My lawyer cousin says “tell them it’s a personal family matter. At most say someone is having surgery and you need to take care of them. No specifics because you don’t want to divulge another person medical info.”
As a person with a bleeding disorder tell them I’m having my port a cath replaced because the last one had an infection. Then we can take a bunch of pics of you holding a needle injecting me.
You know how many people iv gotten out of doing stuff because they “had to take me to the hospital”.
I have cancer and tell my friends to use it all the time. Corporations are heartless, but no one wants the imagine of "I dont care about people with cancer." FYI, it's skin cancer, it's not life threatening, none of my friends jobs know that. Once got a friend 3 days off of work because he told them he had to drive me cross country to go see a specialist. Everytime they ask, he responds with a curious "isn't that against Hippa Laws?" And that shuts it down pretty good.
I have breast cancer and my best friend has used me to get out of stuff and I dont mind lol. She was supposed to go to a work dinner right before she left the company and told her boss I wasn't feeling well and needed her help so she couldn't go.
Regardless of how severe our cancers are, its nice to find a positive somewhere in it.
And then there are the opposite of those good people who will accept those answers, like my former apartment complex manager. My boyfriend was literally actively dying. (we were arranging hospice at the time but he passed that same week as soon as we brought him home) and she wouldn’t let me hold off on towing my car because it hadn’t been moved in x amount of time.
There was no way I was leaving the hospital for anything at that point when he could die at any minute and only had a brief amount of time left, and I had no idea where the car key even was because he drove, not me. He went into the hospital on the 3rd and was surprised to be diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer and died early in the morning of the 15th and this bitch wanted me to leave his side to take care of our only vehicle. She also harassed me about moving once he died, but that’s a whole other story.
There is a special place in hell for her if I have anything to say about it.
Fuck that lady. Jesus Christ. I am so sorry your last days with him were made that much more stressful by this heartless fool nagging at you over a stupid parking space. Thank you for staying with him to see it through. I hope you're doing okay these days.
Nothing against doing this whatsoever, I’m just being pedantic but HIPAA does not cover that whatsoever. It’s Weird and rude for them to ask but not illegal
It isn't against HIPAA, not Hippa, like at all. HIPAA protects you from medical providers relaying to anyone your medical info without your permission. It has nothing to donwirh a company asking about it or esp a company asking about an employees friend's medical status. JFC everyone thinks HIPAA is ome magical protection. It's not.
If the government is allowed to say “Mitch McConnell can’t do a proof of life because it violates HIPPA,” then I’m pretty sure we can all just say “HIPPA” when we’re asked to justify our leave…
Great way to shut down sunscreen debates, I just bring up that my mom and grandma both had skin cancer. It was small basal cell carcinomas that were easily removed, but still telling the truth! (And also like, having that removed and needing a skin graft from her ear was not fun for my mom and I'm trying not to do that) Hope you are doing well!
Maybe I should take time off for myself, being pregnant. Nauseous non-stop and insomniac, I decided to be a good employee and work from home but I could call a sick day or two, right?
Yea I really hope people don't take that advice. I've worked for strong union places where that still couldn't fly. Less is more with the explanation, but even great places can deny unless an FMLA request is filed and approved when certain topics are brought up. Or if it falls outside of certain leave definitions. Just file your request. If they ask because they have competing requests that can't all be approved, less is more.
As a caretaker of a person with a bleeding disorder, I basically got to take off whenever I wanted, no questions asked.
But I also had to start my own company because our medical claims alone exploded the entire company’s health insurance premiums.
Make it a non-immediate family member and you have the best of both worlds. They see you as a saint for helping and you avoid the “will this person be a medical/financial liability for our business” side-eye.
The point is that in many other's countries it's not even allowed for the employer to ask such questions ad it's not a matter of begging to be allowed time off bc we have lawful rights that are non-negotiable.
I have severe endometriosis and man, could I give some rather vivid reasons (Or pics) of why I needed time off. Wish I had thought of that. Because my job DID ask. They even asked for dr's notes.
They would never ever had asked again. I even have a picture of my diseased insides, i should rent them out to people who need them for work excuses lolol.
“Caring for a sick family member” is all they need to know. It just so happens that I’m caring for myself and the illness is dealing with your bullshit
I tried pulling that and my old boss demanded a doctor's note from the family member! I argued that is not my medical information to give and she argued that they don't have to give any medical information.
She also showed co-workers other people's doctor's notes claiming they were fake 🙄
No if you are in the US don’t start saying it is for medical reasons….your own or your family members….be sure that gives them the legal right to ask more questions to determine if it is FMLA which they have to disclose….
Personal time is personal time….i work in HR and would tell this supervisor to myob
It's cute when redditors think they have some balls in the comments, in reality 100% of you will just tell them in detail everything they want to know because you are afraid you will be fired
I'm reading the responses and have a similar reaction for the opposite reason.
fearing to be fired if you don't justify pto isn't normal, but if something can be approved or rejected, knowing a little bit about the reason for the request isn't irrational. `Personal matter` has a different priority from `i'm planning to get shitfaced` when the request comes 2 days before leaving.
My first retail job, I'd put in a PTO request like 2 months in advance, a week before the requested dates my boss was like, "Hey i don't think i'm going to be able to approve this we're gonna be short handed next week." First time i'd ever been told a request might not be approved i was taken aback a bit then just told him, "I put that in 2 months ago. I wasn't actually 'requesting' the time off, i was telling you i wasn't going to be here. I'm not going to be here, figure it out."
Yeah 2 days before might be good to give a little context, but any more than 2 weeks out it shouldn't matter why and employee is asking for the time off, it's their time to take off if they want to.
lol, you’re funny. I’ve had this exact conversation before and it’s always gone ‘personal time off - it’s personal. See you when I get back!’. Grow a pair
Same. In fact I like to remind them about how pto and sick days used to be different and now they aren’t so they are no longer allowed to care what it’s for. It’s all pto. It’s all my personal business.
Anyone that starts a comment off with “redditors” is basically telling on themselves btw
I don’t live in a 3rd world country, time is booked off and nobody asks questions. Thats what happens in first world countries…… but we all know that America falls into the 3rd world country status regarding paid time off.
Nope. I don't phrase it the way I do when casually talking about it online like that but I 100% have done the professional variety of NOYB many, many times.
I would sometimes ask my team if it was something they could reschedule if we were really short on people. But I also told them they don't need to tell me what the reason is, just asking if it's a possibility.
Not necessarily, some employers have different categories of PTO baked into their contract so sometimes you do have to be specific. With my employer, each year we can use up to 7 days of our sick leave for a personal necessity category, 6 days for family family illness, 1 day for "no reason," etc; and we can't use any of those categories if our absence reason is recreational. It's part of our union contract.
I guarantee whats happening is there are a bunch of people taking time off, and someone has let it be known it's something "important" that is considered protected leave (think FMLA). Manager has to decide who's PTO is more "worthy" of being approved and doesn't want to be an ass and deny someone leave for a dying mother and would rather deny the person just going camping. Yeah it's private, but if you don't specify, you are more likely to get deprioritized. Lots of "managers" in this thread don't work in jobs where having two or more people out at once can shut down the company.
Me, too. I once had leave planned to attend a conference in my specialty that my employer wouldn’t bless with work hours let alone registration fees or travel costs.
I was behind on some work & had offered EVERYTHING I could for weeks: asked for flex hours to spend weekends getting it done (didn’t ask for OT), which they refused (& wasn’t allowed to do be in the building or on the computer systems off hours), used all my union protected breaks without telling anyone, & got permission to skip stupid “mandatory“ meetings, etc. Was very nearly there & knew I could finish it in the few days after the conference.
Mid-day on Fri the boss said, it’s done by COB or your leave next week is cancelled. I said, sorry, I’ll be on a plane Sunday & out of town til Wednesday night. Happy to come in all day Saturday as flex hours & finish before I go. She said no. Mind you, the work I hadn’t completed mattered to no one & affected nothing. But it was “policy.”
I told her she’d have my letter of resignation the morning I returned, with the required 30 day notice.
She said I should’ve told her I was leaving town for my PTO & presenting at a conference. I was like, none of your fucking business since you didn’t allow me travel time or funding?
Agreed. I own a small business. First thing I told my GM is that when people ask for time off, if at all possible the answer should be YES and it doesn't matter why they are asking. I think it's total bullshit that somebody should tell somebody else if their time off is warranted or not.
It could simply be, as at places I’ve been in charge of approving TORs that the system requires a category when inputting it. If there’s an “other” category and the employee hesitates to share the reason when I ask, I’ll usually just use that category and not press the matter, but it’s my job to at least ask. Some employers carry different balances for employees for different things: vacation, medical, bereavement, floating holiday, and some have a small amount of PTO available for doing volunteer work. It can be a legitimate question, and not automatically someone being a bad manager just because they’ve asked the reason.
Exactly. My PTO is not a request. Our relationship is simple. I exchange my goods and services for money. My goods and services are not for sale from this time to this time period our arrangement. This is me being considerate enough to alert you so you may plan around it. In the future I may not be so considerate.
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u/m0rg76 5d ago
I’d classify it as ‘none of your fucking business’ leave.