As the title says I am in need of help to articulate some kind of knowledgeable argument with my management on their rediculous expectations and recently updated policies.
I am unable to just “quit” as I have a retirement and good benefits that require me to stay. Although, I have updated my resume and began putting applications out to other locations under the same employer.
Forgive me if this begins to sound disorganized, I have been up all night and unable to sleep after being briefed on our new policies out of frustration.
I am in a mission essential career within the emergency services field, I understand that comes with some sacrifice. One that I am truly happy to make because I do love my job, but it's got to come with some limitations.
We pick our leave for the following calendar year in October the year prior. So we will be picking leave days for the entire year of 2023 this coming October of year 2022. So all vacations and important dates need to be planned out over a year in advanced. Only a set amount of people are allowed to select leave on the same day (I believe it is two people). It goes by seniority and in the following years you would be notified before your turn to pick leave what days were no longer available so you could select new days (this is beneficial for when you want to take multiple days in a row off). A new policy has been dropped and now we are instructed to give management six days that we want with four alternative days. If any of the first six are unavailable we will NOT be notified nor will we have the option to choose alternative days and we will not know ahead of time what days of leave were blocked off by other employees. We are basically throwing random dates blindly in the dark hoping they are consecutive so we can have blocks of leave longer than a few days. This is the only time that we can get guaranteed leave dates for the entire calendar year. To add insult to injury I am also a member of the guard and have military duties. My yearly military drill schedule is released after my civilian job has us select our yearly leave, management is NOT willing to work with my leave picks for the year if I select annual leave during any military drills and/or obligations I must attend. This ultimately renders my annual leave picks useless for me and I am unable to use any leave that I unknowingly selected during any military duties. When management notified me of this after I raised the question I could hardly hide the disappointment and frustration, I could literally feel the blood rush to my face.
I know this is already a long post, unfortunately this was not the conclusion of the brief. Sick leave is no longer calling into work to notify management that you are ill or facing an emergency and are unable to come in. You are not telling management, you are “requesting” to use your sick leave from management. WHAT?! How is that even remotely okay to possibly deny someone their earned sick leave during an emergency or time of sickness?
Last major thing that was touched on in our updated policies was mandatory OT. We are not allowed to say no to mandatory OT for any reason other than military obligation without possibly receiving disciplinary action. I work 144 hours every two weeks, I schedule important appointments on my time off among other things like taking weekend trips to go camping and spend time with the family I already don't see much. It was specifically mentioned that having issues with childcare was not a good enough reason to say no to mandatory OT. I understand that sometimes I may need to work a mandatory OT from time to time, but this seems asinine to me, especially given that we are incredibly short staffed due to the high turnover rate (I'm curious as to why that could possibly be?). You have a plane ticket out of town? Not a good enough reason. It's your weekend with your children and you were supposed to have them at your house? Oh well, figure it out. You had a special date night on your anniversary? Bummer. Dont even get me started on the fact that if they call you on one of your days off for mandatory OT and you don't answer or call back that it could result in disciplinary action as well.
I'm beyond frustrated and looking to transfer to a different location with different management, unfortunately it's not easy as it would require moving states and my husband relocating his job as well, something that's relatively specialized. Is there ANYTHING that I can do in this situation? Any decent argument I can attempt with management? Legal recourse? Please, I'm at a loss. I love my job and helping people but, I can't possibly spend the rest of my career revolving my life around my job that I already live (sleeping, all meals, holidays) at HALF of my life.