AITA if I drag my feet and leave some of my coworker's work waiting for them when they return from their PTO if I'm forced to cover for them?
Okay so before we get started let me first say that I do believe that, since it's part of our benefit package, employees should be able to use their PTO whenever they see fit regardless of whether there is coverage or not. However, here is my problem. My job has multiple buildings with crews who have the same job as me. Each building has their own crew, but we are all on skeleton crews. All it takes is one call off in any of the teams in any building to be practically catastrophic. When a building is too understaffed to function, my boss just pulls someone from the building that can most handle being down a person. I'm low man on the totem pole, so that person is usually me. Note: this doesn't mean that my job is unimportant and im expendable. It just means that out of all the skeleton crews, I'm the most expendable. This leaves my spot empty for the day while I go provide coverage somewhere else. My team does their best to keep up on my own work while I'm gone but it's kind of hard to do the work of 2 full time positions at once. Not to mention that busting their ass to get it done will probably only wind up with my spot being eliminated entirely if management feels like my job can effectively be done without me. They won't care that it means making the remainder staff break their backs to do my job as well as their own. Capitalism Greed, ya know? My team purposely doesn't even try to haul ass and get all my shit done for me because they want management to feel like I'm crucial to have so they can keep me. I completely understand that reasoning, and im not mad about it. However, this means that while I'm providing coverage in another building, I'm falling behind in my own work at my own building. I provide coverage at one place one day, then spend the next day playing catch up on my own work. So I say screw that and just drag my feet whenever im providing coverage. I drag my feet. I take my sweet time. I drag projects out as long as I can. This ensures there's still some work waiting for the guy who is out using their PTO. My opinion is that if I'm being made to fall behind on my work then play catch up when I get back, why shouldn't the guy who took the day off have to play catch up a little bit too? Why should I get screwed just because I came to work that day and management doesn't have a good coverage plan when their understaffed teams use PTO? The other crews hate me, but honestly I don't care. Much as I believe everyone should use their PTO, I also don't believe I should be screwed over because of it. I drag my feet because I kind of hope everyone will consider long and hard if taking a vacation day every Friday to give themselves a long weekend is really worth it if they'll just be playing catchup on Monday. Plus, I think that this will hopefully eventually work out best for everyone. If I'm the only one complaining about getting screwed over due to being understaffed, it's easy for management to just tune me out. It's a lot harder to ignore it when the entire staff is complaining about there not being effective coverage for them while they're out. I say let the other crews bitch and moan about falling behind when I cover them. Perhaps it will prompt management to hire more people so it's not such a catastrophe when someone wants to use their PTO. Thoughts? AITA for purposely not providing stellar coverage for the people I work with?