The two-hour limit is really the cherry on top. Time-sensitive tasks, volumes that flip by the hour, a boss who literally cannot cover anything. That is not a job description. That is a permanent emergency with a salary attached. And the person keeping it all from collapsing is being told to check back in July about maybe getting a Wednesday off.
Loyalty is a great quality to bring to work. It also runs out. Five years of genuinely caring about a company that responds to a two-day vacation request with logistical uncertainty is not a partnership anymore. At some point that gap between what someone gives and what they get back stops being a temporary rough patch and starts being the actual arrangement.
The most useful thing someone in this spot can do is start treating their own availability with the same urgency the company treats its deadlines. Funny how fast things get figured out when the one person holding everything together stops being quite so easy to take for granted.
Author: Kayitsi.com
