Hello. This question is focused mainly on a situation with my coworker vs myself. Although I was present for it, they got the brunt of it. I hope this isn’t confusing.
We work at a well-known resort in a certain department. We’re understaffed, and our department only has four employees along with our manager. There were supposed to be four of us working today, but the closer called out, and our manager had the day requested off. We’re then told during our shift and that one of us has to stay to close. My coworker mixed up her shift times for today from tomorrow and stated she was scheduled to stay until close. She checked the schedule and realized after that she wasn’t scheduled to stay an hour later today and knew that she had family matters to attend to today vs tomorrow. The other employee there was from a different department just filling in for a shift and “snitched” on my other coworker for how they couldn’t stay until close. A different manager walks in aloof and pompously and tells us very directly that there is no other option rather than one of us staying. I’d already said I couldn’t stay until close even though my shift had already been over during this conversation. The manager cornered my coworker and questioned why she was unable to stay when there was no option other than not to and how it was such a ”reasonable request”. My coworker said she had personal, family reasons and was unable to cover the remainder of the person who called out’s shift. The manager then confirmed my coworker was denying a “reasonable request” and that was she would be having a direct conversation with our manager about this situation. She was threatening my coworker with something we’ve never heard before.
This is long enough, and we both are very opinionated on how this situation went down. What the fuck is a reasonable request, and does it hold any validity whatsoever? She’s gone through the handbooks and policies we were given during orientation, and there’s absolutely nothing regarding this.
Our manager hates us, and HR’s been made aware of their actions and attitudes towards us.
If someone’s requesting something of you, how is a threat appropriate when you say no?