Because boy, do I have some anger I’d like to take out on some unruly shrubs and wild growth that need to be scaled back anyway.
I don’t really like to brog about my job, because it seems so cliché and there used to be this off-chance concern that someone who doesn’t know me could piece two and two together, identify where I worked, and do something unpleasant with that information. But I keep things rather vague enough to where that aspect of it has gone away, not to mention the fact that I have like, zero readers, so I don’t have to worry in that regard anyway, but it still remains pretty cliché to bitch about work.
Regardless, let me tell you a story about how I am rather displeased with my job these days, and this is a very specific reason to add to the lengthy list of things I’m keeping documented for if and when the time comes to where I ever can bounce out of there.
I asked my bosses (because I have 1.5 bosses, as in one person who is the actual boss whom I shall refer to as “boss,” and the spineless puppet husk under them who is technically my actual boss, whom I shall refer to as “puppet”) if I could have next week off, as I believed I had a week of vacation left, and was feeling pretty burned out from the combination of being a first-time father on a 24/7 daddy schedule, combined with an unnecessarily, artificially busy holiday month.
Boss said sure, I felt a little bit of relief and satisfaction at knowing that I might finally get a little bit of time to relax and to not be so, on, with a combination of work and baby duty.
A couple of days later, I get an email from puppet, saying “they thought I had used all my vacation, but could be mistaken, please give me a list of dates you took off,” which is pretty easy, because I only had three substantial breaks throughout the year, given the fact that because of coronavirus, I’ve been working from home since March. I took a week off prior to the start of my paternity leave to extend my time, and I took three days off back in May when I was really fried from being a first-time dad, and I took two days off to celebrate my first-ever wedding anniversary.
I cited the week off as vacation time, and declared the five other days as the sick/personal time that all employees are entitled to get. Puppet responds back to me that they’re “fairly certain” that salaried employees (like me) sick/personal time doesn’t act in the same manner in which it works for hourly employees (which I used to be), which is basically auxiliary vacation time, if you’re not prone to getting sick.
They’re going to check with HR.
At this point, I already know that I’m fucked, and that all ten of my vacation days have been spoken for, but that’s not really what’s upsetting me. It’s the fact that puppet is deliberately going out of their way to second guess and make an effort with the end result of making sure that I don’t take time off, as if I were deliberately swindling the company and thinking I had pulled one over the evil, evil Fortune 50 company.
Instead of just telling me in an email or a text message, confirming what I already figured was going to be the case, I have a fucking meeting dropped on me, as if we don’t already have enough of these two-on-one touchbases that I have resorted to calling gangbangs, because they’re usually bi-weekly sessions of them telling me in how many ways I suck at my job, no matter how much function and actual work that I do for my team. Nah, they decided that an extra gangbang this week, in between our usually scheduled every other week gangbang was necessary, in order to tell me what I already knew was going to be the case.
Naturally, they start the meeting off with a fresh list of grievances they have with the way I conduct my business at work, which is mostly boss doesn’t like how many evil words I use when composing emails, or “trying to coach me” which is every fucking day because they’re a sociopathic micromanager, while puppet sits their on their screen nodding in agreement with everything being said because they’re a fucking spineless puppet whom I have zero respect for.
And then they get to the part where they’ve “discovered” from HR the policy on sick/personal time, and that as a salaried employee, I don’t get it the same way as hourly associates do, so therefore the five days I took off for being burned out and my wedding anniversary go against my lone pool of vacation days, and combined with the week I took to stack onto my paternity leave, I have effectively used all of my vacation time for the year and obviously have no time in order to take next week off.
I don’t even bother to explain that it’s very well-known and accepted that hourly associates all use their sick/personal time as basically bonus vacation time, because frankly I know where this is going to go, and the last thing I want to do is ruin a good thing for all the hourly associates on my team, and put them into a situation where they can no longer capitalize on their hard-earned PTO.
I don’t even try to hide my displeasure at the news, despite knowing that this was going to be the case. I explain that I feel that I am being penalized, because I am being responsible and staying home as much as I can in order to not get sick or get coronavirus, and I keep my child home as much as possible so that she can’t get sick or get coronavirus, and boss basically tells me that that’s because I’m coming from a mindset of when I was an hourly employee, which is completely off-base but they’re basically detached from normal human emotion and behavior from the onset anyway.
But the reality is that as a salaried employee, I’m actually in a much worse position than my hourly counterparts in terms of having time available to take off.
The laughable part is when boss suggests to me that if I really needed time off, that I could explore the possibility of short-term disability.
I actually had to suppress myself from laughing incredulously at such a ludicrous and detached from reality suggestion as such. I’m just fucking fried, and want a few extra hours of sleep, who on the fucking planet would need short-term disability for that??
DISABILITY. You know, that thing people with broken limbs, grievous wounds, and fucking diseases take, to have time off while they recuperate?
Man, putting that shit in writing, that’s making me laugh. Which is good, because I need it.
Long story short is that I wanted to take a week off because I’m feeling very burnt out, but my puppet of a superior went out of their way to look for a way to deny me. If and when I ever find another job, and they’re curious to why it is I might be leaving, I’m going to have a very difficult decision to make on whether I give them PC, safe, non-bridge burning responses, or if I point to a fucking calendar as bullet point #1 on a long tirade of how the fuck did you not know I wanted out designed to nuke the bridge into orbit.
I was skeptical on whether or not actually using a machete on shrubs and overgrowth would actually be something that was easy, or turn out to be way harder than I had imagined, but I think if I’m picturing my boss and their puppet in my mind while I’m doing it, I’ll need to be careful to not chop down the entire rainforest.
