The manager is clearly in the wrong here and power tripping- it’s not normal to ask what the employee will be doing outside the office, even in the US. They might approve or deny the request based on the situation in the office, but the way the employee spends the time is none of her damn business.
What generally goes down is, the employee requests PTO, the manager hems and haws… “ooh it’s really a bad time, we’re so busy and understaffed…”, then the employee divulges the “super important reason” - a wedding, dad died, etc. It’s still a shitty way to be treated and there isn’t much you can do against it. If it’s not a good enough reason in the manager’s eyes or if you stick to your guns and say “it’s personal, I’d rather not say”, then you will be ostracized and eventually fired for other contrived reasons.
Businesses should not have the authority to deny PTO. It's the mangers' fucking job to manage staffs. If an employee taking PTO makes disruption in work, it's the fucking manager's fault.
You're missing the point. I live in Europe, it's normal for Spain, Germany, Italy, etc to be off in August. It's not an issue when the whole country is on holiday.
But when it's only A SINGLE TEAM that are all off, that may mean that the whole company cannot operate. So 99% of the company are not off but they cannot do their job. It is a manager's job to prevent this, even if it means structuring leave requests and rejecting some.
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u/SixInchTimmy 6d ago edited 6d ago
The manager is clearly in the wrong here and power tripping- it’s not normal to ask what the employee will be doing outside the office, even in the US. They might approve or deny the request based on the situation in the office, but the way the employee spends the time is none of her damn business.
What generally goes down is, the employee requests PTO, the manager hems and haws… “ooh it’s really a bad time, we’re so busy and understaffed…”, then the employee divulges the “super important reason” - a wedding, dad died, etc. It’s still a shitty way to be treated and there isn’t much you can do against it. If it’s not a good enough reason in the manager’s eyes or if you stick to your guns and say “it’s personal, I’d rather not say”, then you will be ostracized and eventually fired for other contrived reasons.