This is more of a vent. Just felt like I needed to get this off my chest. My son and I almost share a birthday. His is the day before mine in May. Every year, I try to take him camping for our birthday with our whole family. This year, I've been looking for a campground but most are already booked. I finally found one that we would all be able to make and I go to put in the time request at work to see 2 people in my department are already off that day. In our department, there's a rule that no more than 2 people can be off at at time. However, one of the ones off is the manager. So I went and explained that I'm trying to take some time to spend with my son for our birthday to my supervisor. I say that since one of the people off is the manager, hopefully I can still take the day off. My supervisor says she'll have to check with the manager. Of course, they deny me. They just tell me to “pick a different weekend” for our trip. Easier said than done. I tell her that sucks because any other weekend isn't our actual birthdays and we like to spend that time together to which she replies “Since it was so important to you, you should have booked it off as soon as 2022 was available.” I felt that was an incredibly rude way to treat your employee. I don't take a lot of time off because of work loads here. And I get that it's our policy, just sucks to feel like my time with my kids is so less valuable than being “short staffed” for a day. Plus, if having 3 people out on 1 day is enough to screw the department, then maybe we need more damn employees.
TL;DR Didn't find a campground in time for my son's b-day and manager denied my time off because she and 1 other is already out. Told that if I really cared, I would have booked it sooner.