H.R said that I must use my sick days first, before I use my vacation time. Vacation doesn't roll over, but sick time does. My boss OK my vacation time off, and I happen to have shoulder surgery on my vacation. Now I'm being told by H.R you can't use vacation time for this. Which means I'm losing 9 days of vacation, because our new physical year starts July 1.

This is usually a matter of company policy, each company differs. Since this is a matter of surgery and not an actual vacation, it stands to reason you should be taking sick time.

First time I've heard of sick leave rolling over but not vacation time. Also the first time I've heard of a place that doesn't use the calender year on things like vacation and sick leave.

But as J_9 says... its all a matter of company policy.

Most everywhere I know of, you can't use sick leave because you just want a day off (if you get caught at it), so why would you expect to be allowed to use the vacation time instead of sick leave for surgery? The amount of sick leave carried over by employees is a liability for the company in your case and they are properly protecting their assets here. In addition, their policy encourages employees to use their vacation time which has been shown to cause higher productivity in most instances.

Where do you work, state and town? Do you have a contract?