Would you do something like this? Boss denies PTO time to two employees who have tickets for a concert, as this boss and another employee are going to be off that same day – FAIL Blog

Maybe you just need to ask sooner…

In the corporate world, you will hear a lot of sayings for different things, and one of them is “first come, first served”. You are going to hear it when you get to the communal kitchen and every fork has been taken, when you get a more annoying task than the older employees, and ESPECIALLY when you want to ask for PTO time. For the time off, companies usually give priority to the employees who have been at the company for longer, but sometimes they do seem to treat everybody the same and just give it to the person who asked first. That seems far more fair, as everyone is now entitled to those days if they organize fast enough.

When in the story below we encounter this situation of multiple employees wanting the same day off, here is where the saying we previously mentioned has to become a rule. Is obvious that a small company wouldn’t accept multiple employees gone at the same time, especially if they are from the same area or store. So when these two employees started requesting the day that already two other employees had asked for, my answer became obvious. If I were the manager in this situation, I would have simply said no. They can’t take the day off because other people asked for it first. Next time, manage your time beforehand so we can avoid this situation.

The fact that those employees who were denied the PTO said aloud that if they didn’t get it they would just call off is so dumb. Why would you say something like that? Don’t you realize it can get you fired? Some people… What also got to me was that this manager really tried getting them the time to go to the concert. This person worked out a plan where they would be able to come work, go to the concert, rest after it, and come back the next day, and they said no. This boss had no business working this hard for people who weren’t organized enough. I get the fact that they wanted the free day, but it’s not possible, so work with what you got. Especially if one of them wasn’t even allowed to take time off yet.