If your business requires all its employees to be there to function, it’s understaffed.
People go on vacation, get sick, quit, have car trouble, and die. Your business needs to account for that.
My job is IT. Staffing is your job.
A lack of adequate planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
I believe that this, particularly, is why many fast food restaurants are closing way earlier than they did several years ago. No, it isn’t because of the pandemic. It’s because someone (Gen Z) finally got fed up with the bullshit of managers dictating when they can work as opposed to a fixed schedule. No, no one should ever have to bear the burden of “picking up a shift” - that’s just shitty management and has been for around 60 years. We’ve all just bowed our heads and accepted that we need a job. Gen Z said, collectively, “Wait, what?” and the world will be better for it. Under no circumstance should someone ever be forced to work 2nd shift one day and early mornings the next.
No doubt answered with “we’re a family here” nonsense, all while the company makes record profits and the executives get compensated with a giant bag of cash. Yuck.
Sounds like a Management Skill issue
One of the only positive things about working at Amazon is they they’re actually competent enough to hire enough employees to cover unexpected life events. No joke, they hand out over an hour of personal time every single day, enough to take an entire day off after barely working a couple of weeks.
I’ve been sleeping in nearly every single shift for a year straight, coming in late constantly, and management literally couldn’t give a single fuck. They even let you come back from breaks late and no one says a damn thing. I once stretched out a 15 minute break to 45 minutes, and nothing came of it. So long as your work gets done on time it’s no problem. They even fired the one manager who would actually do things by the book and get after employees. I couldn’t believe it when it happened; it’s almost too unbelievable to be true.
The best part is that you don’t even have to call in; taking time off is done with an app and it always gets approved instantly. If the pay wasn’t shit (only $19.50hr), I’d never want to leave.
So you’re saying you failed to plan adequate staffing capacity for the company’s needs?
“Should have hired taller people then”
Solid joke, but hard to pull off in person if you’re over 6 feet.
Wouldn’t it work better in that case? The implication being that if you weren’t the only tall person, then staff wouldn’t be so short without you.
I wish I could say this instead of having to schedule my vacation time a month in advance.
Do some people actually get these messages? It sounds almost illegal. I get emails from management moaning at me for not using my annual leave and reminding me to take them before they reset.
Had a boss that refused to give me full time cause that would cost company more money, but would harass me if I ever called out. Would remind him that he refused to make me full time and didn’t give me a raise that year so I sure as hell wasn’t driving through a blizzard to come to work a night when I hadn’t been scheduled until 15 minutes before he called.
I’ve had companies write clauses in their employee manual which states you must apply and get approval for using your paid vacation days a month in advance. When you sign the contract, you agree to these rules.
The thing is, where I live, there is no requirement to receive approval, and you really only need to give one day of notice (which has precedent in court). The use of these days off if the employee’s legal right.
The really shitty thing is that companies can legally write illegal clauses in their contracts, they just can’t enforce them. However, if an employee is young and doesn’t know their rights, they will just follow the rules blindly (I know I did).
Also, leave only accumulated for two years here, so you have to use it or lose it.
So the moral of the story is to educate yourself on your local labor laws.
I’ve worked in a small company’s small team of 3 devs before, it would not have been great for the company if two or all of us went on a holiday at the same time.
In the US there’s basically no legal requirements for paid leave so there’s also little to no protection for it
land of the free (for corporations)
Your leave resets? That sounds illegal.
Use it or lose it is very common, even in (US) government employment.
US having laws that permit wage theft? Colour me entirely unsurprised.
Vacation time is not the same as hourly wage.
Where I live, failing to give people their legally-mandated annual leave would be no different to failing to pay them their salary. If they resign or are let go, you have to pay out their annual leave (one day of annual leave = one day of extra pay).
They can reasonably instruct you to use your leave if it’s building up too much (but what’s “reasonable” or “too much” are not specifically legally defined), but they cannot just take it away. Annual leave is literally part of your legal entitlements.
That’s cool, and I’d love to see it. “wage” means hourly payment for time worked. Anything else is a benefit or whatever - but not wage. Wage theft is not getting paid wages due.
I’m not going to deny that that might be true in some US states’ laws. But it is not true morally or philosophically. From the first sentence of the Wikipedia article on wage theft:
Wage theft is the failing to pay wages or provide employee benefits owed to an employee by contract or law.
Later in the same paragraph, it includes as an example:
not paying annual leave or holiday entitlements
It is pretty uncontroversial that not paying overtime bonus rates is wage theft, and that article goes to great lengths to describe how misclassification (e.g. classing someone as a contractor when they are in fact a direct employee) is wage theft not just philosophically, but at times in the US legally.
Here in Australia, a classic example of wage theft that we hear about companies getting fined for a lot is failure to pay superannuation. A US equivalent to that might be if they failed to pay into a 401k contribution match when their employment contract stated they would. It’s not “wage” per se, but it is part of the agreed compensation for work.
Leave entitlements are no different. Whether the law recognises it correctly or not, taking away people’s annual leave is wage theft.
This might be a US thing. I have worked in — what I consider — pretty unfulfilling jobs, but they usually still insist I take my vacation time and remind me to take breaks. Maybe it secretly came back in my performance review in obscure ways so I might also be an idiot.
The break reminder is just a legal obligation, they can still give you the stink eye when you say you’re taking a break and brag about how long they’ve worked without a break.
Translation: We’re extremely short staffed, so we are shaming our employees into sacrificing their vacation
“that’s a shame, you should have considered it when you last downsized the workforce. I’ll be back in a month”
Sounds like a management problem to me.
Really?! That sounds like awful management.
That sounds like every job I’ve ever had. Working so hard everyone is making themselves sick and the moment you’re not at 100% you’ll be let go for underperforming. God forbid you actually ask to be paid for the overtime you worked, good luck chump. Then some other desperate soul will take your place until they’re chewed out and replaced. We weren’t even called employees, we were human capital. The worst part is I’d do it all over again if that meant I would have a paycheck again. At least then I’d be able to afford rent, cause if I don’t find a job in a few months I lose my apartment. Apparently I’m living in the greatest part of the world.
