Is anyone else seeing this attitude becoming more and more common among employees lately? I've seen people on Instagram and Reddit saying things like, "It's your PTO, take it, and staffing is management's problem," and it seems like this has become a very widespread belief now, especially among younger staff.
What brought this up is that earlier this week, one of my employees sent me an email saying she would be absent from December 27 to January 2 for New Year's. I replied: "I need to check coverage first before I can approve it, because someone else is already off during that same period," and she responded: "Hey (my name), I wasn't asking for approval, I'm letting you know I won't be there. I'm spending New Year's with my family, and making sure my work is covered isn't my responsibility. That falls under your responsibilities."
Our actual policy says that any time off has to be approved by a manager. But over the last several years, I've noticed a very big shift in how people look at these things. I don't like to generalize, but it's clearly mostly coming from people under 35. In the past, if I denied PTO because too many people were already out, there was a good chance the person would suddenly call in sick with a stomach bug, migraine, fever, anything, and then I'd still find myself forced to deal with their time-sensitive work. Some people don't even bother putting in a request if they know someone else is already off. They'll just wait and call out.
I haven't taken any time off around New Year's since 2021 because it's become almost guaranteed that someone will call in sick during that period. I only have 7 people on the team, and of course most of them don't want to work that week. Honestly, I wish we would just close completely during the holidays so everyone could take time off and we could stop pretending this system works. Yay capitalism 🙃
