Meaning:
Lit. “the hangover’s (day)” or officially “urlop na żądanie”, is a part of an employees yearly holiday budget he or she can use without planning it in advance and get approved by the boss.
In practice it is mostly invoked per telephone just before or within the first hour of your scheduled work day. Although the employer has a right not to grant it, in practice this means the employee stays out of work for the day. This can happen four times a year.
Obviously, it has its consequences – every boss likes to have the work delivered as planned and if you use this right too often or during a critical project phase, this will probably be used against you.
Now for the name: I haven’t seen any statistics but one common use case is to call-in if severely hung over. It is not just my opinion – hence the name. It’s probably become much less common than in, say, early 90s – alcohol, especially vodka consumption in Poland has been steadily going down . Nevertheless, the name remains.
Examples:
Tzw. kacowe różni się jednak od zwolnienia, które otrzymujemy na przykład z powodu przeziębienia.
Wcześniej to było niesprawiedliwe. Jeden z kolegów przynajmniej raz w miesiącu zwolnienie kacowe. To w roku dawało mu ponad 16 dni gdzie musiałam go zastąpić.
Raz tylko wziął kacowe, gdy zdał sobie sprawę, że nie jest w stanie zawiązać sznurówek, a najbliższe buty na rzepy były w supermarkecie gdzieś w Morach, bo tam było całodobowe Tesco.