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Boss who wouldn’t give time off for college graduation scolded on social media

Boss who wouldn’t give time off for college graduation scolded on social media

Sometimes when you’re searching for the root of a problem, it's easy to overlook that it’s staring back at you in the mirror.

That’s the general response on social media to a boss who wrote into the website Ask A Manager, asking for advice on how to tell an employee, who recently quit “without notice,” that she acted in a way that “isn’t exactly professional.”

The manager, who chose to remain anonymous, wrote:

I manage a team, and part of their jobs is to provide customer support over the phone. Due to a new product launch, we are expected to provide service outside of our normal hours for a time. This includes some of my team coming in on a day our office is normally closed (based on lowest seniority because no one volunteered).

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They continue that one employee asked to start her shift two hours late because of her college graduation. But they were “unable to grant her request” because she had the lowest seniority.

The manger said they offered her the chance to find a coworker who was willing to cover those two hours, but no one was willing to come in on their day off.

They added that other employees who weren’t scheduled to work that day did make switches to work the overtime, but not with her.

The manager said they don’t “interfere if people want to give or take overtime of their own accord,” except for one occasion when they switched someone’s end time because they had concert tickets.

“But this was a special circumstance because there was cost involved,” they wrote.

The manager said they had no choice but to tell their employee that she would be forced to skip her graduation.

They said that an hour later, the employee handed in a list of all the time she had worked late, come in early or taken overtime for her fellow employees, and then quit on the spot.

The manager has since been taken to task for their desire tell the employee that she quit in a way they said wasn’t “exactly professional.”

The anonymous manager writes:

Even though she doesn’t work here any longer, I want to reach out and tell her that quitting without notice because she didn’t get her way isn’t exactly professional. I only want to do this because she was an otherwise great employee, and I don’t want her to derail her career by doing this again and thinking it is okay. She was raised in a few dozen different foster homes and has no living family. She was homeless for a bit after she turned 18 and besides us she doesn’t have anyone in her life that has ever had professional employment. This is the only job she has had. Since she’s never had anyone to teach her professional norms, I want to help her so she doesn’t make the same mistake again. What do you think is the best way for me to do this?

Ask a Manager's Alison Green didn't side with the manager, and quickly went to the defence of the ex-employee.

“If anything, you should consider reaching out to her, apologizing for how you handled the situation, and offering her the job back if she wants it,” wrote Green.

“I’m not usually a fan of people quitting on the spot, but I applaud her for doing it in this case.”

In particular, the manager has been held over the fire for not making an exception for someone they described as their “best employee by far,” who never missed a day work in six years and was their “go-to person for weekends and holidays,” despite the fact that they intervened when another employee simply had concert tickets.

“One of the frustrating things about your letter is that despite rigidly adhering to the rules with this person, you were willing to make an exception for someone else (the person with the concert tickets). I’m at a loss to understand how concert tickets are an obvious exception-maker but this person’s situation wasn’t,” wrote Green.

“There’s a lesson to be learned here, but it’s not for her.”

Green pointed out that the manger’s case looks even worse given the fact that they said she had taken night classes part-time to earn her degree, had grown up jumping between a “few dozen” foster homes, has no living family and was homeless for a period after she turned 18.

“While I normally think graduation ceremonies are primarily fluff, I’m hard-pressed to think of anyone who deserves to be able to attend her own graduation ceremony as much as this woman does,” wrote Green.

“You should have been bending over backwards to ensure she could attend.”

The post has garnered nearly 2,000 comments, most of which don’t mince words when chastising the manager’s approach to the situation.

“I have to say that I’m dazzled by the poor quality of the manager. The lack of concern and appreciation for someone’s personal efforts, particularly when they are cited as one’s best employee, is staggeringly narcissistic, wrote John Hedtke.

“If I owned a business and found out that a manager treated an excellent employee like that, we would be having a very long conversation,” wrote another commenter, Ellen Mahan.

“Props to the woman in question and good luck in the future.”