Keeping this vague on purpose.
I've been working at the same place for a couple years. I was planning on being at this job until I finish college. All until I got an incredible offer to vacation abroad and all I would have to pay for is plane tickets.
Knowing that summer is the busiest time for the business and knowing that I wanted to take 2-3 weeks off during this time, I purposely finalized my trip as early as I could and let my boss know. He immediately shut it down and said “No vacations over summer, period.” I explained I knew summer was busy and that's why I wanted to give him (the manager) time to work on the schedule knowing I'd be gone. I explained further that this was an opportunity that was only going to come once in my life and that it was important to me. I shortened my vacation to just two weeks and went back to the same manager and this time he was calm but still declined my unpaid vacation and basically said “tough luck”. At this point I was still seven months away from the vacation, I also don't even work 40 hours a week, I'm part time, so me being gone for 14 days is only six shifts.
I brought this up with the owner of the place and he said that everyone wants time off during summer and he asked me why I should get vacation over others. I asked if other people had asked for time off during the weeks of my vacation and he said “No, but someone might. Should we just grant your vacation since you asked first?” to that I replied “Yes, this should be a first come first serve basis.” In a long discussion he said we weren't seeing eye-to-eye and that he would need to touch base with the manager but that my request seemed unlikely.
Anyways I finally bought my plane tickets and put in another formal request for unpaid vacation time, this one with the exact dates I'll be gone. I have received zero word on if it will be approved or declined it seems that we are looming towards the date and I will just end up being a “no show” and lose my job. The closer I get to my vacation the funnier this entire thing is getting.
I don't know about you but I can't wait for my vacation:)