Bengaluru HR professional explains concept of 'sandwich leave'. What is it and why is internet not happy?

She argued that the arrangement was intended to keep leave allocation “fair,” prevent staff from using a minimal number of days to create extended holidays.

A Bengaluru-based HR professional set off a storm of discussion on social media after detailing the controversial “sandwich leave” policy in a LinkedIn post, a rule that, according to many workers, can turn an anticipated long weekend into a costly exercise in depleted leave balances.

In her post, Rubin Tania Louis explained the mechanics of the policy: when an employee applies for leave on both sides of a weekend or a public holiday, the days in between are also deducted as leave. Using a hypothetical example, she wrote that if a person requests leave on Friday and the following Monday, the company’s leave register would treat all four days — Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday — as leave taken.

She argued that the arrangement was intended to keep leave allocation “fair,” prevent staff from using a minimal number of days to create extended holidays, and preserve continuity of operations. According to her, exceptions could be granted in cases of official duties or medical emergencies, provided HR approval was secured in advance.

The post quickly migrated to Reddit, where it drew a sharp and divided response. Many users criticised the concept outright, with one commenter writing: “Weekends are already non-working days — counting them as leave is absurd. This isn’t about fairness; it’s about control.”

Another questioned the legal basis for the rule, arguing that for such deductions to be permissible, the weekend or holiday days “would have to be paid working days in the first place.”

Some accused HR teams of fostering a restrictive corporate culture. One Redditor quipped that the policy sounded like “a clever way to make employees quit on their own, saving the company the trouble and cost of letting them go.”

Others defended the principle behind the policy, saying it discouraged extended absences that might disrupt projects. However, even among those who agreed with the policy in theory, several commenters expressed doubts about how fairly it would be applied in practice.