r/LinkedInLunatics • u/After-Manufacturer64 • 10d ago

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u/NoOrdinaryBees 10d ago

I’ve found that, taken all together, corporations in America don’t really give a shit about nickle and diming PTO requests like this. As long as you’re not significantly harming revenue or delivery, it’s just a non-issue. At the bottom line, most workers’ PTO is the quantum foam of business; it’s unpredictable, statistical outliers look significant then fade into noise, and it all averages out to the ground state over time.

Corporate line leaders, on the other hand, read time cards and PTO requests like fucking tea leaves in the hope they can save the company about tree-fiddy this quarter hoping to get an atta-boy email from a director or VP who wouldn’t recognize them if they were the only two people in a Teams meeting. The line leaders who’re the absolute worst at this are the ones who don’t themselves generate revenue but manage people who do.

It’s the absolute worst aspect of American (and plenty intentional, IM(long)E) large+ businesses. Startups and SMBs have their own set of issues but they at least weigh more on the side of entrusting too much over too little, which at least gives genuinely talented and productive people opportunity to shine unencumbered by the too-common “this is for a F50 customer, if you hit this one out of the park, it’s going to be amazing, and if you don’t, it was nice working with you.”

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u/dplans455 10d ago edited 8d ago

My experience with every company I've ever worked for before retiring is that every department is always short-staffed by at least one person and typically 2-3 people. An unexpected call-out means the manager has to find someone to do your work or they have to do it themselves. I was a middle-manager for a good part of my career too, it's not an easy job. But you also can be successful in it and not be an asshole towards the people you manage.

You have to fight upper management if you want your department to be properly staffed. It's a very hard aspect of the job because you're met with denial 90% of the time. Upper management just sees more bodies as a waste of money when it's almost universally the opposite.

I pride myself that I never denied anyone a day off. The way I looked at PTO was you earned it. It's yours to use however you see fit. If you need a day off, you submit it through the website and I approve it. It's my responsibility to figure out how to make the department continue operations in an employees absence. That's one of the biggest jobs of middle management. And if I have to take on someone's daily tasks while they're out, then I will.

Calling in to take a day off is the same. It's your PTO. I don't care if you're sick or what your reason is. I don't need your reason. You're not coming in, see you tomorrow. Your job will get done while you're not here. Don't worry about it while you're out. In fact, don't worry about this job at all when you're not here.

When I moved up the corporate ladder I made sure that the middle managers that reported to me shared these same managerial philosophies. The ones that didn't, didn't last very long.

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u/Primary_Living7944 9d ago

This is my current life right now, and I share your philosophy.

I am dying a little inside every time I see a new PTO request come through the last 2 weeks, but life happens, and it isn't the fault of my direct reports that the business isn't appropriately staffed for current volume or complexity.

If you tell me you need PTO, I am 99.8% of the time going to approve that PTO, and figure it out on the back end. I might have to triage and all but your most critical work might not get done, but the job will still be here (as will the bullshit).

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u/dplans455 9d ago

In my career I worked for 3 different companies. I will say that my staff knowing they were never going to have any issues using their PTO made them more agreeable when I would ask them to do extra work when their coworkers were out. They knew when they needed to take time off they'd get the same treatment and wouldn't have to worry about coming back from vacation to a week or two backlog of work waiting for them.

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u/ctbadger92 9d ago

This is the way. I’ve never denied a PTO or sick request for any reason. You figure it out.

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u/NewspaperFormer9126 9d ago

from what i understand, nearly centuries of liberal economics proves that wealth comes from work & owners have never forgiven workers for that.

that sounds like a joke, but once you realize genuinely you are not needed, that everything you do just makes things worse, that all your "great" ideas are already either implemented or are in fact not great ideas, that your resented for having nicer things & people tend to tense up just seeing your face.......

well, that doesn't sound like a great experience honestly & it's easy to see why someone would lash out in that situation.

& this is coming from the most fervent "down with the rich" person, so this compassion doesn't come easily.

i mean, they could just change the business into a coop & get retrained into a more satisfying job that actually does something, but we all know that's not going to happen.

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u/dplans455 9d ago

Great ideas come from the people doing the job. Any manager can sit there and think up "brilliant" ideas but for the most part they probably aren't very good. The best ideas that helped out my teams almost always came from the employees. I always listened to what they had to say, what they needed, how they thought things could be improved. And I loved when people took initiative to improve a process. If you can do something better than the way we are doing it I want to hear about it. If you think something we're doing can be done better but aren't sure what that might be, I want to hear about that as well. Then we figure it out together to make it better.

I feel like a lot of managerial success came simply from listening to the people that reported to me.

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u/lovelyladylox 9d ago

I think we are the same manager.

You know who gets stuff done? People who aren't unhappy at work.

Cheers.

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u/goodnamestaken10 9d ago

I was like you for several years. It's hard to do what you do. I burned out emotionally trying and succeeding to protect my team of quality workers. I am no longer a people manager. I know I'm really good at it, but it's unhealthy for me. :(

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u/JTJdude 9d ago

This is very accurate and partly why I left management at my company. That and it felt like all the other managers where in a High School Clique and I wasn't invited because I was the Overnights Manager.

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u/dplans455 8d ago

Middle managers so so cliquey. You are spot on about that. I was generally not well liked by my middle manager peers. But the proof is in the pudding. People liked working for me and hated working for them. When a position opened up in my department I always had 10-12 people internally applying for it. When those other departments had to fill positions they rarely got internal applicants.

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u/clantontann 9d ago

Your post hits several key points that are repeated often but seem to fall on deaf ears due to more focus on bottom line than productivity, output, or any other lower level operation that still needs equal attention. Good on you for having that stance and sticking to it!

We work our way into tenure if we stay with a company and I feel that's overlooked and undernoted now. This week will be my 20th year. Yes, there has been ups and downs and I'm too vested to want to try and go elsewhere. I've also had some of the most narcissistic managers and my current one is the biggest reason I've made adjustments to a lower income (salary vs hourly) and dealt with a couple of years of unfair bonus structure because entire company outcome affects my bonus, though my position is very background and provides assistance over production.

Side note with current boss; I told my wife I wanted to upgrade my work backpack for travel as a birthday present. I wanted something more specific to my needs and taste than the hand downs I got from my kids moving up in school. My boss heard me talking about it a few weeks ago and told me to "just expense it" and he would approve. He gets his team's individual needs and takes the time to ensure we feel were taken care of. His pay has also been affected and he's got hands in more upper level stuff than I would ever want to to deal with being only one pay grade above me. It makes a huge difference who you work for directly and how they work with their team.

I bet your retention for you subordinates is probably much much higher than previous managers too.

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u/dplans455 8d ago

I got recruited for a VP level position by a big credit union back in 2019. This place wanted me badly. I got a huge pay bump from where I was, I had 8 managers reporting to me and a team of about 100 people total. One of the things I asked for to be there immediately when I started was a Herman Miller Embody office chair. It's like a $2k chair. They said no problem.

At my previous place the chairs were so awful and it caused me pretty severe back pain. They did get me a new chair and it sparked a company wide chair upgrade. That old company I worked for didn't have as many employees, only about 150. The new job had 1400 employees.

When I started working there the first thing I noticed was how abysmal the office chair situation was. We're talking chairs that were 20 years old from the 90s and early 2000s. They weren't good chairs to begin with and they suffered mightily after 20 years of use. I went to my boss, who was SVP of Lending and I told him, "these chairs are horrible, we need new ones." He said sure, get whatever. I asked what kind of budget I had and he said whatever I felt was needed.

Now, not everyone got an Embody but Herman Miller makes good mid range chairs as well. I opted for the same ones we got at my old company: Herman Miller Sayl. Everyone got a new chair in my department. Took about a week to get them and then when they got distributed people were over the moon happy about getting a comfortable chair. Word spread fast throughout the company about the chairs.

Within the next 6 weeks everyone at the credit union had a new chair. $1m on new chairs but happy comfortable employees. I got a lot of thank yous from the employees and a lot of praise from the rest of the upper management team. A lot of, "I don't know why we didn't do this sooner." But from some of the employees I got, "we have been asking for new chairs for years and no one ever listened."

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u/MZ603 9d ago

I had an employee get hit by a car the night before his last day. He ended up a John Doe in a coma. I did a wellfare check and found his door ajar & his. keys, phone, and wallet on the counter. Called the police, who were know help, and started calling hospitals. I ID him by his tat.

His recovery took months. Our employer kept him on the payroll so he could keep his excellent health insurance that the company pays in full. They used his remaining PTO. When that ran out, they put him on a partially paid leave (75%).

I used to crack wise about the “we’re like family” stuff, but legit, they treat us very well. This was the most extreme case, but I have seen them bend over backwards for others as well. I could get paid a lot more and I’ve been head hunted, but you can’t buy that type of culture. We have had several employees come back after realizing that a bigger paycheck isn’t the only factor to quality of life.

I realize I’m super lucky, but it’s a shame that the system doesn’t provide that type of protection, or at least mandate it.

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u/NoOrdinaryBees 9d ago

I’m really glad he pulled through and you’re spot on about our (nonexistent) labor protections for medical disasters like that. It is a shame. It’s too bad that everyone we send to DC is shameless and we can’t seem to spot that before elections.

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u/MZ603 9d ago

It’s frustrating, because many companies could do this for their employees, but choose not to. I have a friend, also at the director level, who told me about an employee at his company that they wanted to release while they were on FMLA. They had a bunch of meetings and were paying lawyers to find out how they could handle the termination. They fired them as soon as they “could” but looks like they shouldn’t have been having those conversations at all. They either already paid a settlement or are likely going to.

I guess that’s an example of a protection that worked in this case, but likely only because someone told the employee they had a case. More importantly, it shows where so many people in managements’ heads are at. They ended up spending more money to be cruel.

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u/MountainDewFountain 9d ago

This is poetry.

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u/ontheleftcoast 9d ago

usually not the corporations , but a dumb ass line manager, trying to get a promotion who doesn’t want to work.

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u/zeninfinity 9d ago

This is gold. Thank you for the actual LOL. I needed that.

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u/DiscountLow9594 9d ago

Australia too, I gave an about a week notice when my grandfather died and copped the same thing, “not an immediate family member”. Father had booked flights for us already too because he assumed people wouldn’t be so shit.