"your cow-orkers day off is more important than your day off"

The BBQ Pit
41

I think I said just about the same thing when he told me. I think he said it was a ‘right to work’ state, and that technically they could do that, but that generally it just wasn’t ‘done’. He told me that he just realized that his career had become a job, but that he needed a paycheck until he could start a position somewhere else.

I may have gotten part of the story wrong though. I don’t think it was an internal HQ position; I think he was the assistant branch manager and she was a branch manager. Thinking back, I think he said he called HR, he didn’t walk to there. And I think he said the president called her at the branch, where she closed the door to her own office and took the call; she didn’t walk to the presidents office. This probably also explains the long delay between job search and new job, as higher branch banking positions are hard (were hard?) to find.

But I distinctly remembering him saying that he never would have done that to her or anyone if she hadn’t screwed him over about his vacation and then lorded her Disney trip over the whole branch the following spring.

42

Did you mean “childless by choice” people, not single people? People can be married and choose not to reproduce.

The preferential treatment of working moms (and dads, too, of course, except they don’t seem to take the same liberties) is a real hot button issue with me. I have a solution - how about every staff member gets 6 total personal days a year, for use for child-related activities (and they can be broken down by hour, as well, for those times that mom has to leave early to do something Junior-related). The cbc people in the crowd can either choose to take those days off with pay, or not take them and get paid out for them each year. Now, that would be fair. Moms get to do their child-related stuff, and the non-reproductive people don’t work more hours than the reproducing for the same pay.

I’ve paid for my last baby gift for co-workers, too, since it will never be reciprocated. :smiley:

As for the OP, I keep thinking that no one can take advantage of you without your permission.

43

Dang it, I meant to say that I agreed with you about cbc people being treated as second-class. We’re a vast minority that isn’t replacing itself - I don’t know why people seem so threatened by us.

44

It is really nice to hear that. :slight_smile: So nice that I almost forgot this was a Pit thread!

45

Huh. Was she going ‘every two weeks’ for her entire pregnancy? Was she high-risk? Because I’ve never heard of going every two weeks before your 7th or 8th month unless you’re a high-risk pregnancy.

I suspect she was getting every Friday off for one hour-long appointment a month.

I feel very lucky in my current job since my boss is very generous if I need to take time off, and has been extremely patient with all of my appointments - but I also try to schedule as many as possible at the end of the day or after-hours (my old midwife had late evening Thursday hours, my new one does not, so I have to schedule during work hours).

For the most part, though, our staff is great and we will cover for each other whenever necessary. Only one has small children, though (one co-worker has two teenagers, the others have grown kids), and her job keeps her out of the office quite a bit, so she really doesn’t have the option of covering for anyone else. I will have the youngest child in the office soon, but I can’t imagine expecting preferential treatment simply because I have a baby. I have no problem covering for a co-worker with a sick dog or because they want to take a mental health day, just as I’d hope that they’d cover for me if I had an emergency with my child or one of my cats.

E.

46

In my place of work, we get up to 1 month pregnancy leave and 3 months maternity. I think it is a fabulous idea!

47

Either or. By “family” I’m referring to spouses and/or children.

48

Paid or unpaid?

49

A friend of mine took a job as a city bus driver for the town where he was attending college. New drivers, naturally, were always stuck on weekend shifts. He had one weekend of the fall planned to go visit his brothers who lived 700 miles away, and told the bus company that he would need that weekend off as a condition of accepting the job.

He reminded the supervisor nearly every week. But about two weeks before his scheduled weekend trip (after working there for almost 5 months), he had a conversation that went something like this:

Friend: “Remember, next weekend is the weekend I’ll be out of town.”
Supervisor: “You can’t have a weekend off. New drivers don’t get weekends off”
Friend: “I told you about this before you hired me 5 months ago, and you were ok with it back then”
Supervisor: “That doesn’t matter, you can’t have a weekend off.”
Friend: “Well, here’s the deal: I’m going to be 700 miles away that weekend. So you can go ahead and assume I’m coming to work that weekend, but there is absolutely no way that I will be working that weekend. So you can either plan for my absence ahead of time, or you can call my apartment that weekend, find out that I’m not there, and find a last-minute substitute. Either way is fine with me.”

Sure enough, when he returned from visiting his brothers, there was a message on his answering machine from his supervisor, wondering why he hadn’t shown up to work that weekend.

His supervisor never said a word to him about it afterwards though.

50

Paid ofcourse - although you can have up to 1 year unpaid parental leave.

51

I had an interesting experience in an “at will” state (California). When I applied for a security job, the application had this humonguous section in it that said, “What times are you not available?” That’s actually a very reasonable thing to ask and this outfit, the same as the place where I’d worked until just a month before, was hiring from the local college student body. The thing is, the last place managed their staffing schedule around that and NEVER called anyone in from the “not available” times, since they realized that the folks would be home for the college breaks. The 2nd place told me, “You can’t take that time off.” I told them, “Been nice working for you.” Then the local crew tried to play games with my final check. Calling the main office squared that away mighty fast.

But, it’s an “at will” state and I had no right to keep the job if I didn’t buckle under. I knew it and so did the employers. Can you tell which employer I think is a decent sort and which one I think is scum-o’-the-Earth?

52

What is an “at will” state?

53

Labor law. In “at will” states, you can be hired or fired “at will” unless you personally have a contract reading otherwise, or the cause of firing is one illegal under Federal law. Though this may sound horrific, it’s not as bad as it appears: decent employers know that good competent employees are hard to find, and will not normally abuse their privilege – and non-decent employers end up losing their good employees to the decent ones.

54

Thanks Poly.

55

It also means you can quit for any reason, with or without giving notice, barring any contractual obligations you might have agreed to.

56

My first job in Japan, I had an absolute asshole of a boss. His first words to me were “I wouldn’t let MY daughter go so far away to work.”

There was a male foreign colleague working with me. Every time he asked for time off (we were allowed 18 days a year) he was granted it. In the end, he had over 30 days allowed him because he was given special time off for a family wedding and for a Japanese language course.

I was getting married that year, and asked for two weeks off in the early spring to travel the length of Japan to my future husband’s town to search for an apartment with him and set it up, and then a week off three weeks before my contract was due to end for the wedding.

That makes 15 work days if you are counting.

All refused.

The reason the WEDDING was refused???

Quote “Work is more important than play”

What the absolute assholes didn’t seem to get was that my CONTRACT WAS ENDING. Who CARED what they thought or what permission they were willing to give???

I ended up writing a letter to the main county board of education telling them about this, and informing them that as of that moment I was not asking permission for time off but informing them of the fact that I would not be there for those dates. Then I said that as I was owed another 3 days plus the 10 that the colleague had been given, I would actually be taking three weeks to find the apartment and would not be back after the wedding.

They took it.

(But I have never been so glad to leave somewhere in my life.)

The funny thing was that formality deemed that the boss must give me a wedding gift. I got the standard envelope of money and when I opened it there was a Y1000 (10 USD) note in it. It couldn’t have been a smaller denomination.

I went into the office and thanked him loudly and long for his wonderfully generous gift and wondered how he could have afforded it, and whether or not I should have accepted it. Made the bugger squirm - and I showed everyone else in the office what he’d done. They all hated him too, so it was seized upon with glee. (I didn’t want his money so I am glad he didn’t actually give me the standard Y20,000 or so, that would have been really oogy.)

57

So can non-parents get up to 4 months paid leave for other reasons?

58

In my last semester of college I took a job as a weekend busser in a restaurant, working Friday and Saturday nights only. I figured it was a good way to keep earning some cash that wouldn’t interfere with my final-semester classwork. I did ask to have the weekend of graduation off, as I would be (duh) graduating and wanted to celebrate. The boss said that was fine.

Fast-forward to a few weeks before graduation. Boss calls me in and asks if I wouldn’t mind working one night of graduation weekend, because they expected to be busy because of (surprise) all the graduates going out to celebrate. I was a little miffed (Um, you might have heard me mention that I’M one of those oh-so-important graduates), but agreed, as I wasn’t having a big party, wasn’t going through the ceremony, and basically just wanted a night out with Mr. S. So I said as long as I could have one night off that weekend I’d be OK.

I came in for my shift on the Friday before graduation weekend, saw that I was scheduled for both nights of graduation weekend, and turned around and walked out. Shit on that noise.

59

Not only time off in Japan - in my first job I was forbidden to use my car for work (in fact they tried very hard to tell me I couldn’t even buy one to use privately - har har!)

This meant that I was expected to WALK to the station at five or six in the morning, through blizzards etc ( the station was about 45 minutes walk in the summer).

One morning I had to go to a far flung school which meant starting out from my house at about 5am to arrive by 8.30. I went out and although the snowploughs had gone by at about 4am, the roads were now about six inches deep in snow again, and the sidewalks had not yet been ploughed at all. I started walking along the side of the road, but the blizzard was so bad that there were pools of darkness between the lampposts, and random cars were weaving by. I got scared and turned back, and went home.

There was no-one to call (no cell phones in those days, no-one yet either in the main office or the visit school) so I went back to bed and then walked to the office for 8am instead. Asshole had the cheek to threaten to fire me. I laughed.
(Mirthlessly)

In my next job after I married, in a totally different area (now my visa was a spouse visa so I was not dependent on keeping my job) I asked my new boss(who was actually a sweetheart) how I should apply for a parking space. It was a crowded office so only employees living more than 6km away were entitled, I was informed - so sorry. Well I lived 11km away, no problem, hand me the forms please. Then he told me that I would not be allowed to drive my car to work (Oh bloody hell, here we go again…)

I looked him in the eye and laughed, and said lightly, “That’s a very funny joke.” He said it was no joke, and I took a deep breath and said “Oh, I think it must have been. Because if it isn’t, I shall be very deeply offended and may have to begin discrimination proceedings.” He told me it was a joke.

60

Sure there is. Drama. Attention. Some people are addicted to it. I spent a lot of time working in restaurants when I was younger, and my god, by the level of cheap drama and attention whoring (Who’s sleeping around? The hostess is doing lines of cocaine off the busboy’s cock in the men’s room? The cook got into a knife fight with the head waiter out by the dumpster?), you’d think it was the Roman Senate, rather than a dead-end, crappy restaurant job.