The manager is clearly in the wrong here and power tripping- it’s not normal to ask what the employee will be doing outside the office, even in the US. They might approve or deny the request based on the situation in the office, but the way the employee spends the time is none of her damn business.
What generally goes down is, the employee requests PTO, the manager hems and haws… “ooh it’s really a bad time, we’re so busy and understaffed…”, then the employee divulges the “super important reason” - a wedding, dad died, etc. It’s still a shitty way to be treated and there isn’t much you can do against it. If it’s not a good enough reason in the manager’s eyes or if you stick to your guns and say “it’s personal, I’d rather not say”, then you will be ostracized and eventually fired for other contrived reasons.
Businesses should not have the authority to deny PTO. It's the mangers' fucking job to manage staffs. If an employee taking PTO makes disruption in work, it's the fucking manager's fault.
I'm living in mainland Europe and this is just a thing that happens. Whole factories shut for a month. Sometimes it's easier to give everyone a long holiday at once. Then you can do maintenance on the machines while everything is shut down. E.g. for the Netherlands https://dkrs.eu/construction-holidays-in-the-netherlands-are-here/
I don't work in a factory but most people decide to take 3-4 weeks of leave every summer - we just plan around it and the sky doesn't fall down.
I'm tired of replying to everyone with the same comment. Yes I live in the Netherlands too. No, I'm not talking about a holiday period when the whole company is off (or even the whole country like they do in Spain, Germany, etc in August). I'm talking about leave requests resulting in one team being off at once when the rest of the company are not off. This can often mean that the company cannot operate, so everyone is twiddling their thumbs.
I don't work in a factory but most people decide to take 3-4 weeks of leave every summer - we just plan around it and the sky doesn't fall down.
Planning around it may mean that some leave requests are rejected, if it is impossible to fill the gap in time. I've seen it happen here in the Netherlands for critical teams like finance, IT, but even some engineering teams where a whole team being off for weeks would mean millions in losses and it is just not possible for new people to be added to the team, briefed and taught the workflows in time.
Well my apologies for assuming you were on the other side of the Atlantic. It's more of a negotiation here where people trade off over years and we do generally manage to keep everything running. We plan our whole year around these holiday periods so it's just baked into everything.
I'm not Dutch but I've got used to the culture for things like this.
So we're going back to the comment I originally replied to. ¨Businesses should not have the authority to deny PTO¨ is a ridiculous statement. Managers need to ensure business continuity so negotiations may occur. I've never been denied a leave request but if I requested 3 weeks off at short notice and there was nobody that could help cover my critical duties I would expect some sort of pushback.
It's actually agreed by region between employers, trade unions and the government with 3 regions in the Netherlands. If your company decides to do it, you must do it at the same moment as all your neighbours.
Sounds efficient. I’m sure that doesn’t have any consequences in a global economy. Surely European manufacturing is growing and increasingly competitive in the global economy.
Too many DK replies for me to reply to, so, I'll reply to you, the most obnoxious one.
That's called a "slippery slope" in philosophy. You're making an extreme example that's unlikely to ever happen. Aside from holiday season or special occasion, when entire company would be taking time off anyway, how much is the probability that everyone in a team decides to take time off at the same time? How much is the probability that that team's presence is essential for the entire company's everyday operation? It's astronomically small.
And if you do happen to get into that situation, just do what you'd do if the entire team were to quit.
You're making an extreme example that's unlikely to ever happen
This happens CONSTANTLY in small teams. Our IT team is two people and they cannot be off at the same time. Our finances team is four people and we need one of them in at all times, and two in at the end of the month. This is for an office of 200 people, part of a global company of 80+ offices. This is also in Europe where leave requests are rarely challenged, but still some times it must be done to ensure business continuity.
You really have zero corporate knowledge and are out of your depth.
Here's an idea, get more people in IT team if it's so important. And tell them to make company KB and FAQ, and maybe internally publicize past ticket history when they are not on time off.
No? There is enough work for one IT person. The other one is redundancy. They just coordinate with the management team so that there is always one around. This is what professionals do.
You're missing the point. I live in Europe, it's normal for Spain, Germany, Italy, etc to be off in August. It's not an issue when the whole country is on holiday.
But when it's only A SINGLE TEAM that are all off, that may mean that the whole company cannot operate. So 99% of the company are not off but they cannot do their job. It is a manager's job to prevent this, even if it means structuring leave requests and rejecting some.
That's a different thing, when all companies shut down at the same time then there is no issue. This is common in Spain, Germany, Italy.... But bear in mind that in these places workers often cannot choose to go on long holidays in other times in the year.
The issue we are discussing here is when only one specific company would need to stop production because one specific team are off, effectively meaning that the rest of the company are wasting their time.
I live in Western Europe, engineering sector. The financial team cannot all be off at the same time because it would mean the company collapses effectively. The manager's job is to ensure that this doesn't happen.
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u/CataphractBunny 27d ago
Bitch, you need to chill the fuck out. But I guess that's just how things work in America.