My fiancée got this job at the end of May and started mid-June. She had been interviewing for at least three companies per day for about a week, and had let each of them know during the interview about our wedding plans and our booked honeymoon. We wanted to make sure they would be okay with it before she accepted the job. She finally got a position working as a permit technician for a solar company. Pays well, she likes her coworkers. She checked with them after starting the position that she would be able to take the time off for our honeymoon, and they said yes.
Fast forward to now. We're getting married three weeks from today, and we leave for our honeymoon four weeks from tomorrow. We'll be gone from August 10-16, meaning she would only be missing about four and a half business days. She has tried multiple times to bring this up to her manager the past couple weeks to double check that she had the time off, and her employer has been reluctant to discuss it every time. Yesterday, my fiancée decided to have a chat with her manager during her regular check-in meeting.
The meeting didn't go very well. Her manager said that was too much time off to take, and her options were to either not go on the honeymoon, or make up the hours she would be missing. Making up the hours wouldn't be terrible, just work one extra hour every day until the honeymoon. Not ideal, but doable. The catch? She can only make up those hours during the week of her departure. We're only there for two and a half days that week, so she can't work 40 hours over the course of two days. It's just an unrealistic expectation.
So we're in a bit of a predicament. The honeymoon is booked and paid for already, so we can't back out now without losing out on lots of money. I tried to give my fiancée some advice with discussing her options with her manager:
- Bringing up the fact that this was agreed upon by the person who hired her prior to her accepting the position
- This is a tricky one because we never got it in writing, so they can deny any recollection of that happening and there's nothing we can do about it.
- mentioning that she didn't end up taking a weekend trip at the beginning of July because I got COVID and we had to isolate (she worked from home), so she had already taken less time off than planned
- they have people who can cover her area while she's gone (they're even hiring more people right now to be in charge of her area)
Side note: My fiancée thinks her manager has something against marriage. Her manager reacts poorly when people discuss their marriages, good or bad, and her manager also went through a divorce within the past year. We think there might be some bias in this decision to not let her take off the honeymoon. It makes sense; if her manager has been burned by a previous relationship that didn't work out, of course they wouldn't see a honeymoon as a high priority. Still, personal bias shouldn't interfere with the decision because marriage is important to us. We don't know sure, this is just based on context clues from conversations in her department.
I just wanted to ask for some advice from all of you. If it's possible, we don't want her to quit her job or be terminated, because she does enjoy the work and her team, and the fact that I'll be starting college again in the fall and only working 20 hours per week means we need the income from her full-time position. But we're just concerned because if her manager won't let her take off something as big as her honeymoon, a once-in-a-lifetime thing, what other minor things will they be unwilling to let her take time off for as well? It's a tricky situation all around, and we just feel stuck.
I apologize for the rambly nature of this post, we're both very stressed and just trying to find a solution.
TL;DR – Fiancée's manager is not willing to let her take time off for our honeymoon in a month, despite it being agreed upon prior her accepting the position at the company. We need advice on what to do.