- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
The US is wild.
You call yourselves the land of the free, but have to beg your boss to let you have time off that’s owed.
That was a typo, it’s actually the Land of the Fee
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It’s a marketing ploy. Not an actual policy.
Land of the free*
*Terms and conditions may apply
*While supply lasts.
*Offer valid only between Saturday 11:59:59.999999pm and Sunday 12:00:00am.
Too many of us are still awake then. It’s the millionth of a second before 3am.
To be fair, having the government mandate how much time you get off for working 40 hours a week is kind of just codifying the indentured servitude you’re under.
Wow. I’ve seen some shit takes around here, but that one is just outta pocket, you’re gonna have to explain that one
On the same take, we used to get 15min breaks every 2 or 3 hours. Then the government wrote laws that said we had to get at least 10min breaks every 4 hours. So now we get less because you will only ever get the minimum.
We get less breaks and they have to be shorter than what the average was before.
I’m not against labor laws, but I’ve been working nearly four decades now and I’m still getting bent over every opportunity.
To be fair, I’m not defending having to beg your boss for time off.
In our world we have a simple choice: work for whoever will hire you, or starve and die on the streets. Barring random and uncontrollable acts of charity or the extremely fortunate situation in which you work for yourself.
Now we could go back and forth on where on the spectrum of “you would be working all day miserably farming if it weren’t for your job” and “you should feel blessed to die of black lung in the coal mines cause at least you got to work” we both lie. But, in a society where the majority of work involves “work or die”, our promises to our bosses are very short periods of indentured servitude in a very hyperbolic sense.
Sure, you can quit at any time only to find another job or be taken to jail (we could go into the criminalization of homelessness), but for most people, you’re working for life.
So to say that the government (or employment contract) mandating that you’re owed days of vacation is an expression of freedom is a far cry from my definition of freedom.
I was certainly being glib and hyperbolic tho
What are you talking about? If the government didn’t require paid leave, you might get … none of it! So the mandate actually makes you … checks notes … less controlled.
That’s only the minimum of paid time off though, and how many hours of a week you work is determined between you and your employer in the form of a contract. If you think that this is indentured servitude, to the state which provides you with taxes and services, then I really don’t know on which planet and or reality you live in.
Watch out guys, we have a Temporarily Embarrased Billionare™ in the comment section.
Some people do but as I said in another comment, I’m informing them not asking.
Exactly. It’s not a request, it’s information.
US labor Laws suck shit compared to the rest of the 1st World.
*compared to the 1st World
I got fired from a job because I took my already approved time off and told them I literally couldn’t come in when they called me the day my PTO started, because I was already out of state.
Pretty sure that’s wrongful termination
You can be fired for almost anything.
They just may have to pay unemployment.
Yeah, but it can be in direct retalliation, it must be based on work performance. Normally the former is hard to prove, but sometimes it’s obvious.
That’s simply not accurate in 49 out of 50 states.
Basically, you can be fired for any reason aside from membership in a protected class.
But if you are terminated without cause, you can collect unemployment, which the further employer is required to pay.
They did have to pay unemployment, but they tried really hard to discourage me from seeking it, saying I likely wasn’t even eligible for it and not to even bother filing.
Wow, that’s shitty of them… Like, what do you even lose for trying? They knew they were going to have to pay up if you applied, those bastards were trying to gaslight you.
I hate corpos so damned much
Lovely. This one weird trick saves thousands and only costs people who don’t matter.
There are still limits, even in at will and right to work states there are some protections.
Revoking approved time off after it’s already started is definitely a valid reason for a wrongful termination lawsuit. Especially if you have evidence of previous bullshit.
That’s why you should always get everything that seems even remotely bullshit in writing, and have your own backups.
Any time someone is terminated without cause, the employer simply doesn’t provide a reason for termination. They’re not required to.
Not telling someone why you are firing them isn’t a magical lawsuit avoidance option. In a wrongful termination lawsuit, the courts take context into account specifically because of shitty companies/managers trying to hide behind exactly that.
Just because they don’t give the reason doesn’t mean the reason can’t be proven.
You can’t be fired for unlawful reasons. Being fired for taking an agreed upon vacation is illegal retaliation.
They just lie about it. You get your unemployment granted. Especially in the shittiest jobs this is how it goes.
Sounds like you haven’t been in the American work force.
They can fire you for any reason. Or no reason. Nothing matters because if you’re a wage slave nobody cares.
Plus they probably made you sign a waiver to work there saying that you couldn’t ever sue them for any reason.
They can fire you for any reason. Or no reason.
They cannot legally fire you for any reason, though yes, they can fire you for no reason. The distinction often doesn’t matter, but sometimes they’re stupid enough to put the illegal reason in writing
Been in this position before - fuck your job and live your life. If they were such dicks about it then do you REALLY wanna work there anyways?
stomach rumbles
Well if you don’t then you don’t have health insurance or money to buy food.
That’s the gamble you take. Hopefully you’d have some money saved up before doing it, of course!
You get health insurance?
I get mine through the state cause im autistic and poor.
There are plenty of places where they don’t lie to you about PTO benefits, pay, and have some group insurance plan/program.
Get with the program. We’re here to whine about capitalism and how we have no choices. God forbid anyone fight back, use capitalism against them.
“They gave me a shit raise!” Or none at all.
OK. Found another job paying 30% more.
“They turned down my PTO!”
OK. Found another job paying double, in salary and benefits.
FFS, these idiot employers are paying you to gain experience and pack your resume. Fuck them over. I know a dude that job hopped from changing oil to $120K in 8 years. I hopped from $10 to $33, with fat benefits and PTO in the same time. Turns out you have to be competent and work hard.
Learned helplessness occurs when an individual continuously faces a negative, uncontrollable situation and stops trying to change their circumstances, even when they have the ability to do so.
…and when their social media enforces their helplessness.
Are you really arguing that hard work gets you good jobs and good pay in the United States?
Of course? And even if you only move laterally, you can still ditch the asshole employers.
Please, keep telling yourself it’s hopeless. Curl into a ball and cry. Less competition for me.
I mean, to some degree it actually does. Sure life isn’t fair, you can do right and still fail and such, but overall, if you play your cards right and make sure to learn and present yourself well you can absolutely build a resume and job hop up the career and economic ladder.
Hell I’ve even had the displeasure of working with someone who literally only had interview and resume skills who appeared to simply job hop as soon as a job caught on that he didn’t have any of the skills his resume indicated he had and found the legal path to firing him
Just listen to yourself. You’re in a social stratification that has blinded you. You’re using english about work in a way that is incomprehensible to the average person in the US.
Even your triumphant story of getting someone fired because they lied on their resume stinks of privilege.
Trust me, you’re much closer to us laborers than you are to your rich-ass owners, and they’ll flick you off their boots like a fly.
Bro who hurt you?
In Japan, by law it is a declaration. You use paid leave, you do not ask to use it.
That depends entirely on your job:
High court rules vital Shinkansen drivers can’t dictate days off
America’s Supreme court ain’t the only shitty one lately 😩
Sounds to me that there wasn’t anyone or atlesst not enough drivers for the Shinkansen, so it make totally sense in my eyes that the employer had to fix the schedules when it’s employees weren’t able to do so themselves.
Rare exceptions are interesting,and the law still applies to nearly everyone nearly all the time.
I still remember putting in vacation at my first job, three months in advance and they still said “well it’s your job to make sure your shifts are covered”. Fuck you, Karen, you make the damn schedule one month at a time, just don’t put me on it that week.
If it’s the employees job to manage themselves, then they should all be promoted to manager.
Drag isn’t joking. Drag has worked at a company where things were done like that. It wasn’t perfect but it was better than the American model.
I appreciate the bit where you talk in third person, but I feel like you could do something better
Drag doesn’t talk in third person. Drag uses drag/dragself person independent pronouns.
“doesn’t” and “uses” are third person.
Conjugation depends on the individual pronoun, not on the grammatical structure. English isn’t Latin. A lot of people complained about singular they/them because of the conjugation, but we moved past that misunderstanding a decade ago.
If conjugation depends on the individual pronoun, the pronoun you used was third person since that’s the conjugation you used. They/them is also third person and singular and plural are conjugated the same, so the comparison doesn’t apply.
To be clear, please use any and all pronouns you’re comfortable with. But don’t write a third person sentence and insist it’s first person.
Conjugation doesn’t depend on the grammatical structure. Not directly, and not through the pronoun. Drag will prove it: they/them and you/you use the same conjugation, but are in different persons. You don’t think “they” is a second person pronoun, do you?
This is an incredibly stupid social experiment
Nah, but your urge to police it is interesting
Are they policing it? I haven’t seen a single unarmed person get shot yet.
Haha but also yes still cop-in-head behaviour
Sounds kinda like a co-op, is there a difference?
Yeah, there was a big boss we all answered to. He just trusted us to manage ourselves instead of dedicating any employees to management. We had HR and Payroll, but they didn’t tell us what to do.
Drag is lead to understand Valve uses a similar structure.
How many coworkers beat the shit out of you for trying to make them call you “drag”?
You are awfully upset about someone just existing where you happened to look. Have you tried looking into why the harmless way drag refers to dragself makes you immediately daydream about violence? That’s not healthy.
Have you tried looking into why the
Cool, someone playing Freud over a single comment.
harmless way drag refers to dragself
Fucking lol @ someone either trolling or dumb enough to fall for the trolling.
makes you immediately daydream about violence?
Pretty obvious my point was that this is the shit that bullies get erect about. I would never ever willingly talk to someone so offputting, let alone be violent toward them.
Drag doesn’t really fit you. Let’s try something else. How about…Coco?! Yeah you seem like a Coco. Anyone else agree?
The shirking of responsibility gets me every time cause like if the manager doesent do that then what DO they do?
Seriously. You aren’t really managing your employees if they have to organize resource shortages for you. At my job, I tell my colleagues to just take time off and, like me, list a few close co-workers as people to contact in case of emergencies in their OOO reply. Nothing is life-or-death, so people can deal with waiting. It’s not like anyone is taking off months straight.
It’s rediculous how retail jobs put you through the ringer if you dare to try to stay home while too sick to work (and basically punish you for doing the right thing and calling to notify them you won’t be in and why) but then you get into a professional job and you can sometimes simply not show up and tell nobody and be fine
Should have replied “it is your obligation to give me HR paycheck”
Well Shane, I wasn’t asking, I was informing you of some time off.
I don’t understand this.
I have Canada and USA coworkers and when they ask for time off approval, they usually get it according to a per team schedule.
We know what quarters are going to be the busiest before hand so everyone is encouraged to take time off when it is less demanding.
You can also take time off in busiest times.
In both cases, you are asked to request anyone from your team to backup you up (obviously available when you are not)
I think many people (me included) feel that it shouldn’t be the employee’s responsibility to find shift coverage.
Agreed. It would make sense to me if managing schedules was a job for the manager.
Are you paid to do scheduling? What if coworkers say no? … Those are two serious potential problems.
No, nothing of the sorts.
As part of the team we all know, usually, the details of the projects we are working on, details that we cannot expect a manager to follow or know for each project, because there are a lot of details and many projects. A lot of them overlap in discovery, development, execution and deployment and also have different priorities.
And it is my understanding that managers also need to prioritize given sudden issues, emergency requests, and so on.
Anyways, with that info, we can decide who is the best fit for it given the experience they have had or not with specific projects.
Also it is usually not that hard.
You don’t get a backup 2 days before your time off, indeed, more often than not, it is asked with a lot of anticipation.
Also, most of the time when you go on time off, you are encouraged to have all of your projects deliverables ready for when you are out.
That way, your teammates doing the backup are just checking in on the project and available for general questions.
Personally, I like to leave documentation as well for my backups so they know what to expect. It’s not strange to have changes that imply more work for the backup so the extra context helps a lot.
Right. If everyone is super supportive and there are never emergencies or vacation scheduling conflicts, this all works. And the rest of the time, you end up having to deal with bullshit that the bosses should be handling. And hey, if your workplace is magically different from most others, and nothing ever gets funky, great!
United Healthcare workers:
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My thoughts as well. “Lol go ahead and fire me? Either I’ll just take another wage slave job or realize that you really fucking need my labor. Either way, two scenarios I can risk myself being in”
I also realize this is a very privileged position to have. Because I’m in such a position, I can be truer to my moral compass and values. Behaving in ways that enrich myself at the expense of others wellbeing would be extremely selfish since I can actually choose not to be selfish and still live a relatively privileged lifestyle.
Just kind of wanting to let people know that even in the fairly upper echelons of social status, there are those who fucking hate the system. I’m economically satisfied, but I’m incredibly deprived of human experience and brotherhood.
The few organizations and groups I’ve been in that had real class consciousness were the most alive and joyous I’ve ever felt, even though at the time I was dirt shit poor. I would give anything to go back to those times. And I am now realizing this wish of mine isn’t fantasy. Enough human courage and anything is possible.
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Anyways, muted the willfully arrogant user.
So my comment was meant to be a shared experience of struggle that others could hopefully relate to in solidarity. Not an opinion or argument. That may not have been clear from my comment.
There’s nothing privileged about quitting a job.
I would 100% disagree with your statement here. There absolutely is privilege in being able to quit a job for some other argument than “I fucking need the money to feed my family this week”
Maybe you have never been in such a situation? I have, and I’ll tell you that it fucking sucks. Having to choose between moral values you hold very close to heart and risking not having a paycheck to care for a number of dependents is not a decision that any person should be forced to make.
The rest of your comment follows from the assumption of a misunderstood conclusion of mine, so I will stop here. Don’t mind clarifying anything though.
Edit: Also, what does “muting thread” mean? Is that “adult speak” for “I don’t wanna talk to you anymore”?
Beppo make Earth proud?
Had a friend who pretty much did that, she came back to no job and went from making $65k+ with 4 weeks off a year to making minimum wage with 2 weeks off a year… She lost the means to travel in the future in order to travel one extra week that year…
Guess that first job was still worse to work at.
What is the point of having 4 weeks off if you can’t take them up on it? Might as well not exist.
So 2 weeks > 0 weeks
Why do you assume we couldn’t take them exactly? With our weird schedules I would end up getting 10 weeks off every year working for the same employer.
She just decided to leave, called after the fact, was told that the quota was full for that week and she said “Well, it’s too late, I’m halfway across the world!”
Lol thattts a very different story now. “I decided not to show up, I’m on vacation for a week as of today without notice” is a shit move and not just to the employer. “I’m on an airplane cause grandma died”, or “I’m in the hospital” – nothing wrong. “I decided to go to Tijuana see you bitches in a week” – I honestly don’t blame them for firing her.
This is not the implication of the op
If your PTO can be denied you never had the means to travel in the first place.
Or maybe some people need to recognize that for regular vacations (i.e. not unpredictable occurrences like a sudden death) their employer needs to make sure there’s a minimum number of employees working so it’s something that needs to be arranged with them.
And then there are also a lot of cases where it went the opposite way…
It is up to the employer to make sure to hire enough employees to do the job.
Not on the employees.
There is always a chance that an employee can’t make it for whatever reason. If your business fails because of that, it shouldn’t exist anyway.
Then it’s a crap job. Or there were other times she did it too many times. If it’s just once and you have it planned and paid, the job should work with you somehow. If it’s every other week that’s a different story.
Oh yeah, it was a pattern with her but even then, just leaving without warning the boss so they don’t have the chance to find someone to take over? That’s a perfectly fine reason to fire someone even with strong labor laws like we have around here. Hell, even the union didn’t want to touch that case with a 10’ pole.
Right but you should have said that first. The point of the post is not specifically to blindside your employer, IMO.
As I said, it doesn’t need to be a pattern for it to be a valid reason to fire an employee, you’re going AWOL.
The reason she was fired was not because she took time off, but because she didn’t disclose her time off.
Big difference.
Correct, she up and left on a last minute trip and asked for time to off after the fact, was told it was impossible to make things fit in the quota and she said it was impossible for her to go to work since she was thousands of kilometres away.
The person you’re responding to is trying really hard to get you to understand that your story makes no sense in the context of this thread. As written, it sounds like she asked for time off and was denied. In fact, as you’ve said, she went awol and asked for forgiveness…which she did not get. That isn’t the point of this thread, which makes the very similar story confusing to seemingly everyone.
Look at the image again and work on that reading comprehension.
Let’s check with the expert
@[email protected] did you mean that you literally fired off a vacation request as you were boarding the plane and it was denied, and you said fuckit. or was this a more general rage against the machine post indicating a general dislike of the concept that managers even have the ability to deny vacation requests. That is, a shitpost not intended to be taken literally.
Inquiring minds want to know.
You can’t accept me using the time I’ve earned? Should I get approval for how I spend my paycheck too?
It wasn’t a request, I was letting you know so you can plan. See you when I get back.
Told them I would be in hospital, had it denied
Was in hospital anyway
That’s illegal, you are guaranteed at least two weeks of (unpaid) medical leave whether yoou’re the King or a city street sweeper.
Poor ILikeBoobies
Unpaid? What country are you from? Zimbabwe?
I’m still amazed that people just accept this.
What happens, if you are ill for a longer? You can’t just work ethic an illness away.
And it’s also stupid from the company’s perspective. If someone has the flu and you have them come in - well - everyone will be sick and everyones performance will suffer.
Who thought this is acceptable, let alone a good idea?
And it’s also stupid from the company’s perspective. If someone has the flu and you have them come in - well - everyone will be sick and everyones performance will suffer.
You underestimate capitalism