I've been currently working at a LTC facility since mid-January 2016. We are quite short-staffed. My boyfriend and I are wanting to go to Cancun in July. I plan on putting in my vacation request this week. My facility has been known to be stingy on accepting time-off requests... and I'm kind of worried. What if I've already paid for my vacation, and they decline my request?
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
I've successfully pressured my manager into giving me time off for something when it would leave a gap in the schedule by making the manager feel uncomfortable and awkward by suggesting that she was interfering with my life. "I want to make it clear that while you are my manager, you cannot interfere with my personal life or career goals." This will put them on the defensive.
OP: you can also go to the HR director and state to them that your manager is trying to make you work when you won't even be in the country. Make her look as unreasonable as possible. Eventually she'll realize that she'd wish she just gave you the time off.
You may have gotten what you wanted in the short term, but I doubt that you are now someone your manager will go to the mat to protect when you inevitably screw up, get injured or become ill. She'll give you the 13 weeks of FMLA she's required by law to give you, but if you go one day over that, you'll be history. You anger the wrong person and you'll be gone. Writes ups will STAY in your jacket, and folks will be looking for you to fail. Congratulations! You've just proven that you're not someone we want to work with.
That stinks, considering you have to ask for days off so far in advance. It would be different if it were like an office job where you can get approval for a vaca day in 2 weeks.
We can only ask off three months prior to the days we want. If we wanted off in July, the first day when can out our request in is April 1. So luckily, we don't have to ask off too far in advanced.
She isn't entitled to paid time off yet as a newer employee. An unpaid leave is rarely an entitlement and times not granted unless pre planned vacation at time of hire. If she had been there long enough to qualify for PTO benefits it might be different.
I think bunnynurse is a Canadian nurse, so she might be entitled to paid vacation, some of our union contracts stipulate nurses with under one year experience accrue 1.25 vacation days per month worked.
Wow, US vacation times suck!! We get 7 full weeks a year (6 weeks AL and one week BH) I can't imagine having to work a full year before I could take holidays!! If you're a traveller or agency worker the statutory leave rights are 8 hours for every 100 hours you work!! Plus because you rotate days/nights it's easy to fiddle - work 7 nights, get 7 off, then take 3 days AL, then request to work the weekend you return - voilà you have 18 days off but only took 3 days holidays [emoji178][emoji178]
I hope the OP will come back and tell us how it all worked out in the end, whether the time was approved as a LOA but unpaid, or denied. I have seen many different policies in many different places, but the one common theme was that you could not take time off unless you had benefit time to cover it. If you didn't have enough vacation time then you couldn't take the time, it was really that simple.
I guess you could think of it this way, from the company's perspective. If an employee who doesn't need the paycheck but works there to keep up skills or whatever decides she wants to take off two weeks every six weeks then I think the facility would have to say No, you don't have the time accrued so you can't take it off. It isn't a PRN job, right? So the OP should expect that if they want to be very nice about it (this once!) then fine, she'll get the unpaid time off approved. But I wouldn't count on it happening again!
I know I suck at replying at all the comments, but I appreciate everyone's feedback (negative and positive) :) haha.
But a little update to you and all: My facility's policy reads, "Unplanned vacation requests can be submitted after Mar 31 on a Leave Request form and will be filled if replacement staff are available." Scheduling said to me today, "3 months is enough time. There's actually some employees that try to book vacations a month before, so you should be fine."
I know some people thought my question of, "What if I booked my vacation and they declined?" was a pretty silly, so I probably shouldn't have included that/reworded it at least. I posted this basically to have a some ensight on other people's experience or policy on booking vacations since mine was unclear. Plus I'm new to the whole health-care system.
I am not submitting a quote from your post as I would have to quote all of it. It has been my experience (nursing 40+ years) that every where I've worked the atmosphere is the same. The "good" nurses - the ones who come in early, stay late, cross their T's and dot their i's, give patient care above and beyond, who know what they are doing, need little to no guidance, go by the rules, etc - are the first to be let go, go unrecognized, and are basically disposable.
On the other hand, the nurses who don't document well, are in constant need of counseling, need to have someone f/u frequently, who are lazy, who take advantage of the system - you know who I mean, your co-worker who gets paid as much as you do and you can't believe she gets away with x, y& z - somehow they skate by and become the "senior" staff.
I'm glad everything worked out for you. I want to apologize for the company who did not recognize your value to them. Little consolation, but .....
What about the European countries where vacation is encouraged and even mandated? The US, in general, is the stingiest country in providing and encouraging "down time". We wonder why families are falling apart, no one has family dinners any more, and more. We don't take time off. We don't use our vacations and MH days.
I'm all for letting my staff have the time off they want and I make sure , we as a team, are helping cover for each other as each one gets their battery recharged.
I have also worked - both in health care and in my alternate life prior to working in health care - where that was already standing policy. (This covers some considerable length of time too, as my health care experience covered a 15 year period which ended 5 years ago with my involuntary retirement into the world of total Disability. )
If you had PTO accumulated, you were required to use it, if you had sick leave time in addition to "vacation" time (prior to the time when PTO became the "bucket" into which all paid time off was dumped) and you were ill you were required to use it until it was all gone and THEN you were in an unpaid leave status. So, if you had those things available to you, you couldn't request to take unpaid leave time first.
It would be like "double dipping" is how it was explained to me - you're accumulating PTO paid leave while you're working, but voluntarily taking time off without using it, while also shifting the load of your work onto the rest of the staff, and keeping your "time off bank" full in the process. This was the same as increasing your allowed number of hours of time off over the limit set for everyone. Not fair to anyone else, and almost everyone was disallowing such tactics.
By the time I left working for a living, nobody I was aware of (in a very large metro area with many hospitals and LTCs and friends working in them) not one was allowing that to happen.
I don't know if it was legal for you to secretly tape Nurse Queenbee, but that was a great story.
I think from what I've read is that it's legal to record someone as long as there is at least one person in the room who knows that a recording is happening. JMHO
I think from what I've read is that it's legal to record someone as long as there is at least one person in the room who knows that a recording is happening. JMHO
Those laws vary by state. In some states, you must have permission from both or all parties.
I'm guessing the poster in question lived in a state where that was permissible, or she probably wouldn't have produced the recording as evidence that backed up her version of events (and apparently got the liar fired).
When must you get permission from everyone involved before recording?
Twelve states require, under most circumstances, the consent of all parties to a conversation. Those jurisdictions are California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington. Be aware that you will sometimes hear these referred to inaccurately as two-party consent†laws. If there are more than two people involved in the conversation, all must consent to the taping.
Ruby Vee, BSN
17 Articles; 14,051 Posts
You may have gotten what you wanted in the short term, but I doubt that you are now someone your manager will go to the mat to protect when you inevitably screw up, get injured or become ill. She'll give you the 13 weeks of FMLA she's required by law to give you, but if you go one day over that, you'll be history. You anger the wrong person and you'll be gone. Writes ups will STAY in your jacket, and folks will be looking for you to fail. Congratulations! You've just proven that you're not someone we want to work with.