interview/form-signing/here's-your-payoff-meeting to be told that someone had resigned last night and they could keep one person and they wanted to keep me and move me to a proper software development role to fill the role that was now vacant. I said that all the jobs I'd been looking at were paying more than I was on. They said to give them a week and they'd get me an offer.
At the end of the week they came back with a £5k pay increase and told me to report back in in another week. All told I had about 2 months off on full pay, and then went back to a higher salary and a more interesting job.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
