Hey Bonita,
I’m feeling “eff that job,” and need an outside perspective. My family has a trip planned that will require me to take two days off. I put the PTO request in early March for this July trip and initially, without looking at the calendar, my boss said sure, that should work. The rest of my family got the time approved and booked the trip. Well, my boss just told me too many people in the company are off that day (two people), but since the store has been particularly slow lately they might be able to make it work. BUT they won’t know until a week before I’m supposed to leave for my trip. I bend over backwards for work, always, so this trip is non-negotiable for me at this point. If they tell me no, I want to tell them sorry, I will not be in those days, and stick by it no matter what. Does it seem like an over-exaggeration to say “eff that job” and take my family trip? I don’t actually know what the worst case is here, aside from being fired, obviously, but I’m not sure if they would do that right now.
Anonymous
Hey there Anon,
I tend to answer questions in chronological order, so it’s been some weeks since you sent this to me, and now July is here. I hope you’ve bought yourself some fresh new vacation fits and have made all kinds of reservations. You did exactly what you were supposed to do by giving your workplace plenty of advanced notice and putting in your PTO request months in advance. At this point, your absence is their problem and not yours. Your managers know how PTO works—requests submitted in a timely fashion are supposed to be honored, and they are making the choice to exploit your need for work by dangling your PTO over your head. You gave them plenty of time to do their job, which was to adjust the schedule for your absence and keep business going as usual, but they didn’t. That’s their fault, not yours, and you shouldn’t have to sacrifice a long-planned family vacation to cover for their failure. You did everything you were supposed to do, and now the ball is in their court.
Sorry if you were expecting me to encourage you to stay at that workplace and make excuses for this kind of poor management. I am absolutely the wrong person to turn to when it comes to managing situations that don’t serve you, because I will tell you to dump him, I will tell you to give notice, I will tell you to take your ball and go home. Making memories with loved ones can never take a backseat to your job, because it is the nature of capitalism to work us to death. For some folks, that dedication is a byproduct of guilt drilled into us by the boomers who raised us, and workplaces will exploit that guilt by trying to paint a worker as a bad person for having a life outside of work. You’re supposed to feel emotionally beholden to the point that you will overcommit or even work for free. Some workers do this because they expect a reward for giving too much, and we all know you can’t rely on any workplace to truly recognize your labor and compensate you fairly for it. They’ll just add more to the load until you break. The fact is that work won’t love you back, so you should just update your resume and enjoy your vacation. You’re allowed to seek out a workplace that isn’t exploitative and disorganized like that, and maybe this is a sign for you to pursue a career dream instead of just staying afloat. This doesn’t sound like a job you enjoy or find fulfilling. I don’t think that you necessarily have to feel fulfilled from your work, and that it’s perfectly valid to seek work just to get paid, but that doesn’t mean that you have to abide by this kind of treatment. There are other workplaces out there that won’t treat you this way. Eff that job!
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