Well, I guess I see your points. I never really considered that someone would take SLS purely for the fact that they wanted time off. I thought about taking some for that same reason, but unlike Dragonair, Cathay made no guarantee that I could take all the weeks together.
They told me that they would make an "effort" to give it in 1 week blocks. Effort of 1 week blocks was just not good enough for me and I looked at it as an opportunity for Cathay to work-stack my roster. This, to me, made SLS look more like a pay-cut rather than unpaid leave from work.
But I'll give you that if you got the long block of time off with the family all at once, I do agree, that would be worth doing and I would not mind if they did not pay me back for it.
