What should my partner do about denied time off, that won't get him fired?
On a throwaway. Long story but I do need some advice, as I think it's out of my scope. Obviously nobody wants to work but we need money, and this is frustrating already for both of us. We don't have safety nets to quit.
So my partner has been job searching for a long time, like months. Idk why it's been so impossible, but it has. It should've been easy, he can do just about every blue collar job under the sun. Nevertheless it's been difficult. He recently got rehired at a Lowe's, different location. He worked at another one back in 2021. We were both very excited.
The timing sucks, but helpful nonetheless. We have an event we're going to at the end of the month that I booked months earlier, like maybe in June or something, non refundable hotel, tickets, all that jazz. We honestly didn't even expect him to get a job before then, but considering he needs the money, I'm glad he did.
Here's the thing. This job has been messing with him since day one. I'm giving as many details as I can, however I probably don't know all of it. The HR lady is uncommunicative at best. He did training for two days, however nobody told him how to login to his workday in those two days, nor sent him a schedule of any kind. He did clock in. This was orientation and the like. Evidently there was another training session on Saturday that he didn't go to, because nobody told him such a session was on Saturday. He was supposed to get paid on the 8th for his two days of training and still hasn't yet, not even by check.
He's been trying to get into contact with HR lady since he started the job to inquire about the time he's taking, but the first few days she kept blowing him off and saying “we'll talk about it later”. He knows how important it is to mention. In that time he tried call, email, and nothing. She also rarely comes by the actual store.
He finally got to working Sunday this week. Nobody told him to come up there nor give him a schedule, but he wanted to see if a manager was on duty so he could sort things out considering he was having login issues and had no schedule. He was informed by a manager he was “supposed to be here at 8am”. Again he has no workday login to know what his schedule looks like, so he didn't know this. This manager he encounters says to wait 2 hours until HR and management gets here to sort out such issues. However this is a forgiving manager, so that's nice. They both work in Paint together and said “no biggie” to him not showing up at 8 when he didn't know. So they do. He gets his schedule, his vest, login ect ect. Again, she's been hard to reach. However he did put his time in and left it at that.
He then tells me it was denied. I'm a little perplexed, but at this point I just don't know what to do.
I want him to keep his job, obviously. Him trying to find another one is gonna take another 2 months we frankly don't have. He also, well, has to go. He's my ride, I can't check into the hotel without him(I'm 19, him 21)and again, this entire thing is non-refundable and was planned months in advance.
Is there a way he can maybe talk to HR/management and let them know that he will be going, but also keep his job? Obviously he's not expecting it to be PTO, just adding that in.
I know the situation is sticky and it might not work in his favor, but I wanna do my best to give him the solution with the highest chance of success. It's just throwing us for a curve ball and I don't have time for this, quite frankly.
And if you want to snoop, yes I am cross posting. I work for a place with generous PTO, so I don't know how to navigate this.