I know a lot of workplaces/bosses don’t like it, but I’m of the opinion that your time off is your time off. It doesn’t matter if you’re in town or out of town, have the ability to get to work or not, if you have scheduled time off, you shouldn’t have to make any excuses as to why you’re not at work.
Going from retail to trade work 20 years ago was a world of difference. If someone has a day off, it’s a DAY OFF and you better not even call the motherfucker. Workers will even get yelled at by the boss for disturbing fellow employees personal time if they don’t absolutely have to.
Retail is just all hell. If anyone is doing that, get out. Get out any way you can. There is no future, you will NOT be rewarded for going above and beyond, and you are just a corporate asset.
There’s also another major difference. In the trades, comraderie grows organically as you work with others on a job. In retail, it’s all forced, with dumbass morning meetings and songs and shit.
I work in IT and if you need to call someone when they are off, that’s a huge embarrassment.
Nothing should fall apart because one person on the team isn’t there. Nothing should ever be so critical that their absence is life and death. Never should there be a problem where only one person has the answers.
If you have to call someone when they’re off then you didn’t manage your team and their work properly, and you fucked up, big.
This is what I’ve heard called the “bus buffer”, which means “run your team so that if someone is hit by a bus you aren’t totally screwed.”
I’ll never forget the time my boss call me to have me come in to cover a shift that night while I was chilling on a mountain looking over to Mt Adams while eating my lunch
I was surprised my phone even rang given the location, he was surprised when I told him I was 9 hours from my apartment
I sent him a picture to prove where I was
He was not amused but he did tell me to take a bunch of pictures since I was out there
All in all it was a good day
I had my manager try to call me in while I was on the other side of the country. He tried to tell me I hadn’t informed him of my vacation, so I sent him the picture and emails where I had listed my vacation in the scheduler. Then he told me I was lying, so I sent him a selfie of me in front of Fort Yellowstone.
I’ll always send a quick text. I never need a reason for a no. If they say no, I thank them for their time and move on. Some people want more hours and are glad to take the shift, some want the day off. I understand both perspectives.
This is why you should live in a different town than your workplace. Even if it’s the next town over, technically you’re “out of town”!
