3w ago

The audacity

205 comments

Let me clarify: the business didn't need the employee to be there, it needed the employee to be pliable.
- Also, in this case: the business = the boss
- A stupid question but what does that mean?
  
  Easily influenced, persuaded, or controlled.
  "replaced the complainer with a more pliable subordinate."
  
  It needed the employee to bend to its arbitrary will. Company was on a power trip.

Imagine posting this like it's something to be proud of.
- You'll love hearing about LinkedIn...
  
  I keep my LinkedIn time laser-focused on job searching because of this shit.
- !linkedinlunatics@sh.itjust.works
  
  You missed the !: !linkedinlunatics@sh.itjust.works

In the first world, we have employee protections that mean that a) pulling stuff like this in the first place is illegal and that b) bragging about it on social media means that when you get dragged in front of an employment relations tribunal, your lawyer caves their forehead in with their palm and tells you that you owe back pay and penalties
- Daily reminder that the US is a shit hole country.
  
  The US will do anything but socialism
  
  Daily? I get that reminder every hour. Step up your game.... 😭
- In the first world, we might have protections against firing but companies can deny vacation day requests for project reasons and if you don't go to work you will have consequences, legally.
  
  That's the point where you call in sick and stay home anyways. Can get fired for not coming to work, can't get fired for being sick
- Is the US second world then?

I literally told my employees back in the day that if for any reason a request was denied, just don't show up anyway. I also never asked for a reason for the request. The building won't burn down if you aren't here. Just keep in mind that someone has to pick up the slack and pay it forward.
My direct boss always wondered why employees would come in on off days to cover shifts when I was there, but not him. Don't be an ass, treat employees with respect, and surprise, surprise, people actually want to work.
- Reminds me of my former employer. Would always give us time off when we requested it. Was always understanding if we needed time away or had issues going on that impacted us work. When I gave my 2 weeks notice I told him to call me if he needed cover as I knew him and his wife were going on holiday soon (the guy almost never takes proper time off). Nearly a month later he calls and mentioned one of his newer employees was out sick. Very enthusiastically agreed to come back for a week to cover them as I had started my own business. Lovely people and would always cover a skip like that in a heart beat. They’re few and far between.

Normalize punching bad bosses in the nuts.
- Instead of physical violence, leave a Google review and spill beans.
  
  I had a prior employer who got some of those well deserved negative reviews, from employees. Google swears they can’t pay to take them down, but the ToS is so slanted towards their customer (the business paying AdSense fees) it’s exactly that just with more steps.
  Once they nuked the bad reviews, a manager came around for a ‘friendly chat’ with individuals about how great it’d be for them to use their personal login and ~~write~~ leave a review - wink wink.
  
  Where do I spill the beans? Is their desk drawers an acceptable place?
  
  Coward
- My God, not a single negative review at the time of writing this. Perhaps we should rethink ~~office politics~~ combatative hierarchical structures.

I dunno who needs to hear this but, they need us more than we need them.
They keep trying to flex and act like they're in charge of everything because they sign the paychecks, the fact of the matter is that the money they give you is a paltry amount compared to what they're making from your labor. If you don't do the work, they won't make any money at all. Sure as shit the business owner isn't going to step up to do your job.
They need you. They want to convince you that you need them. They want to take your power away from you.
Employment is a two-way street. Anyone who will treat you like trash isn't worthy of your sweat.
- This is true, but you can only grab hold of that power collectively. There is no way to pull on this lever solo.
  
  Sometimes you can, but it's rare.
  Collective action and unions are the way for 99.9%
  The 0.1% know who they are, and they're happy to throw their weight around. When the company pushes back and gets rid of them, they often end up bringing that person back as a consultant because they really cannot survive without their help
- Your uninformed (or hopeful) if you think big businesses make money from labor. A lot of it is from capital, investments or rent.
  E.g. McDonald's profits are mostly from rent.
  
  And Hollywood profits aren't from movies, honestly you've fallen for basic accounting tricks..
  A franchise that doesn't make money devalues the retail space. McDonald's model links rents to sales so they take maximum value at all times.
  Royalty fee: 4% of gross revenues
  Brand marketing and promotion fee: 4% of gross revenues
  Location rent: Unlike most other franchises, McDonald’s owns the land and buildings at its locations and franchisees pay rent that can be based on a percentage of sales or as a fixed amount. Percentage rents are 31.75% of sales. Fixed rents are typically £100,000 to £225,000 per month.
  So Corporately it looks like they make their money from rent. But that rent is directly linked to sales and labour in most cases.
  Without sales they don't get rent unless they've agreed a fixed rent and that's increasingly rare. Usually only the highest value sites.
  The real estate value of the property is linked to business revenue as well. If a franchise fails and doesn't get another investor then the empty building is worth a lot less.
  By picking McDonald's you're actually about as wrong as possible. Everything of value is linked back to labour, even the value of the land.
  It might work differently in other countries but I doubt it. Economics work the same everywhere and McDonalds didn't like to standardise when they find a winning model for themselves.
  
  Labor existed before capital. Capital cannot exist without labor. Labor can exist without capital.
  
  Capitalism's value and money is based on your labor, that's it, that's the foundation for all of it including rent.
  
  McDonald's franchises can't pay rent without that business making money. It's labor at the end of the day. Always is. Always has been. Always will be.
  
  I get what you're saying here. McDonald's, the franchiser, makes money on rent. But they're renting to McDonald's franchisee's (at least in part, likely a majority of it). Even if they're renting out to third parties, those third parties are making money largely from service, which is rendered via labor.
  So the service is performed by labor, and the service makes the revenue to pay the rent and pay the labor, QED, rent is paid by labor.
  McDonald's franchisee's are paying their rent with labor. It's not like the franchise is getting fully assembled big Macs delivered. The labor needs to assemble the parts to make the whole.
  Without labor, they would have no product to sell, since it's not feasible to cut out the on site assembly of the food while keeping it as fresh as it is.
  Yes, a nontrivial part of revenue is in materials, and there's a mark up on the sale of those materials when sold, but the majority of cost is for the labor of putting everything together.
  On top of this, there's plenty of non-McDonald's examples of the same. I work in IT support, almost all of my work is service, where I go in, either in person or remotely, and perform corrections to get things working normally. There's plenty of industries that have similar models, where there's little to no production of things that you're paying for, and the vast majority of the payment is for labor.
  Finance, tax prep, handymen, carpenters, welders, programmers, factory workers, delivery drivers.... The lion share of revenue is directly from labor.
  With food service costs are generally split between labor and materials, since the raw materials can be rather costly, but for many other workforces, labor is the main revenue.
  
  McDonald’s profits are mostly from rent.
  rent on what?
  Come on, follow through. Don't leave the equation partially finished. Rent on what?
  RENT ON FUCKING MC'DICKOLDS FRANCHISES. Not rent on Toy R Us, not rent on Starbucks, it's rent on MICKY-DEEZNUTS FRANCHISES MATE.
  Cute thou.

Any manager who talks about work like that in public isn’t a manager of any high caliber.
Probably just a gas station manager or some shit
- My money is on he's not a manager of any kind but a stupid troll

I had something similar happen once when I was a teenager, working McDonald's. Keep in mind, is not PTO it's just 'don't schedule me these days'. Handed my request to a manager like a month in advance. Before I went in the family vacation, double checked everything was fine. When I got back from vacation, went to work to get the next schedule only to get stopped and informed I was fired for 'no call no show'.
The one manager that didn't like me for some reason (honestly don't know why) had changed the schedule to explicitly get me fired. The manager I handed my request to was there and even said she remembered my request and putting it in the books but claimed there was nothing they could do.
Technically, I've been fired twice from McDonald's (second time was years later at a different McDonald's and basically the owner thought my hair was too long and I had 'girls hair'). So I cut McDonald's out of my life a long time ago. And it brings me great joy every time I read about McDonald's having financial problems or people not going there as much as they used to. I hope I live long enough to see McDonald's file for bankruptcy. And all the managers that wronged me, I've never forgotten. I wish them nothing but unhappiness and misfortune for all their days.
- And all the managers that wronged me, I’ve never forgotten. I wish them nothing but unhappiness and misfortune for all their days.
  seems like you already won tho. You left. They stayed.
  
  Yeah OP’s definitely winning with that lifetime of bitterness
- We may have worked at the same shitty McDonald's as teens lmao. I once requested off one single day several weeks in advance, because I had some school trip that day and wouldn't be in the state. A week from the trip I looked at the schedule and saw I was scheduled for that day, even though I had it approved weeks earlier. I asked my manager about it and made it very clear that I would not be able to come to work that day. They told me I needed to find a replacement or I'd get a "point" or whatever they did to keep track of people's "fuck-ups". I told the manager that I didn't have a way to contact any of the other people that worked at that McDonald's because I had just started working there and didn't have any of their numbers. The manager went and printed out a spreadsheet of every employee that worked at that location and their phone numbers (probably without their consent), and I called every single person on that list. There were probably close to a hundred names (I think it was a list of literally every person who had ever worked at that location, past or present), but no one was available to cover my shift. Trip day comes, I got a point, and then was "quiet fired" a couple months later when they just stopped putting me on the schedule (except for after I submitted a two weeks notice, where they scheduled me for an 8 hour shift on my last day 🙃). I too have avoided McDonald's ever since then.
- Yeah, the McRib is back tho.
- Oh McDonald's can go dying a ditch but just so you know they're a franchise. Kind of surprised you worked two different ones and didn't realize that

“For the needs of the business” to feel powerful.
- This. The only "need" for the business being satisfied is that one manager's "need" to hear his own voice and to lord power over someone. And such managers are the ones whom, if I were in charge of the business, I'd make redundant in a heartbeat.
- You guys all feel this way, but when 6/10 ppl request off the day before thx giving or something what are managers supposed to do? Just close up shop?
  
  Well definitely firing somebody should help your staffing problems.
  A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
  
  I mean, yeah. Unless this is a critical business, like emergency services, then... Oh no, we can't make someone's bullshit for another day or two? The fucking HUMANITY. Won't anyone think of the bottom line???
  
  Sure, if it's a nonessential business.
  
  Exactly

I got fired as a teenager for visiting my late grandfather on his deathbed. I was fired within a few days of his death.
- I think there's probably a lot of context you're leaving out
  
  This is one of those times not much additional context is needed.
  
  Oh no. The poor company has a side in this story too. Won't someone hear out the company?
  
  You know a better approach to your theory might have been to ask op if they were an otherwise model employee, or if there were any other circumstances that may have added to this one incident to account for being sacked. Or perhaps query what aort of job it was. If it was a supermarket job, or a paper round or something basic like that then perhaps the staff turnover is great anyway and something like visiting a dying relative is a drop in the ocean of the reasons someone may lose that job.
  I just think that being presumptuous and condescending might be the reason so many dislike your comment.
  Just my opinion though.
  
  I think you have a favorite flavor of boot polish.

At work right now they're denying all the new vacation requests because we've got to make a bunch of products for customer. But they at least told us when the order was placed, so everybody took a vacation before the rush or planned one afterwards.
- That is good management and good team mentality.
  
  It sounds like poor planning on behalf of management to me. Unless you work in some kind of micro enterprise with <5 employees, good planning should leave sufficient capacity to enable at least some vacation time to continue.

I've managed people for 20 years, and I've never denied a PTO request. The business has never collapsed because of that.
- We have Dec 24th and 25th off this year. My entire team requested Monday, Dec 23rd off. I denied all of them (after securing it as a paid holiday).

"no one wants to work" [for dicks].

hired somewhere else a week later
They forget, they're as disposable as we are.
- At a better job with a higher wage.
  
  If it was a better job with a better wage I'd already be at that job. I wouldn't wait for some manufactured conflict to occur between me and the manager. I'd just go.
- Easy go, easy come!

To be clear, the employer loses on the unemployment claim with this one without a big packet of documentation.

Sad. Reads like they needed a warm body but it didn't much matter who

Can somebody explain "y'all can front if y'all want"?
edit: thanks for the replies. The differences in interpretations make me wonder why people don't just say "bluff" or "challenge me" or whatever the boss actually did mean to say. It seems like inventing slang has really accelerated in the last say 20 years. I hear so many more slang terms now. It's like everybody wants to make up their own language. Seems like non-inclusive behavior to me.
- "Rebell at your own demise"
  To front someone is to face them, to challenge them. This basically said "you challenge me to fire you? Challenge accepted."
  
  I thought it was about 'putting up a front', trying to act tough without expecting blowback.
- Others mentioned front is slang. Easiest definition is just a bluff. "Yall can bluff if yall want," because they called the bluff
- Pretty sure it's short for confront, at least that's how it's commonly used.

I think "the needs of the business" include firing managers who make stupid decisions.

Fuck that. At my job we don't deny vacations. We make sure that no one is too important to take a vacation. Simple. Plus we let people known, "your PTO is yours, you figure out when to take it"
If the company is hurting, the CEO asks kindly during our all hands to take PTO if you can to help the company not acres during the tough period.
- I can't quite figure out what the last sentence is supposed to be...
  
  It be do like that

lol there's no way the poster actually fired anyone. If there's one thing I've learned its that most business don't like to fire people, its too expensive. They just talk a big game, do write-ups and generally try to use passive-aggression to present an air of "you're on thin ice!" Odds are, if your employer needs you THAT badly to work your shifts, they're not gonna want to train an all new person to replace you.
- He didn't have to "fire" him, if they were scheduled and didn't show up repeatedly, it would be considered voluntary quitting.
  
  In right to work states 3 consecutive days of no show no call is legally considered job abandonment and therefore you "quit" without notice. So in the case of a workplace choosing to ignore someone's clearly communicated vacation it makes it very easy to book them as having "quit"
- The company I work for decided one day that we absolutely had to use a script when talking to customers. I don't, I just ignored them because we didn't used to have to have a script so why is it suddenly requirement now.
  Every time they hear you not using the script they write you up, which essentially just amounts to them writing down this person is not doing what I want. Signing it and making you sign it as if that's some kind of contract you've entered into and then nothing happens.

I had an employer do this to me. I requested to use most of my two weeks vacation time in one vacation. They declined it, telling me that it should be used for 3 and 4 day weekend trips on occasion, and not all at once. Then they were shocked that I didn't cancel my vacation.
- Damn. Where Im at, there is a law requiring businesses allow two weeks back to back vacation each year.

My PTO notices are not a request. The "business" may request that I change my plans and I'll consider it but my PTO notices ARE NOT a requests.

Apparently the work needs slaves.
- Being denied PTO on a specific day and slavery are not the same. Source: California just voted to continue enslaving people, PTO was not brought up.

"The business needs you here, so I am going to fire you"
Fool played himself and cant even see the humilation

When I was a supervisor I had to reject a ton of PTO requests because we only had so many slots available in a day and our scheduling lady wouldn't work with me AT ALL. The only thing I could tell them was they can switch shifts with one of their coworkers or "You, know, you only have x points against your attendance and consecutive days off still only count as 1....". We had a lot more missed days due to people taking full advantage of the attendance policy than we would if we'd just scheduled them off the day they asked for. One of many reasons I got out of that job asap.

Notice that they don’t mention WHAT the request was for? My money is on a funeral.
- It's irrelevant what it was for, it's your paid time off, it's a part of your salary. America is soooooooo fucked, I'm so glad I don't have to deal with the bullshit I see here daily.

It might be that the business had some delivery date for some product and really needed to manpower to do it. Once that manpower failed they renegotiated a new delivery date at a loss, and could make do with less employees until they hire more, so the employee's presence was not so urgent anymore, and, since they didn't deliver when necessary, were fired.
I see no hypocrisy here. The owner might be a scumbag for reaching that conclusion but they are no hypocrite for firing them.
Edit: Y'all seem quite pissed with my conditional read of the post, but sure as hell agreed with the other side since the most upvoted comment is calling the boss a hypocrite. Idk man, if you are going to entertain one interpretation of the story but refuse the other one, you are kind of a hypocrite.
- They are no hypocrite for firing them assuming your fantasy scenario is reality
  
  Fantasy scenario? have you even worked in consulting and project deadlines? It's my everyday life.
  In any case, let it be clear that the boss is a piece of shit and that although consequences should be in place, firing is way overboard. I'm just being a tad pedantic and saying that no, they are not a hypocrite necessarily.
- And Occam's Razor pretty easily lets us throw out this line of reasoning, absent any further information.
  The facts we know are:
  Employee put in a PTO request
  Employer denies it
  Employee takes PTO day anyway
  Employer fires employee
  Employer makes post referenced in OP.
  Occam's Razor states that, when two or more scenarios are equally likely, the one that makes fewer assumptions is the more likely one. It certainly seems like the gymnastics required to reach the scenario you presented requires a lot more assumptions (active project, able to move deadline, proper communication was given to the employee) than the scenario most people here have gone with - assuming the boss is a bad boss, and fired the employee out of retribution.
  So yeah, I think most people are gonna land on "the boss is the asshole" barring motivated reasoning, like enjoying boot leather.
- It might be that the employee was a dishwasher.

Have to make an example.
- /s needed
  
  Not really. Shitty bosses see it this way unironically.

As they should... What's the alternative here? Let the company's schedule be determined by sporadic PTO usage that they are expected to have no control over?
- How do those boots taste? Jesus Christ!
  I’m happy that in my country we have employment laws and shit like this wouldn’t fly. I put in PTO requests to use my 25 days paid leave they’re always accepted because I don’t work for fucking ghouls.
  My company understands that I provide my skills and time in exchange for money and they’re not more important than the individuals that work there. They also realise that a good work life balance is better for employee retention and happiness, meaning that you can keep your best staff and they don’t leave for somewhere that treats you better.
  
  Employment laws don't protect you from a boss denying PTO because you are needed on that specific date. Imagine having a 24hr devops team. Three guys went drinking together and crashed into a tree last night. They're fine, but they need checkups and rest, so they have a doctors note. The team now needs to be planned well, but otherwise it is fine. Then someone comes up and says "I need PTO this week". You tell them "sorry we can't, too many people are out, we couldn't get round the clock support like we have in the contract". And then they leave anyways. And when they leave, the prod suddenly shits itself and there is noone who is there to react for the next 7 hours.
  Work life balance doesn't mean "I get to grab PTO whenever I want to". That's why "on demand" days exist.
- The alternative is not failing the logistics skill check you're ostensibly supposed to be good at as a manager. If you're in such dire straits as a business that you cannot possibly approve PTO, your problem will not be fixed firing the employee who at least did you the courtesy of warning you that they wouldn't be available that day.
- What if the employee didn't get PTO, what if they were in an accident and needed two weeks in the hospital to recover? The company would have no control over that either, but that's always a contingency. If you can't handle one less employee, you need more employees.
- That's literally what a manager's job is. To manage the personnel so that they have a full staff. That's why we put in time off notices two months in advance, at least.
  Oh, and if you aren't paying well above market rate, a time off notice is just that. I'm not requesting shit. I'm notifying you that no matter what you do, I won't be there, and you need to do your job.
- The alternative is working with your employees to get them the time off they need to the best of your ability instead of hiding behind "the needs of the business". They don't give a flying fuck about the needs of your business, especially if you don't give a fuck about them enough to approve a day off request.
  Any time I've EVER had trouble accommodating a time off request, I've done it in person and it started with me trying to figure out what their time is for so I can work with them on finding a way to accommodate their plans. Or, if it is clear that person 1 must be off, then I can talk to person 2 or 3 with requests and work out a deal with them instead.
  Instead of any of this, sounds like this terrible manager simply denied the request in the schedule with no conversation and KNOWS he's a dick, given the "keep frontin'" comment.
- If a business can't function when a single employee goes off on leave then it doesn't deserve to survive. Survival of the fittest, innit?
- The alternative is granting leave, are you that dumb?

Is there a line I need to get into for the chance to be the next person to repost this?
- Nope, internet points are free here
  
  No they aren't, you need to pay me $3 per dozen.

This is lacking info. I can think of a lot of scenarios where the boss is justified.
What if the boss had granted some PTO for someone else and this person said FU I’m not coming in either. In that scenario I’d definitely fire them too. If I can’t count on you so I can give other people time off then I don’t need you.
- Normalize businesses having enough employees that they can take their time whenever they want as long as notice is far enough out. Or people can call in sick without a replacement being required because you were already operating with a couple "extra" people.
  And definitely normalize closing on holidays. The sheer number of American employers that require holiday work means it's not actually a holiday unless you're wealthy enough. If you absolutely, holy shit, must be open for a holiday, hire people who don't celebrate it. Maintaining a diverse staff means you can give holidays to the requisite groups without worry. Just put it on the application, "check the box for each holiday you must have off".
  
  Small businesses cannot afford a few extra people on staff.
  It will be worth it if big corporations start taking care of people properly, but one side effect will be that all the small businesses who already struggle to compete with the big corporations will get completely crushed.
  Fair enough that if your business model cannot afford to properly compensate the workers then you deserve to go out of business, but due to capitalism, all small businesses fall in to this category.
  Only large corporations can survive the transition into properly compensating workers. Sad all around.
  
  Im not saying to not give people off. All I’m saying is there is no context here. From personal experience most people are selfish and there needs to be some kind of structure when giving PTO. Everyone should have an opportunity to be off but many places can’t shut down their business for 2 weeks because the home sports team made the playoffs. Again I’m speaking from experience. Some people need to be told no so that someone else that earned it or asked earlier can be off.
  And just to add this but hiring so anyone can be off at anytime is not possible. You are essentially saying it’s ok to discriminate. For example if my business is in a predominantly Christian community many employees will want to be off on Sunday but that is a peak day because after church many people want to eat at my restaurant. Should I then reject any applications from Christian’s so I ensure I am staffed?
- I think there’s enough info. Employee put in request. Request denied for biz needs but employee is fired anyways. Boss is a hypocritical asshole.
  
  How are they hypocritical? They said no and gave what they thought was an appropriate consequence.
  There is zero context here and if you were running a business and gave anyone off who asked there would be days you would have to close because you are short staffed. It’s very easy to say from your couch what you would do but when you need your business to provide for your family you think a little differently.
- Hey, what if there was a request off. Your other employee gets in a car wreck. You going to make them come in from the hospital since it wasn't requested off? This situation actually happened to a co-worker. The GM didn't ask if they were ok, they asked if they could still make it to cover their own lunch.
  Shit happens. You deal with it, not retaliate.
  
  PTO != LOA
  PTO is like if you got a cold and needed a day or two, LOA is like if a major fucking event/sickness took over and could potentially ruin your life and you have to be out of work for weeks/months/years. With LOA you still get paid, though you may get slightly less than your normal paycheck. Still a paycheck though, and after saving gas from driving in, or saving money from the train/bus/subway, or savings costs of electricity from powering on your PC/heater/AC or whatever else in order to work from home, it almost balances out.
  Also, in at least where I'm from, retaliation is illegal and businesses get sued out the ass for it.
  Source: Work in the US, have used LOA and PTO, and have seen businesses go down for violating these laws.
  
  Imo it’s a given that if someone is in the hospital and asked for some PTO I would grant it without question.
  All I’m saying is based on the initial scenario there isn’t enough information to say the boss is wrong to fire the person.
- If your fanfic is right and the boss is justified, they would have included it in their post.
- I can't think of any scenarios where bragging about it is justified.
- I can think of a lot more scenarios where the employee is justified.

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