little bit of basics here

the depot i'm in charge of has 10 full time employee's presently
the rules are that you can't have more than 2 people off on holiday at any one time
there are 2 people off, everyday, for the next 7 weeks
so that means no one else can take holiday
one of our drivers wants to take a few days extra off but there's no slot for him to fill as they are all covered
he has said that if he doesn't get the holday he wants he's handing in his notice

my initial reaction was "well, fill it in then and i'll see you this evening" but i actually said "i can tell you now that they don't want more than 2 people off and every holiday slot is booked, i can ask for you but i can't see head office OK'ing it"

and then he said that he wanted the time off because his daughter was moving house and he wanted to make sure she was alright and help her change the locks and settle in etc, instead of having a week off later he wanted to have a few days the week before as well

i know what head office are going to say and that is "drivers can't hold us to ransom so let him go" or the only other alternative is "he can go and not get paid for it" both of which will probably mean he will quit on the spot

i don't want to let him go as he's a good driver and always does his bit, but do i be the hard boss and tell him to like it or lump it or do i be the caring boss and say it's going to be sad to see you go or do i be the hero of the peice and say he can have his holidays, even though that means i'll get a bollocking from head office (which i shuldn't get as he knows the rules)

argh!

 

I would say have a look at how heavy the workload is going to be over the period he's asking to have off, and if you could cope 1 man down, then let him have the time off. As a manager your responsibility is both to your staff and to the needs of the business. If you can't bend for him this once then why would he bother bending for you in the future? Even if there are jobs that need doing, could some be postponed? We all have lives outside of work...

 

Rules are rules, you let one person hold you to ransom and then others might try it on, but say the above to him.

Even if he quit now, he'd find it pretty hard to find an employer who would take him on and honour taking holidays so soon after joining. If they did, he wouldn't get paid for them.

He is being pretty stupid really IMO, he won't be able to claim dole because he jacked, and any reference he will need from you to get further employment, you will have to be honest and say why he left. Some employers would view that unfavourably and think him a trouble-maker if he doesn't get his own way.

 

I agree with Redkop if you give in to him then its possible other staff will try the same thing, tell him he cant have the time off and if he walks he will look stupid when he has to tell new employers that he jacked coz he couldnt bend the rules.

The cheek of some people..................

 

You might be right, but personally I believe in a bit of give and take between employer/employee....

 

give and take is a good thing!

if he is a good employee and does his bit when he doesnt need to then surely you can help him out! plus its not that fair that 7 weeks has been booked out...

or you could be the helping kind and say he can have it off "sick" then when he is back if he "askes" for it to be made into holiday, as he cannot afford to be off sick and has a couple of days holiday left...

 

call his bluff.

Rules are rules, you know this - he knows this.

I work with drivers as well. If you ask me they spend far too long on their own in the cab. They think about things too much as they've no-one else to talk to. Amount of times I've had guys making something out of nothing because it's been brewing in their head for the last 9 hours with no-one else to talk to, you wouldn't believe.

Guy is at it. You can't do it for one as you'll be expected to do it afor all. That is why you are manager and get paid the bucks. Sometimes you've got to make the decisions that people don't want to hear. Don't give in to the guy. You lose nothing out of it, he'll lose his source of income. Odds are in your favour

SMG

 

Get one of your WWF mates to DDT him off top rope onto a decorating table

 

but seriously just use ya common sense..if you can honestly cope with out him for a few days then let him have it off....you dont want to see anyone out of work do ya??

 

if you give him the time off then you are leaving yourself open to a whole heap of trouble if the same situation arises with a different employee!!

you cant have one rule for one and a different one for the others.

this guy knows the situation with holidays, if he doesent like it then let him hand his notice in, Im sure theres plenty of other people out there who would welcome his job!

 

If the bloke'd had his wits about him, he should have said nothing and then thrown a sicky for the extra days. He only has to provide a self-certification sick note if less than a week and you'd be none the wiser if he was telling the truth or not....

 

Just been talking about this with a colleague.

Let the fucker walk.

Who the does he think he is giving a manager an ultimatum. If you back down on this then you are showing a weakness.

Tell him if that's the level of respect he is giving to you and the company then you're better off without him. Pay him to the end of the week and tell him to get to fuck.

That's what I'd do anyway.

Plenty more drivers where he came from.

 

I'd be letting him have the odd day or two off, but spaced out. Let's him help his daughter, shows you care, and tells the others you're no easy ride as he's asked for a week and been told no.

 

thing is, we've got a budget for drivers, and, if i let 3 people off during the same days i have to fill them with 3 agency guys

anyone who knows the agency's knows that they cost mroe to emply than the normal full timers so i will effectivly be paying for 7 people to do the work of 3 where as with just 2 people off i save myself the agency driver fees to cover the holidaying driver (who also get's paid as he's on holiday)



i'm going to speak to the boss and see what he says

brb

 

I personally would clothes line the bitch to the floor , rip off my shirt sleeve and perform the most electrifying move in sports entertainment today and give him the peoples elbow to the throat

Failing that ......... just say look chap , I cant tell you what to do but how about this .

Call in sick , that way you get the time off and I wont have to sack you for being a moaning little scrote who thinks he can just blackmail me because I like WWF or whatever the fuck its called since they renamed themselves

 

boss said no

he's said fuck it, i'm having it off anyway, i might not come back at all

perhaps tomorrow things will be different...............

 

You are his BOSS first his buddy second!!
Don't jeopardise your own position, he must have known in advance of the move as well.
tabetha

 

If thats his fucking attitude then your work really doesnt need a cunt like that !!!

As an employee he has to addeer to company rules and regulations, and if they state only 2 people off at a time then he hasnt got a leg to stand on, unless he goes on the sick but you would know why hes gone on the sick !!!

 

my boss basicly said that although he understands why he wants the time off, he can't have it as it would leave us short staffed for those days
if there wasn't so many people off already at the other depots then perhaps we could have covered his runs from one of them but we can't so he cannot have the time off that he wants

he's taken this as a "come to work or don't bother" reply and is thinking abot what he wants to do as the house move may not happen on the day in question

my take on it is that, even thoguh family comes first for me as well, i would have gone to the top and pleaded my case and then asked for unpaid leave, which is how it works normally and you bypass the 2 other peole who are above me who deal with leave/hoilday/sickness/other absence

 

If he takes it to the top, let him as it takes the pressure off you making the decision.

Let your gaffers make the choice to let him have the time off

 

that would have been the case had i not already spoken to someone who's told him he can't have the time off, like he asked me to in the first place

there's me, who runs the place, then there is another guy who does the allocations so that we know what resources we need for the next day/week/month, there there is another guy who does the holiday stuff and then there's the boss who generally says yes or no if you ask him first
but seeing as i've already asked the guy who does the allocations what he thought and he asked the guy who deals with the hoildays, the boss can't really say "well, i'll let him have the holiday" because he knows that will make the rest of us look like cunts


i want to help but my hands are tied and now the next level have alreayd quashed his plans i'm going to just sit back and try to avoid getting dragged into all of it and basicly see if he's got the balls to walk or not

i'll let you all know how things pan out in a few weeks as he wants a few days off in a fortnight so not long to go

 

 

when does he want to take the time off?
as it says in my contract i need to give 2 wks notice for holidays?
thing is has the rules ever been bent for someone else to have time off? if so maybe thats why hes being a cunt?

 

you need a weeks notice to get holiday at our place, but even then, it can be denied even if there isn't anyone else off at the same time

the paperwork says you can request holiday upto 1 year in advance, but unles the holiday forms are returned signed for all the days you want off, you don't get them off and anything over 2 weeks requires special permission

thing is, all holiday requests go through me and if i ok them then they get signed off by someone higher up and if i say no then it means no, but now it looks like i'm the one being a cunt about it even though i'm trying to do my best to get him the time off

if it was for someone who was in hospital or a death or the like then it's unconditional leave as there are certain things that you get time of for regardless which are obvious, but helping someone move house isn't one of them

 

true just fill out the green form

 

Something you've done Pete?

 

he did say that he was thinking of doing that but didn't want to be a sneak, which i thought was a good thing

makes my decision even harder

 

You could ask the other 2 people that are booked off if they'd mind coming in , if they aren't actually doing anything they "may" help you out and take their holiday days at a different time.... Worth asking the question and at least that way its another avenue explored...


Steve

 

Just tell him you had a poll on a car website to decide his future, as its not your fault you don't know how to manage employees.

 

one bloke went off on holiday this afternoon and won't be back for another 5 weeks (he took all his holiday in one go)
the other person who's off is me
now, seeing as i wanted the week the complainer is off but couldn't because he's off, and seeing as he's not going to change as he wants "extra" days off i'm not about to lose another week of holiday because there aren't enough people available (like what happened last month when, even though there was only one person off, i couldn't take the week off because they couldn't afford to have me off during the busy period of easter)

so he can either swap with me and be happy with it or not

 

I would as an employee of yours to discover your incompetence which has to resort to a poll on someones future, shame on you

 

but i've already decided what i was going to do before i put the poll up

which was tell him he can't but i'll see what i can do, knowing that he won't get the time off
then he said he'll jack the job if he don't or he'll take them and face the consequences upon his return or he might not come back at all

as his imidiate boss i can't be seen to be a push over, but at the same time, i don't want to lose a member of staff if i can avoid it

from the replies i've read here, it seems that my initial thoughts were correct and he can walk awayu, and i can say that i tried to help out bt he wasn't having none of it

i can see both sides of ths tory but rules is rules, what would you do?

 

so the point of the poll is pointless? Confirms to me your post is as pointless as your abilities to manage staff. Imagine how you would feel reading this. deciding over someones future, their ability to support their family pay their bills and enjoy life. wrong place. shame on you

 

explain how relaxing the rules for one employee would make me a better supervisor than not relaxing the rules and letting him dig his own hole?

i put the poll up AFTER i'd already made MY desicion about things, i spoke to the boss afterwards and he concoured with my desicion

if he wants to jack his job in because he doesn't get his own way then that's his disicion to ruin his job prospects

on the other hand, there are loads of things that you don't know beause i haven't told you the rest of the curcumstances surround this matter, so please don't judge when you don't seem to have a clue what you are talking baout

plenty of others agree with my desicion, i fact, it's seems that most of them do

 

i would never do anything like that

 

11 days till D-Day

 

Hard one - but if you haven't told headoffice yet, sit down with the bloke and explain CALMLY the ins and outs of it...

If YOU still think it's doable to let him have the time off, as you think you can cope with the workload, but don't want a bollocking from headoffice about letting him have it off, maybe suggest he takes a few sick days? Sure the company won't let more than 2 peeps have the same holiday days, but they can't do fuck all about someone being out sick

 

but i have already told them

he wanted me to look and see if he could have the time off and i said that because 2 people were already off he couldn't, but i'd see what i could do
the message came back from head office that he couldn't take the time off as there were the maximum amount of people off throughout the country so that other depots can't cover our workload
i also offered him the choice of swapping with me, as i'm off either side of his week off, but he wants extra days
the pulling a sickie would have worked but he's too nice a guy to do that, and, to be honest, i think he's looking for a way out
all week he's been ever so quite, he's normally a happy camper but he's not said a word to anyone over the last few days, other than a quiet hello in the morning

 

The whole point of a holiday request is to ask for approval or denial. An employee cant just TELL you when they are going to take holiday.
He knew the rules as well as the next Employee and I thinki most Companies work with a similar procedure.

He is part of a team, and by acting like a spoilt brat he is letting the rest of the team down. If he takes the time off and walks I think your team would be better off without him. So many people think they are indispensible

We have very strict rules at our place on holiday, mainly because if everyone didnt stick to the rules it would put a lot of unfair pressure on our collegues. All about give and take.

I think you're being more than fair offering to swap your week with his, you are actually giving him the option to take the holiday he so desperately wants.... he cant have everything his way, im sure if the shoe was on the other foot he sounds like he'd be one of the first to complain that its one rule for some and different for others.

 

mate,,,,,, sack the fucker,,, hes a good employee whos taking hes boss for a mug !!!

thats the problem when your a genuine person,,, some wanker thinks he can take the piss

tbh,,,, id call him back 30 mins early for a meeting ( someone ELSE to hold the meeting ) about his attitude and then give him a pen and paper and a copy of the job news paper with some circles round it for places he could go for

hes trying to bully you,,,, let him win and your a mug,,, stand your ground THEN when hes made the choice rethink things

maybe let him leave early and maybe start a few hours earlier ?


if ANY of our drivers spoke to MY gaffer like that,,,, well they wouldnt but if they did he would get a chance to finish the sentance and then he would drop him off home

good luck what you choose,,, but hes taking you for a cunt im afraid