We had been short staffed for quite a while, and had been unable to hire a qualified replacement. Several coworkers had requested time off – one requested a single day off for her son's birthday, another requested July 4th weekend off (and was previously led to believe she would have it off). When the schedule came out, employee 1 was on the schedule on the date of her son's birthday, and employee 2 was denied July 4th weekend. A third employee requested time off for a trip and she was also told no. They both were told we were just too short staffed and no one would be getting time off until we hired more help. Meanwhile, the manager took off July 4th weekend for himself. At this point, we had already been short staffed for SIX MONTHS and no one was applying. So what, people just can't take their contractually guaranteed PTO indefinitely? We work in an industry that has a staffing shortage, and these employees could have easily found another job (probably at a higher pay) if they wanted to. Everyone was burnt out and ready to riot. It would not have been that big of a deal to let these people have their PTO, we still could have handled the workload (it just means that the manager has to step up and do some of their duties instead of sitting in his office playing candy crush). I told the owner of the company (who was unaware this was happening) that isn't right and people deserve to have time off, vacations, or to spend time with her family. I told her people were going to quit if this wasn't rectified. Luckily, she handled the situation and the schedule was modified and everyone got their requested PTO. I just couldn't believe that this manager, who takes more 3-4 day weekends than anyone, was willing to deny PTO indefinitely.