Writing this on behalf of my friend because I'm so pissed off. I'm in Europe, she's in the US, we've known each other 6 years now, and met each other irl for the first time last year. We've decided to make meeting up a yearly thing, she went to visit me first, this year it's my turn to visit her. We've been planning this trip since she left last year, we've made plans, picked a specific date, rented our bnb as soon as possible, I got all the necessary papers to travel and bought the plane tickets, got my own vacation days approved…
All the while my friend has already handed in her request for two weeks time off, so she can spend time with me, but obviously their software is broken, so she has to ask to permission in person. She asks her manager who says it's no issue, and we think all is good, although she has been trying to get it in writing ever since. It's been nothing but back and forth between her, her manager, the team lead, some other people up the corporate ladder, and no one seems to be able to agree on if she can have those two fucking weeks off or not, but the general consensus was “probably yes maybe likely we'll wait and see”.
Store manager says it's fine, someone else says it'll be a busy month, so they're not sure, another person my friend can never even reach but according to someone else they're in contact with, they say it's also fine. They got their software to work again, and my friend, just to get the confirmation, enters in her vacation request and gets a fucking rejection today with no explanation as to why.
I'm so angry and annoyed on her behalf, this is so fucking stupid. She's gonna try talking to her manager again, see if it was a mistake or what. I know she's dependent on her job, otherwise I'd just tell her to go say fuck them, and just don't show up, do our thing like we planned, they knew almost a year in advance and still have over another month to figure out schedules. But alas. Murica.
As of right now, I don't have high hopes, because I know how toxic American work places are, and unless she gets a clear written statement that she's got those two weeks off, I'm gonna run on the assumption I'll have to spend those two weeks in the US alone. Which is stupid, because she's the only reason I'm visiting Texas of all places and I feel no desire to skulk around there by myself.
Rant over.