Work to live, or live to work?

DireEmblem

DireEmblem

DireEmblem

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Joined
25 Aug 2008
Posts
947
I think this is a good time of year to bring up this question.

What would you do if work denied you holidays when best suit you. Whether with family/mates.

If it was just the once, would you deal with it? If it happened to be on several occasions, but you enjoyed your work, would you leave?

Discuss.
 
Eventually, leave.

It is my absolute single pet hate when holidays are denied without a very compelling reason, it even raises hackles when 'not-so-subtle' pressure is put on employees by employers not to take holidays, or to re-arrange them at short notice - it seems a lot of employers treat holidays as an inconvenient liberty they can grant to employees at a whim rather than an employees contractual (and legal) entitlement.

Nothing more than a complete lack of respect for the employee most of the time.
 
Rich_L said:
Eventually, leave.

It is my absolute single pet hate when holidays are denied without a very compelling reason, it even raises hackles when 'not-so-subtle' pressure is put on employees by employers not to take holidays, or to re-arrange them at short notice - it seems a lot of employers treat holidays as an inconvenient liberty they can grant to employees at a whim rather than an employees contractual (and legal) entitlement.

Nothing more than a complete lack of respect for the employee most of the time.
Click to expand...

I can't believe how much I agree with this.
 
Being able to manage my own time is pretty high up my list of priorities. If I was denied holiday I wouldn't do anything rash but it would make me consider how long I wanted to stay there. You shouldn't feel in debt to the company for taking annual leave.
 
As above, depends on the context. If it was situational and the result of extraordinary circumstances, such as a company-wide deadline, maybe, but as a general policy? No, I'd have a problem with that.
 
It is annoynig when you cant take your holidays when you want. However there has to be some sort of system behind it so you don't have everyone off at the same time.

Trying to make you cancel with short notice is a big no no.
 
DireEmblem said:
I think this is a good time of year to bring up this question.

What would you do if work denied you holidays when best suit you. Whether with family/mates.

If it was just the once, would you deal with it? If it happened to be on several occasions, but you enjoyed your work, would you leave?

Discuss.
Click to expand...

Depends on the reason. If you have some gimp in your department who books every holiday a year in advance and you book up with a week to go, there's not much you can do.

If there's no decent reason I'd either leave, or as I have done previously with one manager who had an issue with me, made it clear to her and her boss that as there was no valid reason to refuse me I would take the holiday whether cleared or not. It got cleared and no come-back.
 
If it was just the times when I couldn't due to staffing issues, or there being serious work going on, then it wouldn't bother me too much. But if it was all the time, then I'd eventually get fed up and just go. Having your employer select your holidays is never convenient, but if your partner works in a field where it is hard to get the time off that you want then it could become a real frustration.

Fortunately, since moving out of LEA control and in to an external company providing managed IT services, I'm actually better off. Previously, I could only take holidays during half-term (the time when I'd rather be in the school doing serious development work) whereas now I can take term-time holidays as long as it doesn't create a staffing issue. And where it does, it's possible to arrange cover using technicians from other schools. I currently have a couple of lads in covering for my boss and our senior technician.

But if the company was to turn round and deny the holiday requests I've put in so far, and the one I plan to put in so I can go to France with a good friend, I'd be a little annoyed, yeah. If they did it multiple times, I'd probably consider finding another employer. But I don't see that happening :)
 
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