This is probably better on workplace.stackexchange. Solutions include looking for a different positions, and when you find something better, sign a contract with the new company, and tell that freak of a boss to do his work himself.

Even in Germany one wouldn't book a trip without making sure that one can get off beforhand. Otherwise actual workdays (the days when you would otherwise work on) are the vacation days. If Monday is a Holiday, then it doesn't count.

Ask for 5 days off; M-F, and ask for it twice... (maybe that will unstick his small brain?) P.S. The policy ought to be outlined in a company employee's manual. Look there, he may be interpreting it wrong.

For unpaid leave (based on the OP comment in the answer), the same rule would apply: only the days when you would otherwise work would not be paid. How many days you work per week is stated in the contract.

Why 14 days and not 16? Your last day clocking in before leave was a Friday, why does the vacation starts next Monday and not on the Saturday immediately after?

Let's be clear, your requesting 10 days off: two consecutive Monday through Friday's. The law isn't going to help you here, but your employee handbook and vacation policy might. Those are a contract.

@Michael and, to the extent that they are a contract, the law can help enforce them.

@phoog Forgive my imprecision; I meant there's no federal or New Jersey law that would intervene here absent other factors (like a contract).

What does your employment contract say?

@Michael that's what I thought you meant, and I imagine that you already knew that enforcing contracts is also part of "the law." I mainly worried that people who didn't know that might think "oh, there's nothing to be done" when they probably is a lot that can be done.

This just sounds like a semantical and administrative disconnect between counting in calendar days vs working days. I don't get the feeling that your boss rejected your leave based on thinking that your weekend days would have to come out of your leave days; so I'm doubtful that there is a legal issue here to begin with - unless in regards to preventing employers from consistently refusing employees take leave in general, at which point the boss' reasoning of calendar days is simply irrelevant to the question at hand.

You'll take 10 days off, regardless of how many days your vacation actually is, which is really the most / only important part (and it's how every work contract and law I've ever heard of works). But taking off 10 continuous days and being away from work for 14 days can be an issue if it's scheduled on short notice and/or it's a critical time for the company. You didn't mention either of those things, so it's hard to tell who's being unreasonable here. But simply declining any vacation in principle because "it's 14 days" is pretty absurd though (assuming you have 10 days leave available).

I believe "vacation" isn't even strictly speaking a legal concept in a lot of jurisdictions or contracts. It's simply called "paid [or unpaid] time off". In any case, your boss might be playing semantic games, treating the 10 "vacation days" (paid time off) you'll be taking off from work as interchangeable with "vacation" in the colloquial sense (which would either be 14 days or however long you're spending away from home, but that has little to nothing to do with your employment).

Only way this might make sense is if you were "on call" or otherwise required to be available at weekends, when you might have special arrangements for absences. Otherwise it seems nonsensical, by a manager who has no clue about even the most basic way a business is run.

@MichaelHall That's all fun and games until the boss approves one request and not the other.

What is the relationship between the purported 14-day length of the vacation and the refusal? Is it because you have only ten days of paid leave available (or eleven, twelve, or thirteen)?

In the U.S. Military (unrelated, I know, but an interesting comparison). Weekends are considered two-day pass. Passes can only be granted for a maximum of two days by one's direct supervisor and can only be granted while the member is at work. What this meant was that leave (paid time off), had to cover all time between two working days (including weekends, because you wouldn't be at work to get the pass for weekends).