As a disclaimer: this post is a little but wishy washy.
This weekend I’ve had a massive change in my life for the better (not going into details) and will be starting a job in a field I’m actually interested in and with pay far above what I’ve earned in the past. As I transition into this new era of my life, I wanted to share what was a turning point in my worklife a few years back.
I worked at a pizza joint that may or may not be named after some dude named john. In November I had put in for a request for pto 2 months in advance for my birthday, and it was approved the day I put it in. January rolls around and my schedule comes out for the week and of course all 4 of my pto days I was scheduled. Brought it up with management and was told, “sorry Nasugi, we’re short staffed and we need you.”
I asked him what his plans were to hire more employees (we’d been short staffed for a while, the store made very little profit), and as I expected his answer was “no room in the budget for more staff”
I promptly replied, “that’s unfortunate. Well, the way I see it you’ve got two options. You can either suck it up and give me my pto and figure it out, or I’ll take those 4 days on superbowl weekend instead.” As you can imagine, this is the busiest weekend of the year and I was the most integral employee at the time. He thought about it for a moment, and said, “enjoy your vacation.”
I was absolutely prepared to quit, and winning that gamble gave me so much confidence in dealing with all this nonsense we all suffer through in the worklife. I always think back to this simple moment when I’m feeling mistreated in the workplace.
To better futures.