a few years ago, i was assistant managing at a restaurant in texas. the manager had me fill out the schedule for the part time employees. to a man, the employees hemmed and hawed and said that there was no way they could work it (naturally, there is more slack given to the pt’ers). i didn’t get to whine about this to the manager for the next thing i knew, the manager had me do something else, grabbed the scheduling book and on the week in question, the employees were all there. Now, i know that this guy had charm out the wazoo, but, still, they all had excuses for me, so i don’t think that they all would back out of their excuses for him so readily… how did he do it? or, more to the point, how can i pull of something like that, even after the employee giving me a seemingly valid reason?
Because the manager can fire people. You could not. Really it is probably no simpler than that.
Many employees are (unfortunately) like children. You don’t give them options, you give them directives to carry out. Businesses are not run as a democracy. Those employees tried to weasel out of things because they thought you would let them (and apparently you did from the reaction of your manager) Are you there to make friends or run a business, they are often mutually exclusive concepts. Maybe you can make a mental note to yourself to grant no more than one or two scheduling exeptions per week on a first come first serve basis and anything else will have to be handled via trading shifts.
You may wish to ask you manager, from the angle of wanting to learn to be a better manager yourself, how he handled the scheduling situation. If you deal with things the same way he does the employees will see you as a unified front and you will avoid many of the “mom said no, go ask dad” problems.