My work changed our day off policy.

[Krynj]

I work at a call center (boo) as a Kingston level 1 tech support rep (yay), and although doing tech support for Kingston is flat out awesome, they have little to no say over anything regarding schedules, pay rate, policies, etc, etc. That's all taken care of by the call center.

Well, last week the call center I work at changed it so any days we want to take off, we have to use our vacation time. And if we don't have enough vacation time to cover the shift we'd like to take off, it gets denied. Is it me, or is this just kind of crazy? I've never seen this kind of rule/policy in effect anywhere else I've worked. I'd much rather take an unpaid day off, rather than being forced to use my vacation time to do anything. Even if I request a day off 2 months in advance, if I don't have the 8 hours of vacation time to cover my shift at the time of request, it'll get denied.

But, alas, it's a decent job, and within a mile from where I live, so I can't really complain.

Has anybody else run into anything like this?

 

[compuwiz1]

What??? I don't even think that's legal. You can only work someone so many hours and you have to give them a day off. I'd check your state's department of labor and see what the rules are, then file a complaint if they are in violation. This sounds like pure shaft to me. I'm assuming they're making you work 7 days, unless you have vacation time, the way I read your post.

 

[rudeguy]

nm

 

[stonecold3169]

Seems fair to me. What you have to understand is that especially with the economy the way it is, companies need to keep payroll costs down. If the company has lets say 40 employees, they need to be assured that they can get 40 employee worths of work a week, or whatever the base operating need is. now, if a bunch of people start requesting 3 days a week off, but only some weeks, they need to hire additional people that they may or may not need to fill the gaps that you are leaving when you request off an additional day. This is all fine and good, but what happens on the weeks when nobody wants to take a 3rd day off? Now we have people we need to schedule when we dont need them, or we cut everyone's hours across the board, or we lay people off.

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: compuwiz1
What??? I don't even think that's legal. You can only work someone so many hours and you have to give them a day off. I'd check your state's department of labor and see what the rules are, then file a complaint if they are in violation. This sounds like pure shaft to me. I'm assuming they're making you work 7 days, unless you have vacation time, the way I read your post.

I read it as:

he works 5 days, accrues an hour or so of vacation time. If he puts in a request for a day off, the company checks his bank to find out if he CURRENTLY has enough time off to take it. If he does not, they deny it. Problem is, by the time the requested date comes around he would have enough time to take that off. They probably are within their legal rights on this, though it is a stupid way to treat employees.

And the company refuses to let me request an unpaid day off. Not sure what the legality of that is.

 

[MikeyIs4Dcats]

op wants to take an unpaid day instead of his vacation. not many places will do that.

 

[Geekbabe]

Do you receive benefits ? If so it goes like this.. say you're hired to work 40 hours a week.. 5 shifts with the standard 2 days off everybody gets, you also receive benefits based on those 40 hours.

If you decide you want to go away for a couple days and you work 3 days and take 2 vacation days.. that equals a 40 hour week

if you decide you want to go away but you don't have anymore vacation time it goes like this
you work 3 days.. take 2 unpaid days.. but the company is still on the hook for fulltime benefits that week.

OP be grateful.. my company is asking people to take up to 20 unpaid days off this year.

 

[amdhunter]

Originally posted by: MikeyIs4Dcats
op wants to take an unpaid day instead of his vacation. not many places will do that.

My job would, but you have to put in a lot of notice. I don't like the idea of people just taking days off and saying "don't pay me" and think that they can take it off.

 

[CPA]

unless your absence falls under FMLA, then your company doesn't have to grant you unpaid time off. What they hell would make you think it's okay?

 

[Tsaico]

OP, my current place has a policy like this, and we just adopted it also. PTO looks like for now is a thing of the past. I liked my old company's policy, we got x number of PTO, it was all lumped together, sick, vacation, personal time, whatever, and just called PTO.

If you wanted to take some time off, then you just called it in. There were some restrictions on how you could use them, but they were things like, you couldn't call in the same day and say you were taking a two week vacation. You also couldn't use more than two weeks at a time. But they also "bought" back any unused time at the end of the year.

This was to encourage us not to take vacations or the like, since if we did, the company would have to re-arrange the other sites to make sure there was enough coverage. I loved that part, it always happened two weeks before Christmas and was worth about 2.5 weeks of pay. That was great times...

As for your current spot, it sounds pretty typical to me. Hope when things get better, they give it back.

 

[MikeyIs4Dcats]

Originally posted by: Tsaico
OP, my current place has a policy like this, and we just adopted it also. PTO looks like for now is a thing of the past. I liked my old company's policy, we got x number of PTO, it was all lumped together, sick, vacation, personal time, whatever, and just called PTO.

If you wanted to take some time off, then you just called it in. There were some restrictions on how you could use them, but they were things like, you couldn't call in the same day and say you were taking a two week vacation. You also couldn't use more than two weeks at a time. But they also "bought" back any unused time at the end of the year.

This was to encourage us not to take vacations or the like, since if we did, the company would have to re-arrange the other sites to make sure there was enough coverage. I loved that part, it always happened two weeks before Christmas and was worth about 2.5 weeks of pay. That was great times...

As for your current spot, it sounds pretty typical to me. Hope when things get better, they give it back.

what you describe is normal, but not what the OP is complaining about

 

[Krynj]

I do feel grateful to have this job. I really genuinely enjoy the work. I'm not looking to be able to take days off whenever I want, I'm just kind of worried about emergencies, or other things that may take priority. I can kind of understand their reasoning behind it, it just seems a little backwards to me. Most places will let you take a day off if you request it 2 or 3 weeks ahead of time, and it's just rather strange to no longer have that option.

I don't call out or request days off very frequently. I think I've called out once in the last 5 months or so, so it's not too big of a deal, it's just something I've never seen before.

 

[MikeyIs4Dcats]

Originally posted by: FetusCakeMix
I do feel grateful to have this job. I really genuinely enjoy the work. I'm not looking to be able to take days off whenever I want, I'm just kind of worried about emergencies, or other things that may take priority. I can kind of understand their reasoning behind it, it just seems a little backwards to me. Most places will let you take a day off if you request it 2 or 3 weeks ahead of time, and it's just rather strange to no longer have that option.

I don't call out or request days off very frequently. I think I've called out once in the last 5 months or so, so it's not too big of a deal, it's just something I've never seen before.

Ask for clarification. I suspect there's a misunderstanding in requesting future time off. I don't think they can prohibit you from requesting time as long as you have the time to take when it comes time to take it. It's possible one side has misinterpreted this. They likely intend to keep you from taking any time you do not have vacation earned for. That is common. Emergencies would generally be handled as they come if you don't have time.

 

[cpacini]

Originally posted by: FetusCakeMix
I do feel grateful to have this job. I really genuinely enjoy the work. I'm not looking to be able to take days off whenever I want, I'm just kind of worried about emergencies, or other things that may take priority. I can kind of understand their reasoning behind it, it just seems a little backwards to me. Most places will let you take a day off if you request it 2 or 3 weeks ahead of time, and it's just rather strange to no longer have that option.

I don't call out or request days off very frequently. I think I've called out once in the last 5 months or so, so it's not too big of a deal, it's just something I've never seen before.

Very few companies will let you take time off, no matter how far in advance you request it, unless you have vacation, sick, personal time, etc. to cover the absence.

 

[Krynj]

Originally posted by: cpacini


Very few companies will let you take time off, no matter how far in advance you request it, unless you have vacation, sick, personal time, etc. to cover the absence.

None that I've ever worked at before. I guess if it's the norm, it's the norm.

 

[fleshconsumed]

Originally posted by: cpacini
Very few companies will let you take time off, no matter how far in advance you request it, unless you have vacation, sick, personal time, etc. to cover the absence.

Guess I'm lucky, I can take all of my vacation days right at the beginning of the year, before they had a chance to really accrue. The deal is of course if I use them all at the beginning of the year I obviously can't take anymore later and if I get fired/laid off/leave for another job any days that did not accrue will get subtracted from my final paycheck. That's a reasonable policy IMO.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Originally posted by: FetusCakeMix
I work at a call center (boo) as a Kingston level 1 tech support rep (yay), and although doing tech support for Kingston is flat out awesome, they have little to no say over anything regarding schedules, pay rate, policies, etc, etc. That's all taken care of by the call center.

Well, last week the call center I work at changed it so any days we want to take off, we have to use our vacation time. And if we don't have enough vacation time to cover the shift we'd like to take off, it gets denied. Is it me, or is this just kind of crazy? I've never seen this kind of rule/policy in effect anywhere else I've worked. I'd much rather take an unpaid day off, rather than being forced to use my vacation time to do anything. Even if I request a day off 2 months in advance, if I don't have the 8 hours of vacation time to cover my shift at the time of request, it'll get denied.

But, alas, it's a decent job, and within a mile from where I live, so I can't really complain.

Has anybody else run into anything like this?

Remember, your mental health is also important!