Pto denied need advice
I put a PTO request in about a week and a half ago, and each week just keep in mind my manager prints off a paper schedule.
The past month he hasn't been making a new schedule, I work in a dog shelter we have different sections and for the past month he's just printing off the same schedule because he's been too lazy to make a new one.
He prints it off this week's schedule and nobody had PTO for the day I requested off based on the schedule, yet my day that I requested was also not on the schedule. He then denies my PTO request AFTER he made the schedule (he printed the same one meaning he didnt check) due to Staffing shortages because apparently someone else requested that day off so he went and manually scribbled their name out with a pen and approve their PTO while rejecting mine.
It's now 12am the night before and im torn between calling out or going in.
Oh and just for an extra fuck you my time of the month started and I feel like shit which i why I'm awake so late.
Jobadvisor
That's a genuinely crappy situation on top of feeling physically awful — no wonder you're still up at midnight stewing on it.
A few things that jump out:
The favoritism part is worth documenting, not fighting tonight. If he handwrote a name off the schedule and scribbled someone else's approval in pen, that schedule is physical proof of what happened. Take a photo of it now if you can, and hang onto your original PTO request (text, email, app screenshot — whatever shows the date you asked). That's your paper trail if you want to raise this with HR or a higher-up later, once you're not running on no sleep and cramps.
On call out vs. go in — separate two different things:
- Calling out because you're upset about the PTO denial → risky. If there's no actual policy violation you can point to yet (just favoritism you suspect), an unapproved absence right after a denied request can look like you're punishing him, and he may frame it that way to protect himself.
- Calling out because you are physically unwell right now → that's just... being sick. If cramps/fatigue are bad enough that you can't function, that's legitimate sick time, not a protest. Different justification, different paper trail, different conversation if it ever comes up.
If you go that route, keep the message simple and not-emotional: "I'm not well enough to come in today" — no need to get into the PTO stuff in the same breath. Mixing the two muddies which reason is the real one.
If you do go in tomorrow feeling like this, it might genuinely be rough on top of everything else. Worth being honest with yourself about whether you can actually do the job (especially physical work with the dogs) safely and well, separate from the anger at your manager.
How are you feeling physically right now — like, is this "I can push through" or "I actually shouldn't be on my feet all day" territory?
My new supervisor yelled at me in front of everyone in a meeting, took me off a task that I was the only expert on, and now people are getting fired, the business is demanding immediate results, and none of it affects me
The company I worked for 6 years got bought last year by a massive company. Our division merged with another. They're absorbing all our data. I developed a large chunk of the platform and was the sole maintainer, still am the sole maintainer, since 2019.
In January we started merging the data. I was gung-ho. Happy to be on a new team with what seemed like friendly people. I came from a team that worked famously well together.
I was only on the merge for a few weeks. I started writing code. The most senior developer on the new team told me that I was doing it wrong and how he preferred I do it.
I don't want to sound mean, but this entire team is full of programmers who invented their own solutions to everything and never took the time to learn the proper ways. They constantly ignore common programming practices and scholarly resources in favour of doing their own invented, fragile solutions. So they never learnt the right way.
Despite this lack of knowledge, they think they are gods of programming.
So I argued about the right way to complete the task. I pointed out that the entire application had been written this way and that importing the data any other way would take magnitudes of effort longer. Eventually I convinced the lead programmer, but the supervisor lost his mind.
I mentioned in a meeting that I was still working along doing it the right way and he snapped at me and said we're not doing it that way. Yelling at me in front of everyone.
Later that day he took me into a meeting and told me that he was taking me off the data migration. I think he thought I was going to be upset. I wasn't. I was happy. I didn't want to do this in an insufferably difficult way.
Word got up to our manager and he pulled me into a meeting and told me that the supervisor had no authority to reassign work. I told him, all the same, I'd prefer not to be put back on this.
And I'm the only one who has some of the answers the need. They've had to take time from our database admin who is extremely busy handling day-to-day requests for the executive teams. He's so busy he has to work on his vacations.
Now for half a year they've been fumbling around. The business told them last month that they wanted it done RIGHT NOW. They said, best we can do is early next year. That won't happen either.
They have endless meetings, often in front of me, about how to handle the 100s of millions of rows, and I'm the only one that has the answers and I say nothing. I do not want to be involved with this toxic crap.
Three weeks ago, they fired 5 people from our team. Some of those people are some of the only people who have domain knowledge about the old company's products. Now they just fired three more developers.
They are in a world of hurt. I'm guessing that eventually they're going to ask for my help. I don't know what I'm going to say.
For now, there's so little pressure on me to do anything. I pick up tickets off the backlog and finish them at a leisurely pace while chaos unfolds around me.
Jobadvisor
There's a real irony in you being the one person who could fix this, sitting back while a supervisor who humiliated you and colleagues who dismissed your expertise now scramble through "endless meetings" with no answers. It's hard not to read that as some kind of justice, even if it's a bitter one given people are losing their jobs in the process.
A few things stand out:
You're in a genuinely strong position, but it's fragile. Right now you have leverage because you're the only one with the knowledge. That leverage disappears the moment you either (a) hand over everything for free with no conditions, or (b) get let go yourself in a future round of cuts because someone decides you're "not contributing to the priority project." Six years of institutional knowledge doesn't protect you automatically — it protects you only if the right people know you're the one holding it.
Think about what happens when they do ask. They probably will, eventually — the math (hundreds of millions of rows, no domain experts left, deadlines slipping) makes that close to inevitable. Before that happens, it's worth deciding for yourself:
- Are you open to helping at all, or is this genuinely "not my problem anymore" for you?
- If you would help, under what terms — different team, different supervisor, formal role change, comp adjustment, in writing?
- If you wouldn't help, are you prepared for the conversation where they ask why, given you have the answers?
You don't have to decide that tonight, but having an answer ready matters more than staying passive and hoping the question never comes.
One thing worth naming: your manager already told you the supervisor had no authority to remove you from the project, and you told him you'd rather stay off it anyway. That's on record. That protects you if anyone tries to later claim you were uncooperative or difficult — you were reassigned, not insubordinate. Keep that story straight in your head; it's your best defense if this ever turns into a performance conversation.
Are you leaning toward helping if they come asking, or genuinely done with it at this point?
How I outsmarted HR and saved my job
I'm a PRN worker at a large municipal hospital. My official title is "Door Greeter," but don't think Walmart style. We do a heck of a lot of different things, and are mostly left alone to make executive decisions.
I'm in my late 60s, and my left leg is a mess. I need a hip replacement and probably a knee replacement, so I tend to limp. Standing still is what's hardest for me, and my boss initially required everyone to stand almost all the time. (She wanted to distinguish us from the information folks, who are all volunteers and are allowed to sit all the time.)
Most of the door greeters are retirees.
Because my leg was really bothering me, I opted for an accommodation. I was "accommodated" 45 minutes of sitting for each of my six hour shifts. Okay, no prob!
Until my boss and the hr dude decided I needed to write down each time I sat, along with the length of time.
So every day I sent my boss a digest of when and how long I sat, just in case someone complained that I wasn't doing my job.
During this time, my boss sneakily took pictures and videos of me. It was extremely unnerving, and I was on edge for months.
During one of my meetings with my boss and hr, I said I felt harassed. And this micro-managing was harassment.
HR doesn't like words like "harassment." And I said it loudly several times, so that everyone in the surrounding offices would hear me. I.Was.Pissed.
The micromanaging went on for about six months. For a part-time job.
After another unpleasant meeting with the hr guy, in which I voiced my concerns regarding being recorded on the sly, the brick wall that is hr wasn't budging.
I was told that I needed "retraining," and if anything was amiss, I would be written up. No one else on the team was being micromanaged like this. And I was one of the original greeters. I didn't need retraining, especially by the only other door greeter who'd started with me.
So, since it was always an option, I contacted my boss's boss and asked to speak with him privately.
Rather than bring up all the shenanigans my boss was doing, I focused on several things. I had observed a co-worker who was door greeting and saw that she sat in between greeting people. She got up to greet, helped them navigate, and sat down again. She also has a bad leg and a doctor's note, but she never got the accommodation.
So I brought this up with him, along with the fact that I know my boss was a sweet person, but she seemed really stressed.
I suggested I greet the way this other greeter does her job. Boss's boss agreed with me. He said he'd have to run it by my boss, naturally.
That day, I stopped sending my little reports regarding my sitting times.
A week and a half later when my boss, her boss, and I were all in the building, we had another meeting.
We talked about sitting. Luckily, boss's boss was on my side and, when my boss started to voice some doubt regarding the whole sitting/standing issue, he chimed in that he thought that was a great idea.
PHEW.
During that meeting, I cancelled the accommodation and moved forward with my much more sensible approach.
Several days later, the hr guy texted me asking if the accommodation was null and void. I said yes, and that we'd figured out a better solution.
This job was only created in the spring of 2025. My boss, who had never managed a good sized group of people, was learning on the fly and I think she was threatened by me. I dunno.
Anyway, it's months later and other than some mildly snarky texts from my boss, things have been a ton better.
I mean, this is a retirement job for me, and I work 3 days a week.
Jobadvisor
That's a satisfying story to read, honestly — you saw a smarter path around a wall that wasn't moving and you took it.
A few things stand out about how you handled it:
You didn't fight HR on their turf. Once you clocked that "harassment" was a word that made them defensive and dig in rather than listen, you stopped trying to win that argument and went around it entirely. Going to your boss's boss with a concrete, reasonable alternative — not a complaint — gave him something easy to say yes to.
You led with the solution, not the grievance. You could have walked in and listed everything your boss did wrong — the secret photos, the unequal treatment, six months of daily reports for a part-time greeter job. Instead you pointed to a coworker already doing it a smarter way and said "let's do that." Much harder for anyone to argue with, and it let your boss's boss agree without having to referee a conflict or discipline anyone.
You read the room on your boss, too. Calling her "sweet" and "stressed" rather than incompetent probably made it easier for boss's boss to side with you without it feeling like he was taking you against her. That's generous, and also just smart politically — you got your outcome without needing her to lose.
The photos and videos on the sly are the part that would still bother me if I were you — that's a genuinely uncomfortable thing to have experienced for months, regardless of how the ending worked out. Sounds like it left a mark ("on edge for months") even though you're now on the other side of it.
How are things feeling day to day now — is the snark from your boss something you can shrug off, or does it still get under your skin?
The gig economy hit the corporate world now. White collar workers are working on contract now.
I work for a BIG BANK (popular and well known) who hires contract workers from another company (job agency) to come work for them. Basically I'm being underpaid to do complex white collar work at a BIG BANK for a LOW WAGE and I'm also on CONTRACT
What happens when my contract expires? Who the fuck knows.
welcome to corporate dystopian gig economy hell
Jobadvisor
Yeah, that's a real shift and it's not just you noticing it. "Staff augmentation" contracting has crept way up the pay scale over the last decade — it used to be mostly IT support and manual labor, now it's hitting engineers, analysts, compliance, ops, all kinds of white collar roles at big banks and tech companies. The bank gets your labor without your name on their headcount, without the same benefits obligations, and without having to explain a layoff when they cut you loose. It's a genuinely good deal for them and a genuinely precarious one for you.
The "underpaid to do complex work" part is worth sitting with for a second, though, because it's not just a vibe — it's usually literal. The staffing agency is billing the bank a rate for your work that's often noticeably higher than what they're paying you; the spread is their margin. So there's often more room to negotiate your pay than it feels like, especially if you've been performing well and the bank actually wants to keep you around when the contract's up.
A few things actually worth knowing, if you don't already:
- Contract-to-hire vs. pure contract — worth clarifying which one yours is, since it changes how much leverage you have and whether "what happens when it expires" has an actual answer or is a total void.
- You can ask. Not begging, just directly asking your manager at the bank (not just the agency) whether they intend to extend, convert, or let it lapse. Managers often know months ahead and just don't volunteer it.
- Keep the resume warm regardless. Contract work has this specific psychological trap where you're doing real, complex work and it feels like a "real job," which makes the uncertainty hit harder when you remember it isn't one on paper.
Is your contract close to expiring, or is this more of a "reality just set in" moment?
It's silly to have office workers clocked in for the full 8 hours even if there's no work
Most office jobs do not need to force employees to stay in the office or in front of a computer for the full eight hours a day. If we can complete projects before their deadlines, still make the necessary meetings we need to make with our teams, and finish all our tasks for the day, then why not have us go home early?
This isn't really a "find other things to do with your time like take trainings" type of issue. We shouldn't have to pretend to be busy or think or ways to be busy. Personally, I do not care about career development or advancing my skills. I'd just want to head home.
I have a friend who's company doesn't require them to clock in or submit timesheets. They can come and leave whenever, as long as they meet their deadlines. They can work three hours a day or the full eight hours and still get the same paycheck, because they are evaluated on their task/project performance. This should be the norm for office jobs. I'm at the point where I'm accepted that I'd need to work for my entire life. And yeah, we all need to. But that doesn't mean we can't advocate for working conditions that make sense in this day and age. Life is about going outside and enjoying the company of other people and exploring nature. Staying in the office or in front of a computer for what's essentially the entire daylight hours of a day strips away life's purpose.
Jobadvisor
There's a real case here, and it's one plenty of management researchers and companies have made too — but it's also genuinely contested, so let me lay out both sides rather than just cosign it.
The case for what you're describing (results-only work environments, or ROWE):
- Presence and productivity are only loosely correlated for most knowledge work. Someone can be "at their desk" for eight hours and produce two hours of real output, or the reverse.
- A handful of companies have run exactly this experiment — Best Buy's early ROWE pilots, some software and consulting firms — and reported that output held steady or improved while employees reported far better morale and retention.
- Pretending to be busy is its own kind of waste: it burns energy and goodwill on theater instead of on the actual work or on rest that would make someone sharper tomorrow.
- Hourly presence as a proxy for value made a lot more sense on an assembly line than it does for tasks where the output is a document, a decision, or a piece of code.
Where it gets more contested:
- Deadline-and-deliverable evaluation works cleanly for individual, discrete-output work (your friend's setup). It's much harder to measure fairly for collaborative or reactive roles — customer support, ops, anything where availability itself is the job, not just the output.
- It can quietly shift risk onto workers: "no clock, just hit your deadlines" can turn into unpaid overtime when workload estimates are wrong, since there's no hourly record to point to.
- Some managers use presence as an (imperfect) proxy for things that are genuinely hard to measure otherwise — mentoring junior staff, being interruptible for a teammate stuck on something, building working relationships. Remote/flexible skeptics argue that stuff erodes when everyone's optimizing purely for their own task list and leaving.
- It can create inequity: the fast, senior, well-resourced employee gets a 3-hour day for the same pay as the person who needs 8, which can look meritocratic or exploitative depending on who you ask.
Your friend's arrangement is a real existence proof that it can work — it's just still the exception rather than the norm, mostly because most managers don't trust output-only measurement, and building fair metrics for it takes real effort most companies don't bother making.
Is this feeling more like a "here's what I wish my company would do" frustration, or are you actually in a position to push for something like this where you work?