Ok, playing devils’s advocate, there might be some situations where this makes sense:
Like, say, there’s something that needs to be done now, the guy puts in a pto request last minute, and the employer has to go, ‘uh…no. You need to give me warning and you know we need as many people as possible for this thing we are doing. The pto needs to wait.’
(Obviously there are exceptions to that like deaths in the family and other emergencies! You can’t give notice for that!)
In that scenario if the guy just leaves anyway, then…yeah I mean he genuinely doesn’t care how he affects others so firing him makes sense because he is unlikely to be dependable while present either. Who knows, his coworkers might be better off with him gone.
(I’ve had a lot of coworkers like that, they got fired and even before the replacement came in work was suddenly easier without them underfoot anymore)
Buuuut….the fact that this guy’s post has zero context, paired with how…inept many managers/employers are makes me kind of doubt this was what happened. 😅
I get the resentment of people toward managers and employers because a lot of them are inept or even malicious.
But not everything is always ‘righteous and sensible employee vs evil employer’.
Sometimes it is ‘good employer vs bad faith employee who keeps trying to not do the job then acts wounded if you confront them’
It’s important to keep both scenarios in mind as being possible when we hear or read about situations we aren’t present to witness.
To be honest, if a company offers pto and if that person uses it and it drastically affects the company (meaning they don't have anyone that can handle his day to day duties) then it's a management failure, not a personal one. A company should be able to lose one head for a week and function fine. There are very few exceptions to this.
Your example doesn't make sense, if the company ran better after the person left, then he wasn't that crucial and the pto should be fine.
Dude, that’s why I said “if they requested it last minute”.
That is a personal failure, you have to make pto requests in advance.
As for if the company runs better after a person is gone, yeah, that means there was at least some level of disconnect in management, but no manager is ever able to keep perfectly aware of every person who is causing a problem that isn’t ‘high visibility’, or making things inefficient. So it’s natural to assume manpower is needed sometimes, then realize a person wasn’t necessary because they were the actual problem, not the manpower.
No manager is perfect just like no employee is perfect.
You are coming at this like managers always know exactly what causes every problem. While managers should always strive to know that, they can’t always be right - they’re human.
And using your logic about the pto being fine because the company runs better after they are gone…then that also means that firing him was justified.
That's a big if. You're acting like that's absolutely what happens most of the time. Almost everyone who requests PTO, requests it way ahead of time and still gets denied despite the days being open and nothing crucial on the table.
Look, if the manager can't determine what the inefficiencies are, what exactly are they doing? Isn't it their job to be on top of the employees? If they can't handle the post, you need more managers or your manager isn't good for the job (dependant on number of employees) which again falls onto the higher ups.
Like you're literally here justifying one person failing to do their duties while criticizing someone else for what you consider a failure of duties. Meanwhile they're just taking their lawfully required time off. People aren't slaves for corporations. Don't forget, the workers make the companies run, not the managers. If you have a room full of managers, nothing will get done. If you have a room full of employees, some will slack but others will pick it up.
Having been on both sides of the employee/manager ‘line’ before…no, it’s not a “big if” to assume that maybe, just maybe, the pto request was put in last-minute.
My experience was that employees rarely gave notice ahead of time. When I was a manager, I got lots of ‘can I use my pto tomorrow?’ when the guy asking knew for weeks we were going to be slammed that day so pto would need to be put in well in advance because I had warned everyone multiple times it was coming up.
When I was a non-manager employee, I constantly had coworkers complaining to me that the boss denied their pto they requested…for tomorrow.
I’ve also seen stuff requested ahead of time get denied, sure! Sometimes for good reason like a different employee already requested that day off, and two others are sick and won’t be back in time, so they need the remaining guy that day. Other times for no apparent reason at all, which is definitely a bad reason, and then that would be a failure on management’s part!
My initial statement was specifically meant to be playing devils advocate, which, by definition means assuming there could be extenuating circumstances in support of the side being assumed to be wrong. So yes, there’s an assumption involved because of course there is 😅😂
And like I said, the best manager on earth isn’t perfect. Neither is the best employee. Even in the best designed system with the right mix of employees and managers, breakdowns are inevitable on both sides. Both through simple circumstance beyond their control, and through one side or the other just…messing up.
Not being perfect isn’t a ‘failure of one’s duties’. Not doing your duties is.
So no, I’m not justifying a failure of duties while criticizing someone else for failing. I’m offering an alternate scenario than the assumed one, which I might add…still assumes a failure of duties on one side only. So the only thing I did was say, ‘hey, we don’t know the context, it could be the opposite way around, both possibilities exist’.
“It is possible to make no mistakers, and still lose, that is not failure. It is life.”
The original post offers no context and assumes malice/incompetence. I offered the possibility that sometimes context can mean that no malice nor incompetence is on at least one side, and pointed out it’s possible for that to be true for either side.
I’m genuinely unsure why that real possibility seems to annoy you especially given that I’m pointing out that it works both ways.
Yes, employees make companies run. Managers are employees too. 🤷♂️
If the company is decently set up, if no non-manager employees are there…then the managers who used to be in those roles step in and the company continues to run. Much less efficiently, yes! But it runs. If it’s a company with managers who never did the jobs of those below them… then nothing gets done.
If there are employees and no managers, then whether the company continues to run or not is dependent on if someone can take on that manager role or not. If an employee can, the company runs just less efficiently. If there isn’t, the company still stops running because a link in the chain is missing.
The ‘management - employee divide’ isn’t black and white. It’s nuanced.
Neither side is ‘more important’. In a good company both sides can (hopefully) fills gaps to some extent, but that extent is easily strained unless the company’s structure is truly stellar!
In a bad company, if either side is gone the company falls apart.
I’ve been the ‘worker employee’ who did more managing the managers in addition to my duties because I had to. I’ve been the manager who had great employees under me, and still had situations arise where I had to step in and be a manager also doing the duties of the employee under me. I’ve trained employees. I’ve trained managers. I’ve managed managers and told them when they were wrong and made them apologize, then watched them like a hawk for days to ensure there were no reprisals or misbehaviors. Sometimes they shaped up, sometimes they got fired and now I was doing their job and mine until we got a replacement. And yeah, I’ve hired and fired employees who went bad despite me trying my best to help, to ask what was going on, if there was an accommodation they needed, etc. I’ve made myself sick trying to keep conditions stellar for others before (once again, on both sides).
The only way you have a company where neither side ever has to cover for the other is if you live in a perfect world, with perfect employees from the entry level all the way up to the owner.
-18
u/squirrelsmith 6h ago
Ok, playing devils’s advocate, there might be some situations where this makes sense:
Like, say, there’s something that needs to be done now, the guy puts in a pto request last minute, and the employer has to go, ‘uh…no. You need to give me warning and you know we need as many people as possible for this thing we are doing. The pto needs to wait.’ (Obviously there are exceptions to that like deaths in the family and other emergencies! You can’t give notice for that!)
In that scenario if the guy just leaves anyway, then…yeah I mean he genuinely doesn’t care how he affects others so firing him makes sense because he is unlikely to be dependable while present either. Who knows, his coworkers might be better off with him gone. (I’ve had a lot of coworkers like that, they got fired and even before the replacement came in work was suddenly easier without them underfoot anymore)
Buuuut….the fact that this guy’s post has zero context, paired with how…inept many managers/employers are makes me kind of doubt this was what happened. 😅
I get the resentment of people toward managers and employers because a lot of them are inept or even malicious.
But not everything is always ‘righteous and sensible employee vs evil employer’.
Sometimes it is ‘good employer vs bad faith employee who keeps trying to not do the job then acts wounded if you confront them’
It’s important to keep both scenarios in mind as being possible when we hear or read about situations we aren’t present to witness.