That sounds super scummy.. imagine never giving you vacation time using this ...
It was. We had a really scummy boss for a while. He was new and didn't know everyone, but had to do evaluations, so he just used incomplete data and gave us all terrible evaluations, probably to keep from having to give us raises. He told me the reason I had a poor performance (which I really didn't) was because I'm fat. He told another girl that as well. And he threw one woman's file on the floor and told her that's where she belonged. Several of us complained to HR and he had to call and apologize and he had to do new evaluations with some. Most of us refused to sign our evaluations. He was AWFUL. He kept changing the policies so we had to put our availability in basically a month in advance, but he wouldn't make the schedule until a few days in advance, and you couldn't change your availability while the schedule was pending. So in that month before hand, if something came up for your kid at school, if you changed your availability, he wouldn't honor it because it "wasn't submitted in time" even if it was 2 weeks out. So you had to find someone to take your shift if you were scheduled for a time you said you couldn't work. And it seemed like sometimes he purposely scheduled you for times you submitted after that month cut off date to teach you a lesson. One guy missed the deadline by like an hour, and Conrad scheduled him for a time he had said he couldn't work. He said he had put it as not available, and Conrad told him he'd submitted that an hour late, so even though it was still almost a month in advance, he wouldn't give him the time off, but then other people who were available for that slot weren't scheduled, so he could have easily given the guy that day. He just was on a power trip. But then HE could change the schedule at any time. So he'd post the schedule for the following week on a Wednesday, and then change it on a Friday so you'd end up working different hours than you had scheduled, so you couldn't make plans in case he changed the schedule. Once the hours were posted, you could set your availability for any times you weren't scheduled, so I used to keep an eye on it and as soon as he posted the schedule, I'd change everything that I WASN'T scheduled for to "not available" so he couldn't change my schedule last minute. There were people who would check the schedule, write down their hours, and then get in trouble because he'd change the schedule two days later and they didn't know that they were given another shift. When they didn't show up, they'd get in trouble. He wouldn't TELL us when he changed the schedule, and he could change it up to I want to say an hour before or something? Or maybe a few hours? So he could come in at 8am and change the schedule for that evening and suddenly you'd be scheduled to work that evening and you had no way of knowing if you didn't look in the few hours before. Then if you said you couldn't work then because you had other plans, he'd tell you that you HAD to work and that you hadn't submitted new availability, so you'd better cancel your plans or find someone to work for you. But he wanted you to basically be at his beck and call. He let a few people go because they "weren't flexible enough" because they actually had lives outside of work and would have to take time off for school vacations because they had kids too little to stay home alone, or because a family member was sick and they needed time off to take care of them. One girl's partner had some sort of muscular disease, so she had to work her schedule around times that nurses were there so she could be with him when no one else was available. She worked nearly full time, just that her schedule had to be pretty regular. He wanted people he could schedule randomly. So he fired her. One woman had a maximum number of hours at 32 per week and he kept scheduling her for 40. She had her availability wide open, so she could work pretty much any time, but he was only supposed to schedule her for 32 of those hours. She'd email him and tell him "Nope...not doing 40. Remove one of those days." So then he'd remove a half day from 2 of the days so she still had to come in every day. No one liked him and we were all relieved when he got a new job. They put a jar out for donations to buy a goodbye gift before he left and it was practically empty. No one thought he was worth giving up their own money for.
It's not as bad anymore, but we have had a problem in the last year with Covid, because the policy was if you have any symptoms at all, you stay home. So there were a lot more people calling in sick, so they had to schedule more people than they really needed, knowing several would call in sick. Plus, we're an online store, so since physical stores were on lockdown, online sales skyrocketed as people still need things and had nowhere else to get them. So the number of orders we got increased, so then you need more people to work. It's harder to give people time off because you need more people than usual. The other night we only had 16 people, total, to cover all 32 zones, plus 3 packing stations, one cart loader, one person in charge of putting together boxes. We didn't have anyone doing returns or stocking, or anything else because we were so short-staffed. 10 people had called in sick, AND we were already short even if those 10 had come, because it's Summer vacation and a lot of people aren't available. I don't have set hours. I don't have to ask for time off. I just set my availability and say "I can work these hours in this week" and if that's zero hours, they can't schedule me. It's only people with set hours who get paid vacation, so they have to get their time off approved based on how many people they need and how many other people are off at that time. It's not necessarily meant to be scummy, but if someone waits until the last minute to submit a request for time off, and they've already given so many people that same time off, they have to deny it. You aren't supposed to schedule your vacation until your request is approved.
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