Man Asks For 5 Weeks Off To Welcome Newborn Baby, Boss Calls Him On The First Day, Asking Him To Work, Drama Ensues
You don’t know what you have ‘till it’s gone is an age-old cliche for a reason. However, this does not seem to stop manipulative people from slowly, but surely ruining things. An exploitative manager might try to wring every last cent out of a workforce, only to find that no one will work for them.
A man described a particularly annoying workplace, where his boss would see time off as more of a suggestion and regularly interrupt it with calls and requests to come in for work. So after his partner gave birth, OP asked for a few weeks of (unpaid) leave. Then the day after the birth, he woke up to a barrage of missed calls, texts, and an email. So OP decided that he needed a more permanent solution.
Leave, whether paid or unpaid, is a time when an employee should be free from constant communication with a manager
Image credits: RDNE Stock project (not the actual photo)
But an internet user had this precise problem when his boss would not stop asking him to come in
Image credits: RDNE Stock project (not the actual photo)
Image credits: RDNE Stock project (not the actual photo)
Image source: Tautochrone1
Unless PTO is a right, employers will hold it like a carrot to get more labor from their employees
Image credits: The Coach Space (not the actual photo)
Time off is one of those things where America could do to step up. By comparison, all member states in the EU are required to mandate at least four weeks of paid vacation for employees working full-time. Some countries elect to have even more. Many other nations across the world have a minimum number of PTO that employees are entitled to, making this a pretty universal norm, except, of course, in the United States. This often leads to employers treating it like a luxury and often disregarding it, since PTO comes down to company policy. The result is such stories, where managers treat time off, paid or unpaid as a sort of suggestion, not a right they are entitled to.
Despite no federal legislation ordering companies to provide paid leave, most US employees do still have some amount of PTO. Only about a third have none, and this is mostly, unfortunately, relegated to the service industry and customer-facing positions. Even more strangely, many Americans simply don’t use their vacation days, as one study found that over seven hundred million days are “wasted,” due to a variety of reasons. This could be a side effect of the unfortunate reality that OP’s boss is not unique. Over half of surveyed American employees reported doing some work while ostensibly “on vacation.” The result is that many do not see a reason to stop working or splurge for expensive getaways if the boss might keep calling and demanding things.
American workers have the short end of the stick when it comes to vacation days
Image credits: anna-m. w. (not the actual photo)
This also allows companies to offer fewer days off, because workers might not see them as an important incentive. The average American worker has about 11 vacation days a year and eight days of sick leave. After 10 years, it rises to 17, and after 20 years, it’s 20 days. Meaning an entry-level employee in, say, Spain, has roughly as much PTO as a seasoned specialist at a US company. While all this information may be America-centric, the reality is that in most countries, OP’s story would not happen. Hence, it’s important to understand the combination of factors that allow bosses and managers to “overlook” time off and a work culture that allows it. Fortunately, OP had the skills and resources to just take his labor elsewhere, but for many people just starting off, this wouldn’t be possible, a fact often exploited by greedy managers.
For US workers, things may be improving slightly, as job postings offering unlimited PTO have increased by roughly 170% over the last five years. Similarly, the number of US employees who think PTO is something that would influence a job decision has also risen, though this seems pretty self-explanatory. While it’s unlikely that most jobs will even consider unlimited PTO for the majority of their employees, the “great resignation” could start to push businesses to make concessions for employee quality of life.
Readers wanted to know more and OP was kind enough to oblige
Others shared their own, similar stories and congratulated OP on this “permanent vacation”
My boss once called and asked if he could pay my husband to "watch" my daughter so I could come in on a day I had scheduled off. We worked together at the same company at the time, so hubby would have basically gotten a free paid day off to chill with our kid. I said no. That was the first straw. I just left that place last week. Best decision I ever made. My first job ever had a sign posted near the schedule board that said "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on our part." Well, my friends, that goes both ways. As the employee, it is not my responsibility to cover for my managers inability to manage a workload with appropriate staffing, especially when I had the day scheduled off for months in advance.
Hmm, I get not wanting to give up your day off, but the boss was going to pay you to work and you'd have kept your day off to use at a later date right? And on top of that he was willing to pay your hubbies salary for the day. That doesn't sound awful to me. Especially if he took your refusal to come in with good grace. That sounds like he knew he was imposing on you and was at least trying to compensate you accordingly.
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I had an in home daycare for years. One of the moms whose son I had watched for about four years was expecting baby #2. She had baby, every one was happy and healthy but her work hounded her to get back to work and she was struggling with the unpaid maternity leave and definitely couldn't afford to be fired so she caved in to a monster boss. She went back to work after just three weeks off. I know the only way she was able to do it was because of how much she had grown to trust me with her child, now children. I can't imagine the physical and mental toll that this took on her. My heart broke for her every morning when she dropped her children off with me. The real shi++y thing is that the business she worked for was in the medical field.
I cannot express how much it blows my mind that the United States places the interests of businesses so high above the interests of its BABIES. I think the thing too often overlooked in the discussion about parental leave is, really, it's for the child, who needs their parent. From the perspective of a lawmaker, to look at a helpless infant and look at a business who needs employees and decide that the business is more important than giving the infant their parent is... pretty monstrous, IMO. My country gives a year, split between the parents as they decide (paid for by the parents' unemployment insurance contributions, so it's already banked time to a large extent).
That is a great way to look at it! It also contributes to why our birth rate is so low: people of birthing age cannot afford to have kids.
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My boss once called and asked if he could pay my husband to "watch" my daughter so I could come in on a day I had scheduled off. We worked together at the same company at the time, so hubby would have basically gotten a free paid day off to chill with our kid. I said no. That was the first straw. I just left that place last week. Best decision I ever made. My first job ever had a sign posted near the schedule board that said "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on our part." Well, my friends, that goes both ways. As the employee, it is not my responsibility to cover for my managers inability to manage a workload with appropriate staffing, especially when I had the day scheduled off for months in advance.
Hmm, I get not wanting to give up your day off, but the boss was going to pay you to work and you'd have kept your day off to use at a later date right? And on top of that he was willing to pay your hubbies salary for the day. That doesn't sound awful to me. Especially if he took your refusal to come in with good grace. That sounds like he knew he was imposing on you and was at least trying to compensate you accordingly.
Load More Replies... I had an in home daycare for years. One of the moms whose son I had watched for about four years was expecting baby #2. She had baby, every one was happy and healthy but her work hounded her to get back to work and she was struggling with the unpaid maternity leave and definitely couldn't afford to be fired so she caved in to a monster boss. She went back to work after just three weeks off. I know the only way she was able to do it was because of how much she had grown to trust me with her child, now children. I can't imagine the physical and mental toll that this took on her. My heart broke for her every morning when she dropped her children off with me. The real shi++y thing is that the business she worked for was in the medical field.
I cannot express how much it blows my mind that the United States places the interests of businesses so high above the interests of its BABIES. I think the thing too often overlooked in the discussion about parental leave is, really, it's for the child, who needs their parent. From the perspective of a lawmaker, to look at a helpless infant and look at a business who needs employees and decide that the business is more important than giving the infant their parent is... pretty monstrous, IMO. My country gives a year, split between the parents as they decide (paid for by the parents' unemployment insurance contributions, so it's already banked time to a large extent).
That is a great way to look at it! It also contributes to why our birth rate is so low: people of birthing age cannot afford to have kids.
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