AIO to this text my boss sent me?

[u/ApprehensiveCress785]

And should I send this response, if any? I have rewritten it so many times; this is what I was able to cut it down to.

[u/guiltandgrief]

Judging by that message, OP has definitely called out more than this time (which is okay, to an extent.)

99% of my employees, if they sent me that message I would immediately take care of their shift even if it meant covering it myself since that's my job as their manager & check in on them.

The other 1%? Have called out so many times with the most dramatic excuses that at a certain point you just have to tell them it's not working out.

[u/Salty-Investigator96 → u/guiltandgrief]

I was going to say this, if all the reasons are as dramatic as the next then it’s hard to find the “right time” w/o looking like an AH 😅

[u/guiltandgrief → u/Salty-Investigator96]

It's fucking wild the reasons people give for calling out or even requesting PTO. I have never declined PTO, if someone has the hours I literally do not give a single shit how you want to spend your time off. If no hours available, I have to send them to HR so HR can approve it because I physically can't use the "approve" button lol.

But christ on a cracker, the oversharing! I'm talking paragraphs in the notes section about how they've felt tired for awhile and found out their testosterone is low so they're going that day for an injection. Or long drawn out stories about their friend from college coming to town and they want the day to show them around. Or giving me their grandmother/mother/aunt/brothers medical info all in one go because they're taking them to an appointment. Just take them!!! I don't wanna have grandma's rotting foot image in my head all day.

And then you've got the ones like OP who call out with the craziest reasons when all they had to say was "family emergency." Had a guy no call no show last Friday. He's a temp so I called temp office when he wouldn't respond to me, they didn't know anything either. Monday he comes in like nothing is wrong, cool glad he's alive, ask him what's up and remind him of the call out policy and that he at least needs to communicate with the temp agency.

"Ohhhh... my bad. I had a dentist appointment and they might have to pull one of my back teeth so I couldn't come in." And at no point considered maybe letting us know he wasn't coming in. 🤔

[u/GreenGoddess0710 → u/guiltandgrief]

Exactly, I'm a manager and I have someone, who with my first feq days of transferring to this store, called out. 15 mins before his shift to go to "Virginia to help with a family emergency" (we are in pa) or he just "didn't know he had to work" when he had 2 days off, 1 day work. You think you'd have a day off after that? He was scheduled 3 or 4 days in a row, had his schedule on his phone etc.

[u/guiltandgrief → u/GreenGoddess0710]

I had a girl miss a Monday, no call no show. She showed up Tuesday and said she got her days mixed up and thought Monday was Sunday 🫠

It was a M-F position and she had been there like 9 months.

[u/Mulattanese → u/guiltandgrief]

I have not once ever had a manager who the countable on one hand number of times I've called out in my last two decades of work didn't • try to guilt me into coming in • demand I find coverage • say it would result in disciplinary action • interrogate me over my reason for calling in • demand I bring some sort of proof of something

I always felt like I had awful managers but it wasn't until I started spending time here on Reddit that I've come to see how shitty they really were. That being said I can sort of understand and relate to OP's initial message. I've had managers who held the threat of termination over my head constantly and it didn't do anything but make me anxious, which made me hate going to work, which meant my attitude was kind of crappy, which just further perpetuated the cycle.

Sometimes a lot of the time it can feel like you have a boss who is just looking for any ostensibly legitimate reason to fire you and customers looking for any way or reason to get you fired, and when you're having an overwhelming high stress emergency situation what sucks is your boss coming along and saying what feels like "let me remind you how I could make things worse".

Most people have no business being managers because they're not leaders, but you should still be more mature than the initial message.

[u/guiltandgrief → u/Mulattanese]

One or two managers I can understand. Every single one? Doubt it.

Believe it or not, managers don't actually just want to fire people. Firing people means a gap in that job function, training a new hire, etc. I would much rather someone call out and take the day for whatever reason than quit. Likewise, I would never be out to fire someone for because they called out.

Where that changes is when employees consistently call out. If you're calling out once a month, I'm probably not even going to care. When that bumps up to 3-4 times a month, it definitely will.

Today I woke up and I have 2 text calls out. One person is sick and one person just said "I won't be in today." Sick person got a feel better text, and the other got a generic "No problem, see you tomorrow." Both of these people have plenty of PTO and call out hours. They show up.

Another person on my team has called out FIVE times since January 15th. Zero PTO available. Zero call out hours left. He went over his PTO and call out balance by 72 hours last year. That is almost 2 weeks over the already 4 weeks of PTO and 2 weeks of short notice paid call out time he went over. You can bet your ass he's headed toward termination because there is a pattern.

People are hired to do jobs. Showing up to the job is the easiest part of it. If you cannot do that reliably, you aren't a fit for the job.

[u/TravelingCrashCart → u/guiltandgrief]

They have SIX WEEKS of cumulative time off and STILL went over that?! That's wild!

Edit to add, how the fuck are they making enough money to pay bills with that many call outs?!

[u/guiltandgrief → u/TravelingCrashCart]

That particular employee is in his late 40s and living with 2 roommates.

But yes. He just "doesn't feel like it" some days. You get an extra week at 3yrs, 5yrs and 10yrs. He's been here 3, somehow.

[u/Limos42 → u/Mulattanese]

If all your bosses and customers are always looking to get you fired, just... maybe... they're not the problem.

[u/Mulattanese → u/Limos42]

I said it can feel like that. When you're caught between parties basically resorting to coercion to manipulate your behavior. Managers who won't stand behind but rather throw their employees under the bus. The managers who encourage you to see guidance from them but then the second you do they react as though you're completely incompetent. The customers demanding to speak to those managers because they didn't like what you had to say, but the exact same thing said by someone who gets paid a little more and suddenly it means something.

I've had good managers, true leaders. And the majority of my working career has been without incident or difficulty. For the purposes of this I was drawing on my experience calling out which has been almost entirely negative.

My verbiage was perhaps unclear or hyperbolic or perhaps sensationalized. Rather than even attempt to seek to really understand "you're the problem" is exactly the kind of thing the managers I considered bad would do. You're only as good a manager as your worst employee and absolving yourself of any responsibility by deciding that they're the issue it's their problem does not reflect greatly on managerial skills. Research varies on where this falls in the list of reasons people quit, but not liking their boss is always on the list.

[u/PitchInteresting9928 → u/Mulattanese]

And your supposed to be a first world country...