I recently went on vacation after about 15 months working at my current employer. My employer is a third party outsourcing company. When you call in & get customer support for large company XYZ, nine times out of ten, you're not speaking to an actual employee of that company. Instead, you're speaking to someone like me who is outsourced to handle the phone calls.
I can't be too specific, because both my employer & the client have people whose entire job is to troll social media & monitor negative employee feedback. Suffice it to say, my direct supervisor had been informed of the travel plans since March, & was reminded when the airline tickets were purchased in June. As soon as I hit the one year mark, I immediately asked to formally apply for my vacation. Literal months went by without a satisfactory response.
I eventually had to figure out for myself how to apply for my vacation, because my supervisor had no idea how to do it. Those two facts should have been the big red warning sign for me how they were going to screw it up. The third warning sign was much more blatant. No one is allowed to apply for vacation any further than 30 days from the last date of the vacation. That meant I had to wait a full week longer before I could apply for my vacation, leaving only three weeks from when I applied to the date my vacation would start.
I was approved for Thursday & Friday, but denied for Saturday & Monday. After politely confronting my supervisor, they admitted that the client only pays them so much, which means they are continually understaffed on the weekends & on Mondays. Now the weekends I can understand. No one wants to work all weekend. But Mondays? What kind of responsible company, especially one attached to finance, intentionally understaffs on a Monday?
I finally realized why my employer is always offering overtime. So I had to use two of my emergency day off days to avoid getting negative attendance points or no call/no show flags. Three NCNS in 6 months is instant termination, no excuses. To top it all off, my job has been very stressful. The only reason I'm sticking around is that I'm getting paid nearly 3 times min wage, & that I take care of my disabled wife, it would take a full year to qualify for FMLA, which my current employer is also dragging their feet on.