A new Pentagon memo allows DoD employees who took more than the six furlough days required there to retroactively substitute annual leave or other forms of paid time off; while excused absence can be granted, it will be only in rare cases in which management ordered employees to take additional time off. For the most part, employees who took more than the six days—DoD originally projected 11 before cutting the number to six—did so voluntarily. In many of those cases, the apparent motive was to bunch days so that they could try to qualify for unemployment compensation, which in most states doesn’t begin until the week after someone has been off work a full week. The memo in effect gives employees the choice of accepting the additional time off without pay as water under the bridge or drawing down their annual leave or other paid time in order to get pay for those days. The substitution policy does not apply to the six required furlough days.