A leave recipient must use accrued annual leave (or sick leave, if applicable) before using donated leave (note that beginning December 2, 1994, an eligible employee may use up to 13 days of sick leave to care for a family member, see Federal Employees Family Friendly Leave Act).
Investors assessing the safety of dividends through historical figures are missing the point. Verizon was only able to pay dividends in 2016 by selling of $6.1 billion assets. Verizon cannot continue to pay their dividends. While I am by no means a dividend investor, I feel inclined to comment on the topic.
At the end of the day, it is from FCF that healthy companies pay their dividends -- and as the FCF trends change, so too do a company's dividend policies. This is where I ran into something somewhat concerning. Over the past 12 months, Verizon has brought in $11.5 billion in FCF. There's nothing wrong with that. But in order to pay its dividend, the company used 80% of FCF.