My PTO notices are not a request. The “business” may request that I change my plans and I’ll consider it but my PTO notices ARE NOT a requests.
Notice that they don’t mention WHAT the request was for? My money is on a funeral.
It’s irrelevant what it was for, it’s your paid time off, it’s a part of your salary. America is soooooooo fucked, I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with the bullshit I see here daily.
I think “the needs of the business” include firing managers who make stupid decisions.
Fuck that. At my job we don’t deny vacations. We make sure that no one is too important to take a vacation. Simple. Plus we let people known, “your PTO is yours, you figure out when to take it”
If the company is hurting, the CEO asks kindly during our all hands to take PTO if you can to help the company not acres during the tough period.
I can’t quite figure out what the last sentence is supposed to be…
At work right now they’re denying all the new vacation requests because we’ve got to make a bunch of products for customer. But they at least told us when the order was placed, so everybody took a vacation before the rush or planned one afterwards.
That is good management and good team mentality.
It sounds like poor planning on behalf of management to me. Unless you work in some kind of micro enterprise with <5 employees, good planning should leave sufficient capacity to enable at least some vacation time to continue.
My last help desk job we used to try to run at 70% capacity. Basically meaning you would be on a call 70% of time you were scheduled on the phone. That way when shit happened and we got busy there was capacity to handle it. People were happy and did their jobs well. Then new management came and decided we should aim for 100% and stopped letting us replace people as they left (they never explicitly said this but looking at the numbers when they did let us hire told the story). Everything went to shit after that. People were miserable, no one was able to help each other so there was no knowledge transfer and after the experienced people left they had to reduce their responsibilities down to just the most basic tasks and have the other app support teams take back over what the desk was previously doing for them. By the time I left the whole IT side of that company was a dumpster fire while the execs continued to try to grow the company without investing in it.
A little bit. But mistakes happen, it’s a huge order, and they were transparent about it. I can accept that so long as it stays infrequent.
The majority of businesses are small
Any manager who talks about work like that in public isn’t a manager of any high caliber.
Probably just a gas station manager or some shit
I had something similar happen once when I was a teenager, working McDonald’s. Keep in mind, is not PTO it’s just ‘don’t schedule me these days’. Handed my request to a manager like a month in advance. Before I went in the family vacation, double checked everything was fine. When I got back from vacation, went to work to get the next schedule only to get stopped and informed I was fired for ‘no call no show’.
The one manager that didn’t like me for some reason (honestly don’t know why) had changed the schedule to explicitly get me fired. The manager I handed my request to was there and even said she remembered my request and putting it in the books but claimed there was nothing they could do.
Technically, I’ve been fired twice from McDonald’s (second time was years later at a different McDonald’s and basically the owner thought my hair was too long and I had ‘girls hair’). So I cut McDonald’s out of my life a long time ago. And it brings me great joy every time I read about McDonald’s having financial problems or people not going there as much as they used to. I hope I live long enough to see McDonald’s file for bankruptcy. And all the managers that wronged me, I’ve never forgotten. I wish them nothing but unhappiness and misfortune for all their days.
We may have worked at the same shitty McDonald’s as teens lmao. I once requested off one single day several weeks in advance, because I had some school trip that day and wouldn’t be in the state. A week from the trip I looked at the schedule and saw I was scheduled for that day, even though I had it approved weeks earlier. I asked my manager about it and made it very clear that I would not be able to come to work that day. They told me I needed to find a replacement or I’d get a “point” or whatever they did to keep track of people’s “fuck-ups”. I told the manager that I didn’t have a way to contact any of the other people that worked at that McDonald’s because I had just started working there and didn’t have any of their numbers. The manager went and printed out a spreadsheet of every employee that worked at that location and their phone numbers (probably without their consent), and I called every single person on that list. There were probably close to a hundred names (I think it was a list of literally every person who had ever worked at that location, past or present), but no one was available to cover my shift. Trip day comes, I got a point, and then was “quiet fired” a couple months later when they just stopped putting me on the schedule (except for after I submitted a two weeks notice, where they scheduled me for an 8 hour shift on my last day 🙃). I too have avoided McDonald’s ever since then.
Oh McDonald’s can go dying a ditch but just so you know they’re a franchise. Kind of surprised you worked two different ones and didn’t realize that
And all the managers that wronged me, I’ve never forgotten. I wish them nothing but unhappiness and misfortune for all their days.
seems like you already won tho. You left. They stayed.
Yeah OP’s definitely winning with that lifetime of bitterness
Yeah, the McRib is back tho.
To be clear, the employer loses on the unemployment claim with this one without a big packet of documentation.
“For the needs of the business” to feel powerful.
This. The only “need” for the business being satisfied is that one manager’s “need” to hear his own voice and to lord power over someone. And such managers are the ones whom, if I were in charge of the business, I’d make redundant in a heartbeat.
You guys all feel this way, but when 6/10 ppl request off the day before thx giving or something what are managers supposed to do? Just close up shop?
I mean, yeah. Unless this is a critical business, like emergency services, then… Oh no, we can’t make someone’s bullshit for another day or two? The fucking HUMANITY. Won’t anyone think of the bottom line???
Well definitely firing somebody should help your staffing problems.
A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
How is denying a PTO request a month in advance poor planning? I’m sincerely asking you.
If the PTO request would have been made a day in advance, very few would argue that denying it would be poor planning of the manager. A MONTH in advance though, that very much screams poor planning. Any competent manager should be able to manage and plan for that.
Probably talk about it with employees like adults and try to work something out, rather than throwing their weight around?
I’ve worked on both types of teams, and the ones that have reasonable discussions about staffing problems are always healthier in other ways too. The ones where management just hands down edicts from on high and expects people to roll over and take it always end up being dysfunctional across the board.
Sure, if it’s a nonessential business.
Exactly
I’ve managed people for 20 years, and I’ve never denied a PTO request. The business has never collapsed because of that.
We have Dec 24th and 25th off this year. My entire team requested Monday, Dec 23rd off. I denied all of them (after securing it as a paid holiday).
“no one wants to work” [for dicks].
I had an employer do this to me. I requested to use most of my two weeks vacation time in one vacation. They declined it, telling me that it should be used for 3 and 4 day weekend trips on occasion, and not all at once. Then they were shocked that I didn’t cancel my vacation.
Damn. Where Im at, there is a law requiring businesses allow two weeks back to back vacation each year.
I dunno who needs to hear this but, they need us more than we need them.
They keep trying to flex and act like they’re in charge of everything because they sign the paychecks, the fact of the matter is that the money they give you is a paltry amount compared to what they’re making from your labor. If you don’t do the work, they won’t make any money at all. Sure as shit the business owner isn’t going to step up to do your job.
They need you. They want to convince you that you need them. They want to take your power away from you.
Employment is a two-way street. Anyone who will treat you like trash isn’t worthy of your sweat.
This is true, but you can only grab hold of that power collectively. There is no way to pull on this lever solo.
Sometimes you can, but it’s rare.
Collective action and unions are the way for 99.9%
The 0.1% know who they are, and they’re happy to throw their weight around. When the company pushes back and gets rid of them, they often end up bringing that person back as a consultant because they really cannot survive without their help
That’s fair, and that 0.1% always become legendary among the workforce.
Your uninformed (or hopeful) if you think big businesses make money from labor. A lot of it is from capital, investments or rent.
E.g. McDonald’s profits are mostly from rent.
McDonald’s profits are mostly from rent.
rent on what?
Come on, follow through. Don’t leave the equation partially finished. Rent on what?
RENT ON FUCKING MC’DICKOLDS FRANCHISES. Not rent on Toy R Us, not rent on Starbucks, it’s rent on MICKY-DEEZNUTS FRANCHISES MATE.
Cute thou.
And Hollywood profits aren’t from movies, honestly you’ve fallen for basic accounting tricks…
A franchise that doesn’t make money devalues the retail space. McDonald’s model links rents to sales so they take maximum value at all times.
Royalty fee: 4% of gross revenues
Brand marketing and promotion fee: 4% of gross revenues
Location rent: Unlike most other franchises, McDonald’s owns the land and buildings at its locations and franchisees pay rent that can be based on a percentage of sales or as a fixed amount. Percentage rents are 31.75% of sales. Fixed rents are typically £100,000 to £225,000 per month.
So Corporately it looks like they make their money from rent. But that rent is directly linked to sales and labour in most cases.
Without sales they don’t get rent unless they’ve agreed a fixed rent and that’s increasingly rare. Usually only the highest value sites.
The real estate value of the property is linked to business revenue as well. If a franchise fails and doesn’t get another investor then the empty building is worth a lot less.
By picking McDonald’s you’re actually about as wrong as possible. Everything of value is linked back to labour, even the value of the land.
It might work differently in other countries but I doubt it. Economics work the same everywhere and McDonalds didn’t like to standardise when they find a winning model for themselves.
I get what you’re saying here. McDonald’s, the franchiser, makes money on rent. But they’re renting to McDonald’s franchisee’s (at least in part, likely a majority of it). Even if they’re renting out to third parties, those third parties are making money largely from service, which is rendered via labor.
So the service is performed by labor, and the service makes the revenue to pay the rent and pay the labor, QED, rent is paid by labor.
McDonald’s franchisee’s are paying their rent with labor. It’s not like the franchise is getting fully assembled big Macs delivered. The labor needs to assemble the parts to make the whole.
Without labor, they would have no product to sell, since it’s not feasible to cut out the on site assembly of the food while keeping it as fresh as it is.
Yes, a nontrivial part of revenue is in materials, and there’s a mark up on the sale of those materials when sold, but the majority of cost is for the labor of putting everything together.
On top of this, there’s plenty of non-McDonald’s examples of the same. I work in IT support, almost all of my work is service, where I go in, either in person or remotely, and perform corrections to get things working normally. There’s plenty of industries that have similar models, where there’s little to no production of things that you’re paying for, and the vast majority of the payment is for labor.
Finance, tax prep, handymen, carpenters, welders, programmers, factory workers, delivery drivers… The lion share of revenue is directly from labor.
With food service costs are generally split between labor and materials, since the raw materials can be rather costly, but for many other workforces, labor is the main revenue.
Bro thinks rent and investments make money from the magical money fairy
Labor existed before capital. Capital cannot exist without labor. Labor can exist without capital.
McDonald’s franchises can’t pay rent without that business making money. It’s labor at the end of the day. Always is. Always has been. Always will be.
Capitalism’s value and money is based on your labor, that’s it, that’s the foundation for all of it including rent.
lol there’s no way the poster actually fired anyone. If there’s one thing I’ve learned its that most business don’t like to fire people, its too expensive. They just talk a big game, do write-ups and generally try to use passive-aggression to present an air of “you’re on thin ice!” Odds are, if your employer needs you THAT badly to work your shifts, they’re not gonna want to train an all new person to replace you.
The company I work for decided one day that we absolutely had to use a script when talking to customers. I don’t, I just ignored them because we didn’t used to have to have a script so why is it suddenly requirement now.
Every time they hear you not using the script they write you up, which essentially just amounts to them writing down this person is not doing what I want. Signing it and making you sign it as if that’s some kind of contract you’ve entered into and then nothing happens.
He didn’t have to “fire” him, if they were scheduled and didn’t show up repeatedly, it would be considered voluntary quitting.
In right to work states 3 consecutive days of no show no call is legally considered job abandonment and therefore you “quit” without notice. So in the case of a workplace choosing to ignore someone’s clearly communicated vacation it makes it very easy to book them as having “quit”
hired somewhere else a week later
They forget, they’re as disposable as we are.
Easy go, easy come!
At a better job with a higher wage.
If it was a better job with a better wage I’d already be at that job. I wouldn’t wait for some manufactured conflict to occur between me and the manager. I’d just go.
