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The only thing you do by keeping things running through heroic effort is to send a message to management that they can lower the priority of dealing with the issue.
Managing upwards (getting management to make decisions in your favor) means that you can’t let yourself be the reason they don’t feel the pain of a problem like poor staffing. Sure, you can step in and save the day if you really, truly, need to build up your reputation as dependable/hero, but it’s a thin thin line.
One thing I often do as well is try to look at people in other departments and their general attitudes towards time off, vacations, having to leave for Dr’s appointments, that sort of thing.
I’ll be damned if I’m going to live in a constant crunch time situation, feeling like I need to take lunch at my desk, and put off things I need to do for me.
Especially while other teams are having regular team building outings during work hours on the company dime, one guy takes a long lunch and to go to the gym, and two others were clearly taking the video call meeting while out walking their dog.
Everyone deserves consideration of the fact that they are human, and everyone deserves the kind of flexibility that often is only for business side “important” people.
Overtime solves this issue pretty effortlessly. They call you and offer a shift of overtime to cover someone that’s unexpectedly absent. If you’re willing to sacrifice your normal time off, you get time and a half in exchange. If you’re not, then either another person will or the manager/foreman on salary handles it. That is, after all, one of the reasons they’re paid more (and on salary.)
In my opinion, at a healthy workplace, someone taking time off shouldn’t be noticed
In a “healthy” capitalist environment, they take note of who can leave without any bumps in the road and lay them off
I used to have this boss who would get mad if anyone asked for 2 weeks off. She would say, “if you think the business can survive without you for that long, why do we pay you? Don’t bother coming back then”
That boss was a short-sighted moron. (I assume we all can see that). I hope that role is as high up the food chain as the Peter Principal will allow them to go.
1). Hiring is expensive, scouting, ads, interviews, and paying HR do process their onboarding and benifits. The rule of thumb Ive see previous managers use is the total cost to hire someone is 2-2.5 times their annual take-home. Not to mention the effectivness of a new hire learning the role costs the company real resources, time and effort to bring up to speed.
2). Your PTO is part of your compensation, and can be used within policy as you see fit. Failure to allow its appropriate use could be viewed as wage theft and there are very powerful leagl avenues (depending on location) to take if the case is big enough to bring against the employeer.
Within policy does a lot of heavy lifting.
It’s generally very simple (by intent) for the employer to deny PTO requests “within policy.”
The issue arises when multiple people all get sick at the same time, which is much more common than random chance would have it due to how contagious cold & flu (and COVID) are. A workplace that can handle half the staff gone for a day without falling behind is gonna struggle to find stuff for people to do when everyone is there.
This is reason for having more lenient sick policies, not less. Generally only symptomatic people are contagious (COVID being an exception). Even mildly sick people should be encouraged to stay home until fully recovered to lower the risk of spreading it to the rest of the office.
That can help, though the office isn’t the only transmission vector. Schools, grocery stores, restaurants, public transit, etc. are all major vectors. Families with early school-age children especially tend to get sick a lot, as young children learn and play in close proximity but don’t tend to follow good hygiene habits.
There’s also just the issue that in any environment with multiple people, it only takes one infected person to infect everyone else. Different people have different tolerances for illness as well as varying severity of symptoms. Someone with mild symptoms may come to work/school anyway and the whole room gets sick.
Have you never been in a position of management? You think absences should never be noted or logged?
You might need to reconsider this.
I once listened to a presentation by a guy who had this really elaborate plan, based on everyone doing their jobs absolutely perfectly, with nothing going wrong at all. If anything skipped a beat, anywhere along the way, the entire house of cards would come down.
I asked what would happen if someone didn’t accomplish their objectives, and he said they would. But what if they didn’t? They will. That’s when I said, you aren’t taking the human factor into account, and he said that the solution is to “fire the human, and get a new human.”
Meanwhile, “Nobody wants t’ werk!!!”.
Okay, cool. What happens while you’re training that new human? Trainees will operate at substantially less efficiency than expected while learning and may for a while afterwards too, depending on complexity of the work. What happens if one of those humans gets hurt or sick?
Dude really was a moron, wasn’t he?
Dude really was a moron, wasn’t he?
A leading hypothesis is management are fucking stupid. Throw them back into the trenches. Let them do some actual work for a few years
It’s easy to tell which managers were promoted from within and which were external hires with no hands on experience.
I don’t think hands on experience is necessary, but you need to have a comprehensive understanding of the work being done by people you oversee. That becomes increasingly difficult as your position moves you from the front line, which I think is one reason upper management and executives often seem like aliens compared to the rank and file and lower management.
Throw them back into the trenches.
The problem there is that eventually you don’t have trenches any more.
He’s not the only one. The Neo-Feudalists really think they are the only human species that exists whilst everyone else is a Neanderthal Serf
What happens while you’re training that new human?
My managers always had a simple solution to this problem: pretend that new programmers fresh out of college require no on-the-job training at all. Or for bonus points, pretend that they’re even better than the guys who have been doing this for decades and pay them more.
Nah, new humans aren’t trained in this day and age anymore. Managers just say to use AI instead. We can see this with the high unemployment rate of graduates.
I would like to add - fuck those managers that try to make scheduling issues around your sick days your problem. Over the last few years, I’ve heard of more and more jobs where the manager expects you, the sick person, to find coverage for your shift in order to call out. That is, you’re expected to call around your coworkers and find someone who will work your shift for you… yes, even if you’ve got no voice or are busy puking your brains out. Somehow, this practice has become prevalent in some jobs in the US. I worry about the younger workers who accept this as normal. It is not normal, and should never be normal!
The manager is paid to manage the employees - including finding coverage when someone’s sick. If you ever find yourself in a job where a manager tries to make you find your replacement before “permitting” you to call out, GTFO out of there! It’s a fucked up practice and sane employers don’t pull that shit.
(For all the Europeans reading - yes, this is real. Yes, we need better labor laws.)
Labor conditions in the USA are so fucked up. Join a union, you need collective action to make changes.
I’m a school bus driver in the US (Teamsters union). Our monthly dues are about $90 and we’re finding it difficult to get new drivers to join because of that. Our district is surrounded by non-unionized districts where they make about $8 less an hour and get none of the benefits we get, which include subsidized health insurance and a pension after ten years. We’re OK for now but if our union membership ever drops below 50% of the drivers our contract will be voided and then we’ll find out how shitty it is to not be represented by a union. But I can’t get the new drivers to understand this; the anti-union propaganda for the last fifty years hear (really, for a lot longer than that) has just been too overwhelming.
They make $8 more per hour, but are getting hung up on $90/month union dues? They do know that the difference alone would pay for that in like 12 hours, right?
I dunno if school bus drivers are public workers or not… If they are, the Supreme Court ruled a few years back that they don’t even need to pay full dues, even if they are part of the collective bargaining unit and are receiving all of the benefits of contract that was fully negotiated by the union.
It’s annoying, but it’s there. If they’re public employees, they don’t even need to pay full dues
They make $8 more per hour, but are getting hung up on $90/month union dues? They do know that the difference alone would pay for that in like 12 hours, right?
They actually are so bad at math that they don’t know that.
I dunno if school bus drivers are public workers or not… If they are, the Supreme Court ruled a few years back that they don’t even need to pay full dues, even if they are part of the collective bargaining unit and are receiving all of the benefits of contract that was fully negotiated by the union.
Yes, they get the benefits of the union-negotiated contract even if they are not in the union themselves. But as I mentioned, that contract is negated if the union membership drops below 50%.
This perfectly shows what’s wrong in this country (and many part of the world).
People not paying the dues still get the benefits. Personally they save money by not being a member, while benefitting from those that do. But if enough people think like that then the benefits vanish. Our society is just propped up by the majority (sometimes just a few) that understand that and do things for the collective good. But the portion of people doing that is decreasing as we become strangers with people around us.
Exactly the same thing happening everywhere. People are individualistic, they see benefits if they’re the only one doing something. But they don’t see how if everyone does what they did, everyone will end up in a far worse situation.
I wanted to explain this with an example to some people and they just blew it off saying it doesn’t make sense. The example is below:
If you had a button in front of you that gives you a million dollars if you press it (but only once in your life), but takes one dollar from everyone in the world. Now it might be very tempting to press that button. And if you do, you’re +1million dollars. Problem is, if everyone else also press their button, then you’re -8billion dollars. Even if 0.1 percent press that button you’re negative. But if we give this button to everyone, people will press it. And we reach a cycle where even the people that didn’t press it in the beginning will press it once they lose significant money because that’s the way way to at least recover something for themselves. So everyone loses.
I feel like this is how a lot of business models are working right now, they give you that button, and ask you $1000 for that button. You take it, you make a million. The world lost 8 billion into the void. You recover your 1000 and a lot more. And then someone else does it, you’re still positive. More and more people do it, the business is the only one making money. But as 1000s of people do it, you start to panic, then you get all the people that took advantage of it together, try to bribe the business so they stop selling the button to more people.
People not paying the dues still get the benefits. Personally they save money by not being a member, while benefitting from those that do. But if enough people think like that then the benefits vanish.
That is literally the point.
That’s why that specific case went to SCOTUS, and that’s why SCOTUS ruled the way they did.
They want to snuff out public unions.
Guillotines, even for the low level tyrants.
Caskets with flesh-eating worms for them!
gtfo and maybe start a couple fires on your way to the door
also, by going to work sick, you are unnecessarily endangering your coworkers, your customers, and yourself.
In Europe, there are companies that offer unlimited paid time off. In practice apparently people take less time off than when they have a fixed amount of leave because they feel a responsibility towards their coworkers.
In my opinion, entrepreneurship is a high risk/high rewards game. Employees getting sick is part of the risk, and if you can’t handle that you shouldn’t be running a business.
I know in the US it’s incredibly easy to let people go, in the end if specialist workers get scarce, not accepting sick days will ruin your business. In Europe not accepting sick days is simply not an option.
I am convinced treating people well prevents things like burnout. And preventing burnouts and churn gives you a competitive advantage.
I’m a school bus driver in the US. Not only do we not get unlimited PTO, even for our paid holidays we don’t get paid for them unless we show up for the workdays before and after the paid holidays. This is so that we don’t attempt to stretch the long weekend that a Friday or Monday holiday provides by taking extra sick days before or after. I was a programmer most of my working life and I never encountered any time-off like this, but the other drivers say this is common in “blue-collar” jobs.
TBF our bosses have absolutely no flexibility in terms of the work that has to be done. A bus route needs to be covered or else 100 kids don’t make it to school. We have standby drivers but not an unlimited number of them. The day after the Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl, about a third of our drivers called in “sick” and the transportation director had no choice but to cancel multiple routes. I was more pissed at our drivers than she was – we’re almost all in our 60s and 70s (and a few are in their 80s) and have no business drinking ourselves into massive hangovers. I’m actually surprised nobody died.
Nvidia offers that here, unlimited time off and a focus on work/life balance. They don’t do layoffs. Seems to be working out well for them, given they’re the most valuable company right now.
It’s true and i agree but it’s still my coworker suffering the consequences.
Meh, they should take days off too then, don’t be an apologist. Pitting against fellow workers is not the way.
TIL feeling bad for my coworkers makes me an apologist
You need to stop thinking in twitter posts and start thinking in terms of reality.
What do you mean you “deserve” sick days? Aren’t you legally given those?
For instance, I can call in two days a month and say “I’m sick, staying home, not working”. If I’m not that badly off, then I can call in as much as I want (within reason) and say “I’m sick but working from home”. At any point, I can say “I’m sick, going to hospital”.
No. We are not given those.
The people who we trust to secure those rights for us that you take for granted are useless unless they’re blocking progress.
Few American employers provide actual sick days. Instead you can pull from your pool of paid time off (which doubles as vacation for many jobs, although some do have a separate vacation pool that can only be used for scheduled time off) or just have an unpaid absence.
No. I don’t get any sick days at all for any reason. There are two kinds of leave at my job: scheduled, and unscheduled. If it was preapproved 2+weeks in advance by you submitting a slip and the boss signing it and then getting back to you, then it was scheduled. Anything else is unscheduled, and technically I can be disciplined for it.
That fucking sucks mate.
I guilt myself enough as it is. My boss tells me don’t worry about it and that I need rest like everyone else lol. I’m lucky, I both have my dream job and a boss that actually goes to bat for me. I wish everyone could have the same.
Shit, If a client is even just a little rude to me my boss will basically threaten to pull their account and force them to apologize.
Honestly, one would think the boss is someone with the skill and know how of at least 2 of his subordinates. Not the survivability of 5 toddlers in a trench coat
Exactly, too many times it’s just because of nepotism or attrition.
By the way, this also applies for “unforeseen problems” which “made the project go behind schedule” and “now we’re going to work extra hard” (meaning overtime without pay).
It’s up to management to not only account and prepare for Known Unknowns (problems known to happen but not if, when and how severe - for example employee sickness), but even have margin for Unknown Unknowns (problems that nobody expected).
In fact, half way competent managers will do enough analysis and research upfront to transform many otherwise Know Unknowns into Known Knowns (we know this will happen) and Unknown Unknowns into Known Unknowns - sometimes things are only “totally unexpected” because the necessary upfront research and preparation hasn’t been done.
Managing this is literally the core job of low-level and mid-level managers, so if they try and dump on you the responsibility for it or try and extract from you out of contract work to make up for it, they are literally acting in the most selfish personal upside maximizing way possible and just covering their own incompetence.
It is not up to you to make sure an incompetent asshole gets a bonus for doing a shit job and overpromising.
This is literally they kind of situation where, unless you’re for example reciprocating equivalent leeway from said manager towards you in the past (say, the kind that’ll actually quietly let you go home early if you’re having a bad day), you absolutely have the moral high ground to leave it to them to sort it out with whomever THEY are accountable to (be it a client they made deadline promises to based on a plan that would only ever work in the perfect zero-problems situation or their own manager).
I know this doesn’t happen often in practice, but I absolutely cover my teams time off (for what ever reason). Our clients don’t pay us enough to have extra staff standing around when everyone is healthy, so I’m the coverage plan. 😕
Called off work on Friday because I accidentally fucked up my back Thursday night and woke up unable to move without excruciating pain. My boss left me on read. Didn’t even fucking reply.
Too few people accept this
This is so different industry by industry. Some can build in redundancy to cover employee leave yet still have something to do when everyone is healthy.
For many other companies, particularly in reference to hourly employees, having too many employees in the same position to cover call outs means scheduling gets diluted among them, which leads to lower earnings for all employees and higher turnover.
I pro worker and anti abusive management, but vague generalized posts like these feel disingenuous or at least not well thought out.
This kinda shit only gets written and spread by people who either have never been management or are really shitty management.
There’s way too many nuances to being a “good boss” to sum up in one dumb tweet.
My first impression is that a child wrote it.
Management or not, the older you are, the more opportunities you would have had to understand it’s more nuanced than that.
Labor market faces so many issues on both sides between overworked salaried employees, average and minimum wages not keeping up with inflation, decline in education standards putting out lower quality candidates, jobs shifting towards gig and independent contractor positions that punish independence, and so many things. This just comes off as a novice brat who didn’t like how they were made to feel.
The thing you’re doing right now is equivalent to explaining why giving people Saturday and Sunday off isn’t feasible in the current market before these were established in employment law.
There are a thousand reasons why four people might be doing the work of six and so can’t call out, but it’s really worth asking why are there only four people?
Manager: “Ya know, you’re really putting me in a tight spot here…”
Me: “Oh, yeah, I know all about tight spots. Kinda like how every day I work my ass off, and at the end of the month barely have enough money to keep my head above water, all without having medical coverage. I make too much for medicaid, but I definately can’t afford a doctor. Which is kinda scary and all. You know…since I just over beating cancer in 2023. Not like cancer ever comes back, or has post complications…”
And then I walk away from the conversation.
I’ve found at places of employment, the best way to not get walked all over, is to be a reflection of how big of an asshole THEY are being in the moment. They can’t call me out onit, because it’s exactly their behavior. They won’t fix the issues, because the issue is them, or above them. So it ends up being more of a headache than it’s worth to talk to me.
Now I just get called into an office.
“Did you do the new company policy?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Because fuck that shit. I can achieve the same goal you’re telling me to work at for an hour, in about 15 seconds. All the extra bullshit is just busy work, and I don’t do that.”
Long pause
sigh "Just get back to work…
Guys, I’m telling you. All you gotta do is be an immovable rock in your stance, and work a job that would be really hard to replace you. Then just be dependable. Show up to work every day. Don’t be late. Do the work. But don’t take shit.
They’ll be presented with “do I really fire a worker who shows up and works the shifts no one else wants? Can I replace him?”
The answer may be yes, but it’s still a hell of a process that’s already solved by simply NOT firing you.
You’d get fired pretty fast from a lot of places for that behavior. That made up scenario just reeks of Reddit.
You’re not as hard to replace as you think you are.
I see other people talk to their bosses like that sometimes. I’m always shocked at how blunt they are in a clearly hostile business arrangement, but these guys do exist.
Makes me thank my lucky stars my boss is just a normal person.
I mean don’t get me wrong you gotta assert your boundaries, but I’d just say “no” and not offer a detailed reason. You can hear how I really feel while I’m on the clock. 😜
Like yeah if you’re good work buddies that’s fine, but it’s a great way to get fired for insubordination and general “dude you’re a dick” reasons if applied to all employers.
I’d fire them in a heartbeat. I’ll gladly cover a couple extra shifts a week for a few weeks if it means I don’t have to endure a colossal asshole killing morale on my team.
