Casual reminder that staffing and scheduling is the manager’s job. If you aren’t a manager, your responsibility should be to tell your manager you can’t come in, and it should end there.
Definitely. If this is that big of a deal the workplace is dangerously understaffed or you have people just plain abusing time off which the manager then needs to be aware of and address.
Yep, I did it for over 11 years and while on boarding new staff I always made sure they understood come to me if you want the day off, I don’t care when, I’ll never say no, just let me know when you know.
If you don’t do this and the person can’t find somebody to cover and they really need the day off for whatever reason then they just call in sick that morning and it’s a lot harder finding a replacement at 5am that day vs 3pm the day before.
I’m as pro-labor as they come - at my workplace, you have vacation time, personal time, sick time, and comp time banks, and some people choose to swap shifts in order to avoid using this time or in order to get time off after they’ve used all of their time off. There are reasons you might ask for coverage instead of offloading it to the manager!
Fair enough, but you’re still asking someone to cover your shift in return for you covering theirs. In most of these cases it’s a more junior employee who works nights and/or weekends asking a more senior employee to cover those less desirable shifts.
Casual reminder that staffing and scheduling is the manager’s job. If you aren’t a manager, your responsibility should be to tell your manager you can’t come in, and it should end there.
Definitely. If this is that big of a deal the workplace is dangerously understaffed or you have people just plain abusing time off which the manager then needs to be aware of and address.
Quoted for emphasis and affirmation.
Yep, I did it for over 11 years and while on boarding new staff I always made sure they understood come to me if you want the day off, I don’t care when, I’ll never say no, just let me know when you know.
If you don’t do this and the person can’t find somebody to cover and they really need the day off for whatever reason then they just call in sick that morning and it’s a lot harder finding a replacement at 5am that day vs 3pm the day before.
ok but if you work at a small business with few employees its just polite
I’m as pro-labor as they come - at my workplace, you have vacation time, personal time, sick time, and comp time banks, and some people choose to swap shifts in order to avoid using this time or in order to get time off after they’ve used all of their time off. There are reasons you might ask for coverage instead of offloading it to the manager!
That’s not covering a shift. That’s trading shifts.
Fair enough, but you’re still asking someone to cover your shift in return for you covering theirs. In most of these cases it’s a more junior employee who works nights and/or weekends asking a more senior employee to cover those less desirable shifts.