I’ve recently come across a financial audit show that might be generously described as Dave Ramsey meets Jerry Springer. I get the impression from the show’s founder that he sincerely cares about the topic and wished someone would have presented the topic to his dumb younger self the way he does now. I also don’t think it’s scripted much, other than him getting clear yes/no on which highly personal topics he can approach, and potentially joke about.

The people he has on the show, I think are representative of a certain demographic, and I’m continually amazed at the amount of financial illiteracy and lack of appreciation for the financial ramifications of their actions.

Even for minimally paid jobs and/or short term jobs the same laws apply, and the vacation days will be accumulated.

With the constant stream of projects there is no opportune time. On top of that management rarely works vacations into capacity planning, so if you leave it just gets dumped on someone else. You are then disincentivize to take days, because your coworkers suffer for it.

Having the "You have X hours of PTO" made the expectations clear. Especially for less senior people who might not want to rock the boat or seem greedy. And while use it or lose it policies are overall bad, they do push people to take breaks instead of "saving it up for something good/important".

It also heavily depends on management. There's definitely some companies that do "unlimited w/ manager approval" with the manager expected to find ways to deny and those are 100% shit places to work, but not everyone gets a lot of choice on that.