I work Saturdays and Mondays with Tuesdays off. With Christmas falling on a Sunday this year I wanted to try to get both Saturday and Monday off so that I could spend a long weekend with my family in Iowa. I’ve posted before about my dad’s health issues from the past couple of years (prostate and pancreatic cancer). There’s a real possibility that this could be his last Christmas alive and it was important to everyone in the family that we spend it together. Weeks ago I told my boss about all of this and requested both days off. Time went by with no response. I asked again. He assured me that he had repeatedly emailed the scheduling people and they were going to get back to me. Meanwhile, rumors went around that they were going to close down Saturday and Monday, or just Monday, either of which would’ve been fine with me. Finally word came down that we were open both days, and I never heard anything about my time off request. So instead of my going to Iowa to vist my family for three or four days, my family came to Madison Friday night and we spent about 5 hours together before they left Saturday morning (they had commitments for Sunday they couldn’t break).
I come in to work today and check my schedule. My schedule for the day reads “approved time off - non-paid.” The motherfuckers approved my day off and didn’t bother to inform me of it until today, when the weekly schedule posted. So had someone bothered to inform me, I could be in Iowa right now, having enjoyed Christmas with my family. Instead, my father, who despite what he says is still not fully recovered from his surgery two months ago (removing part of his stomach, intestine and gall bladder), got to endure two five hour car rides in two days.
It is just unfathomable to me how these bastards can continue to treat people this way. I spent hours this morning after finding out in a rage. They are lucky that I am not a violent man, otherwise someone was going to be carried out of there.
This does need to be reported. It doesn’t do much good to get the time off if you don’t know about it. This one was crucial. I’m terribly sorry.
There has to be someone with a heart there somewhere. You can’t change the past now. But you may need that someone in the near future to exercise compassion on your circumstances.
I assume you work for some coorperate mess of a company. Been there. Look, I really sympathize with your situation, but after a few years in a coorperate enviorment that’s how I expected it to come down and this is how I handled it.
I had two daughters in a different state and it was real important to me that I get to spend as much of my vacation as possible with them. I asked my manager for my two weeks off end to end so I could spend it with them.
No! Company policy is that you can’t take two weeks vacation in a row.
OKay one paid week and one unpaid.
No! you can’t take two weeks off in a row.
You mean to tell me there’s no policy in place for someone to take a week off as a family emergency or anything.
No. you can’t do it.
That seemed a little unreasonable to me. Companies have maternity leave, Time of for death in the family etc etc. There must be some some provision.
So I compromised. I booked my flights and took 11 days off, not fourteen. I gave my schedule to my manager and said. This is when I’m leaving and when I’m coming back.
You can’t do that.
It’s done. That’s it.
I’m not approving this.
Then tell me who I need to talk to in this company to get this reasonable request approved. Your manager? The district manager?
An hour later it was approved.
All this to say that your request was extremely reasonable and you should have just made plans to be with your family and done it. Then deal with any issues that came up after the fact. You did the right thing and let them know in advance what you needed. Just do it and don’t wait for official approval. Chances are if you do a good job they will work things out with you.
Well, it’s all well and good to say that. Maybe Otto is even in a position where he can quit.
But that won’t make it like this situation never happened. He won’t be able to get that time back to spend with his father.
This isn’t particularly directed at you, friedo, but it’s kind of a pet peeve of mine that I often notice in pit threads where someone is complaining about their employer. One (or many) people just tell them to quit. That may not be an immediate option for them. But even if it is, the OP still has the right to be irate about the situation that led to this.
However, complaining is. You really should document the chain of events and complain to the highest level of management that will listen to you. It may not help you for Christmas, but you may want to take 4 days off later to be with your family and their lack of attention to detail is unacceptable.
I also agree, that in most cases, if it’s important, you gotta do what you gotta do, and most employers will work with you. I had a co-worker that had a family crisis (illness of an inlaw) and needed some time off. She kept waiting for our boss to tell her it was OK to take some time off rather than simply telling our boss that she was leaving on an emergency and that she’d be back in a few days.
Good luck, Otto, and may you enjoy many more holidays with your dad.
Eh, I dunno. It was an option for me. But then again, I’m a First Class Lazy Bastard and I value my time off more than food or shelter. (What’s the point of eating at home when you’ve got no time to go there anyway? )
Everybody has an inalienable right to complain about their employer, though. But I will only feel a little bit of pity.
Seems to me like all too often employers treat their employees poorly because they are allowed to get away with it. And once they get away with it, it becomes habitual.
Depending on your circumstances and your type of work, it’s up to you to put a stop to this. You can do things like document and then take complaints all the way to the top of the company; you can quit; you can be aggressive about how you deal with these people. I don’t fully know your situation, but you were just sort of sitting back, waiting, and it wasn’t working out for you. I would have gone into a system of getting answers to requests by every means available, and spending all of my time to get those answers at the expense of performing the job. Since you were wasting your own time waiting for emails, I would have wasted their time making calls, hourly or even more, to get answers.
Because in the end, they wasted your time and face it, at the end of the day, the end of your life, having regrets because of an employer’s incompetence or disregard for you, is not worth any penny at all. You can’t go back in time to recover lost experiences, and you can’t go back in time and teach these people how to treat you. And to me, no job is worth the effort if your employers have no interest in you or your needs, given how simple your request.
In January of 2004 I told my family I was taking them to Hawaii for Christmas. We would be leaving on 12/24 and returning on 12/31. I told my son to arrange to take his vacation then.
A couple of days later he called me and told me his manager told him no. He asked what he should do. I told him to tell his manager that he was leaving for a family vacation on 12/24 and the only question was if he would be returning back to the store after 1/1. His vacation was approved about 3 hours later.
Assuming you are a valued employee (and how could a doper be anything but) It might help you to remember that:
**It is easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission. **
If this fucked up situtation ever presents it ugly head again about a week before you are planning to leave at about 4:45PM send your boss an e mail. It should read something like this:
If they come back and say, you can’t have the time off, tell them too late you already have the tickets*. The only way you will be willing to work those days is if they buy the tickets off of you. (like they would ever do that)
This method does tend to piss bosses off, but it does keep you from getting stepped on.
*It doesn’t matter if you are driving to see Mom and Dad, they don’t know that
My company is in the midst of a serious shakeup. I normally work on Saturday, and have Wednesday off. After much begging, humming and hawing, they let me leave at 2:00 Saturday.
I don’t buy that. I don’t believe you should quit immediately but only after you secure another job which the OP could endeavour to do right away. Working for a corporation for which you have lost all respect and doesn’t appear to consider the legitimate personal concerns of their employees is unbearable.
I’ve never worked in a place where my schedule was dependent on some nameless, faceless entity higher up in the company. I find that odd and wrong.
But, I guess it’s a good way to make it easier to either screw the good employees while at the same time, making it easier to get rid of the bad ones. If they don’t know you, and you don’t know them, it’s all just business. Your boss, however, by not having answers from “them” sooner is more culpable, and a dispicable ass if you ask me. The way I see it, it’s his job to be an advocate for the employee if the company is in charge of all the big stuff anyhow. By big stuff, I mean what seems to be the employee’s life schedule, and if that, probably things like raises too.
Man, am I lucky, and thanks for giving me another opportunity to count that blessing. I hope they all eat shit, and I wish for you to be able to quit with extreme prejudice.
This is exactly the sentiment I had. Your boss is your advocate when it comes to the rest of the company. Something is wrong? Your boss should take care of it. Sometimes they try and fail, but it is their job to fix just these sorts of things. This particular situation does not strike me as one a competent, caring boss would screw up.
I’ve never had a boss who was my advocate within the rest of the company. At least not consistently. Without fail my bosses have been more concerned with toeing the company line and upholding policy. The one example I can think of off the top of my head in which a boss strongly advocated for me, it was in the best interest of the companyto do so (a trainee of mine was falsely accusing me of racial discrimination and threatening to sue the company). This idea of boss as advocate is completely alien to me.
In the end, it matters little at this point. We’re getting shut down Saturday, on four days’ notice. So for all my worries about just walking away and visiting my family and not doing it so I’d have a job to come back to, I got another week of work.
Otto, you have my deepest sympathies regarding all the stress you’ve been under. I wish you good luck in finding a new job and your father the best regarding his health. :: hugs ::
I got a reprieve! After throwing us all out of work on Tuesday the bosses announced that our contract is being extended another month. They initially were gonna shut us down because of low call volume. Then we got slammed every day this week by people waiting until almost the last minute (but not really the last minute) to call about their drug plans. And since like a third of our call center quit on the spot after the announcement, we were overwhelmed.
)